A long line of mourners queued up at Toronto city hall Monday morning to pay their respects to former Toronto mayor Rob Ford.
They filed past a Toronto police honour guard and members of the Ford family, dressed in black, past Ford’s casket.
Ford’s casket arrived at Toronto city hall Monday morning, accompanied by his brother Doug Ford and other relatives.
The public now begins to enter the #toronto city hall rotunda to pay their respects to #robFord #topoli #RIPRobFord pic.twitter.com/kKCO8LkuLf
— Patrick Morrell (@PatMorrell_CBC) March 28, 2016
The repose is slated to continue tomorrow from 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m., and the funeral is scheduled for Wednesday.
Members of the public can access city hall through the most western main door from the square. No other main entrances will be open to the public.
Ford died last Tuesday at 46 following a bout with a rare and aggressive form of cancer known as liposarcoma that began in 2014.
Ford was elected mayor in 2010 on a campaign promise to “stop the gravy train” in the city.
But the boisterous, overweight and combative Ford was stripped by the Toronto City Council of most of his powers in 2013 after reports of his drug abuse and drinking binges.
He became known to millions around the world as the “crack-smoking Canadian mayor” after admitting that he smoked crack cocaine “in drunken stupor.”
Ford was forced to withdraw from the mayoral race and underwent several rounds of chemotherapy and radiation treatment following the cancer diagnosis in 2014.
Still, he refused to give up on his political career.
Pale and visibly sick, he campaigned to be elected as a city councillor in his fiefdom of Ward 2 Etobicoke North, a western suburb of Toronto that was his powerbase, and handily won.
He underwent surgery in May 2015, to remove the tumour.
But barely six months later, Ford announced that doctors had found another tumour near his bladder. He underwent further treatments, but they were unsuccessful.
Ford leaves behind his wife, Renata, and their two young children, Stephanie and Douglas. He is also survived by his brothers Doug and Randy, sister Kathy and mother Diane.
With files from CBC News
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