His father was a "pick and shovel" man who earned his living building the Toronto subway system, and his mother was a seamstress.

On council, his most prominent role was as chairman of Exhibition Place and he is often credited with bringing the facility that was in deficit in 1999 to the point of fiscal stability, as it is today.

He served as the Chair of the Planning and Transportation Committee under Mel Lastman, and was also a commissioner for the Toronto Transit Commission.

He retained this position alone after the 2006 election, while Mike Feldman was dropped and Sandra Bussin became speaker of city council.

Pantalone was endorsed by many left-wing politicians such as Jack Layton, the leader of Federal New Democratic Party, Stephen Lewis and Ed Broadbent.

On October 6, 2010 outgoing Toronto mayor David Miller announced that he would be supporting Pantalone [7] Pantalone's campaign emphasized continuance of the existing plans of the current administration, with particular focus on large scale transit expansion in the form of the Transit City initiative negotiated with the provincial Ontario government by the Miller administration.

He also promised to build a world standard professional cricket pitch modeled on the BMO Field which he helped bring to the CNE fair grounds.

However, several pundits suggested that Pantalone had largely misread the electorate, as a Nanos Research poll showed that a combined 83% of decided voters supported mayoral candidates who advocated sweeping changes.

[14][15][16][17] In the final weeks of the campaign, speculation rose in the media that Pantalone might withdraw in order to solidify a vote behind his competitor Smitherman, in an effort to prevent the election of Ford.

A handful of city councillors (Adam Vaughan and fellow NDP members Joe Mihevc and Pam McConnell) who were longtime allies on Pantalone in the Miller administration cast their lot in with Smitherman in an effort to sway voters to support a single winning candidate.

(Back in the 2003 mayoral election, Smitherman had worked for the campaign of Barbara Hall, which tried to persuade Miller to drop out of the race.