Sonya Biddle

Sonya Biddle is an actress and politician in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. She served on the Montreal city council from 1998 to 2001 as a member of Vision Montreal.

Biddle is the daughter of well-known Montreal jazz bassist Charlie Biddle and the sister of jazz singer Stephanie Biddle. Her mother, a white francophone woman, was ostracized by other members of her family in the 1950s for having married a black man.

Biddle was a noted stage actress in Montreal during the 1980s and early 1990s, appearing in performances of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, Irene and Lillian Forever, A Woman Alone, The Colored Museum, Fool Blast, No Men Beyond This Point, The Haunting, and Canad-uh?. In 1990, she directed the play, My Mom Was on the Radio. For a time, she and her partner Allan Patrick were the leaders and organizers of the Fool House Theatre Corporation, and in the mid-1990s she was involved in organizing community events, concerts, and festivals.

Biddle has appeared in the films Rebel High (1987), Snake Eater II: The Drug Buster (1989), Sweet Killing (1993), and The Bone Collector (1999).

Biddle had strong connections with the leadership of Vision Montreal before seeking political office herself; her partner Allan Patrick was an organizer for the party in the 1994 municipal election and subsequently became an advisor to mayor Pierre Bourque on issues affecting Montreal's anglophone community.

Biddle was elected to city council in the 1998 Montreal municipal election, narrowly defeating longtime Democratic Coalition incumbent Sam Boskey in Décarie. During the campaign, she highlighted her connections to the mayor and promised that the city would purchase the vacant Cinema V building to create a cultural centre for local artists and musicians. Vision Montreal won a majority government in this election, and in November 1998 Biddle was appointed as an associate member of the Montreal executive committee (i.e., the municipal cabinet).

Following extensive lobbying by Biddle and Patrick, the city purchased Cinema V for $571,000 in August 1999. The following June, council awarded a one million dollar grant and title to the former cinema building to the non-profit Cinema VI Corporation, a successor body to the Fool House Theatre Corporation. Biddle introduced the council motion to end debate on the issue, immediately prior to the final vote. Some councillors strongly criticized the award; prominent among them was Marvin Rotrand, who had previously drawn attention to the high costs of renovating the site and noted Biddle and Patrick's historical links to the Cinema VI group. Patrick angrily rejected suggestions of a conflict-of-interest, saying that he was not a member of the new corporation's board. (Despite the efforts of Biddle and Patrick, the site was ultimately not renovated, and in 2002 it was reported that Cinema VI had run out of money.

In March 2000, Beauregard, Patrick, and fellow Vision Montreal councillor Kettly Beauregard accompanied Bourque on a somewhat controversial trip to Trinidad and Tobago. City officials contended that the trip was intended as research on the organization of summer carnivals, while critics alleged it was simply a junket undertaken for political purposes.

Biddle was defeated by Marcel Tremblay of the Montreal Island Citizens Union (MICU) in the 2001 municipal election. She ran for borough mayor of Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce in 2005, but was defeated by MICU incumbent Michael Applebaum.