Susan Fish

Background

Fish was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and raised in New York City. Her father was a sailor in the United States Navy and her mother was Brazilian.

Education

She attended Saint Lawrence College where she received a degree in political science and obtained a masters in public administration at New York University.

Career

She served in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1981 to 1987, and was a cabinet minister in the governments of Bill Davis and Frank Miller. She lived in the lower east side and started working when she was 12 as a dishwasher in a cafe. Christopher returned to New York shortly thereafter, but Fish stayed and started work at the Bureau of Municipal Research.

She became executive director at age 23.

In 1973 she started working as a policy advisor for David Crombie, the pro-reform Mayor of Toronto. She obtained her Canadian citizenship in 1976.

Fish was elected to Toronto City Council as a reform alderman in 1976, and served until 1980. Like Crombie, she was a Red Tory.

Shortly after her election, she participated in a rally at Queen"s Park to support the inclusion of sexual identity in the Ontario Human Rights Code.

On July 6, 1983, she was promoted to the Davis cabinet as Minister of Citizenship and Culture. Nonetheless, she retained her cabinet post under the new Frank Miller government when he announced his cabinet on February 8, 1985. Fish was re-elected with a reduced plurality in the 1985 election.

On May 17, 1985, she was named as Minister of the Environment in Miller"s short-lived minority government.

After the Tories were defeated by a motion of no confidence in June 1985, she continued to serve in the legislature as an opposition Master in Public Policy. She was defeated in the 1987 Ontario election by Liberal Attorney General Ian Scott, by a margin of 8,055 votes in the redistributed constituency of Saint George—Saint David. Cabinet positions

She returned to politics in the 1991 municipal election when she ran for Mayor of Toronto against Jack Layton, June Rowlands and Betty Disero.

Fearing a Layton victory, the business and development community consolidated its support and funding behind Rowlands as the "Anybody but Layton" candidate, forcing Disero and Fish to drop out of the race due to lack of resources.

Membership

She ran for Bill Davis" Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario in the 1981 Ontario election and was elected as Member of Provincial Parliament (Master in Public Policy) for the Saint George constituency in downtown Toronto.

Connections

Friend:

Larry Grossman