text: His voice quiet and raspy, Mayor Rob Ford (open Rob Ford's poilcard) said Thursday that he has been told he has a “50-50” chance of surviving his rare cancer. 
   
   Ford said he is not sure if he will feel well enough to participate in any all-candidates’ debates in Ward 2 (Etobicoke North), where he is now a candidate for his old council seat. But he shrugged off criticism from residents who question his decision to run for office while undergoing chemotherapy. 
   
   “Some people are saying that, but a lot more people are saying ‘I want your name on the ballot.’ And we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.There’s other candidates. If they don’t think I’m up to it, then vote for someone else,” he said outside his city hall office. “I think there’s about 12 or 15 people in my ward, I don’t know exactly how many. This came together relatively quick. I was doing great, I was doing fantastic.” 
   
   Ford has 13 opponents. One of them, business professional Andray Domise, initially declined to comment for fear of sounding “harsh and insensitive,” then changed his mind minutes later and called Ford’s decision “highly irresponsible.” 
   
   “My problem is: he’s put his name on the ballot, and asked to be treated as a serious candidate, so the least that I can do is respect that wish. Which also means holding him accountable,” Domise said. 
   
   “So if your name is on the ballot but you’re not showing up for debates, you haven’t released a platform, you haven’t talked about what it is you’re going to do for Ward 2, you’re not canvassing, you’re not knocking on doors, you’re not putting down lawn signs, essentially you’re taking the neighbourhood for granted. You expect to be allowed back into city hall, as a seriously ill person, with no ideas for what we’re going to do for this ward going forward.” 
   
   Candidate Luke LaRocque, a community developer, expressed a different view. 
   
   “The people in this community are focused on making sure that their community gets things that it needs. And that’s what I’m focused on. If Rob’s going to be focused on those things, and people want to vote for him — because I believe strongly in democracy, I would have a difficult time saying he shouldn’t run until he gets well. It’s a personal decision of his,” LaRocque said. 
   
   Ford represented Ward 2 for 10 years, from 2000 to 2010. Polls suggest he holds a big lead over the field. He has been seen canvassing at least once since he was discharged from the hospital. 
   
   He spent part of the day Thursday in his office, where his aides have covered the front window with get-well cards. 
   
   He skipped a Ward 2 all-candidates’ debate held by Rogers television on Wednesday night, instead attending a mayoral debate in which brother Doug Ford (open Doug Ford's poilcard) was participating. He left minutes after he arrived, saying he was not feeling well. ||||| Toronto Mayor Rob Ford says cancer has been the “worst event” that’s ever happened to him, saying that “some nights, I just cry myself to sleep.” 
   
   Mr. Ford, who has been away from City Hall for the past several weeks while he undergoes treatment for liposarcoma, a rare form of cancer, paid a rare visit to his office Thursday afternoon. There, he spoke with City Hall reporters for the first time about his cancer diagnosis, and his decision to pull out of the mayoral race. 
   
   'Some nights, I just cry myself to sleep': Rob Ford on cancer and treatment (The Globe and Mail) 
   
   “This is the hardest by far,” Mr. Ford said of all the challenges he’s dealt with in the past few years – a period of time which includes his admissions of drug and alcohol abuse, having his mayoral authorities stripped away from him, and being the subject of a Toronto Police investigation. 
   
   “A lot of the stuff that I’ve gone through, most of it’s been self-inflicted, but when you get hit by cancer, that’s not self-inflicted,” he said. 
   
   The mayor added that the experience has been especially difficult given the fact that his own father died of cancer. “I wasn’t in his shoes, but I saw what he went through,” Mr. Ford said. “I just told the doctor ‘I just don’t want to suffer. I really don’t want to suffer.’” 
   
   The worst part, he said, has been the effect on his family. “It’s explaining to my kid what a will is,” he said. “Stephanie’s 10 and Dougie’s seven – they know what’s going on at 10 and seven, and it’s heartbreaking at times…They say stuff like ‘Who’s going to tuck me in at night? Who’s going to take care of us?’ Some nights I just cry myself to sleep.” 
   
   Mr. Ford, whose voice was hoarse and several times had to stop mid-sentence to gather his thoughts, said he was at his office Thursday in order to get work done. He apologized when this happened, saying “this chemo really does weird things to you.” 
   
   “I’ve got letters to sign, I’ve got to open up every single get-well card,” he said, gesturing to the wall covered with cards that had been plastered on his office door. “People have the time to send them to me, I’ve got the time to read them.” He said he’d stayed up until late the night before to help put up campaign signs for the October 27 election. 
   
   After the mayor was hospitalized in mid September, he dropped out of the mayoral race, opting instead to run for his former council seat in Etobicoke. His brother, Doug Ford, is now running for mayor in his place. At about the same time that the mayor spoke with reporters at City Hall, Doug was in Etobicoke, unveiling his transit plan at a press conference. 
   
   “It’s different,” Rob said of playing “armchair quarterback” to his brother’s campaign from the sidelines. “I’m just trying to give him advice because we all start off – you think it’s easy, getting up and debating, but it’s a bit of a challenge, because you have so many different issues. You have a lot of your time condensed into 30 seconds or a minute.” 
   
   At his Etobicoke press conference, Doug unveiled his $9-billion, 32-kilometre subway plan, which is almost identical to the plan unveiled by Rob when he was still running for mayor – with one notable exception. 
   
   Whereas Rob's plan placed Sheppard and Finch subways as his first priorities, Doug said that a downtown relief line would instead be his number one priority. 
   
   "The relief line downtown, the Yonge relief line, I think is a priority," he said, "right beside the Sheppard line. So we’ll be doing the Yonge relief line – I think we have consensus with the councillors. 
   
   As with his brother, Doug promised to build the subways at no cost to residents, instead vowing to fund the plan with assistance from other levels of government, as well as a mix of public-private partnerships, sales of assets and air-rights over stations.
target: – Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is battling a rare and aggressive form of cancer, but he says he's trying to stay optimistic, even though doctors have given him a 50/50 chance of survival. "Some nights I just cry myself to sleep, but what can you do, there's only that many tears that can be shed," he told reporters yesterday, saying the hardest part was telling his two children about it, the Globe and Mail reports. "The kids, it's ripping my heart out," said Ford, who began chemotherapy for liposarcoma last month and whose brother Doug has taken his place in the city's mayoral race. Ford, whose father died of cancer in 2006, describes the disease as the "worst event" in a turbulent life. "A lot of the stuff that I've gone through, most of it's been self-inflicted, but when you get hit by cancer, that's not self-inflicted," he said. But Ford is still running for the city council seat he held for 10 years before becoming mayor, even though he might be too sick to take part in any debates. One of his 13 rivals for the seat, financial planner Andray Domise, tells the Toronto Star that Ford is being "highly irresponsible" by staying in the race when he is too ill to campaign. "He's put his name on the ballot and asked to be treated as a serious candidate, so the least that I can do is respect that wish. Which also means holding him accountable," Domise says. But Ford has a big lead, and another opponent, community developer Luke LaRocque, tells the Star he has no problem with Ford staying in the race as long as people want to vote for him. "Because I believe strongly in democracy, I would have a difficult time saying he shouldn't run until he gets well. It's a personal decision of his," he says.