Sonya Biddle obit

 

Obituary: Sonya Biddle was 'unbridled and unfiltered and honest and courageous'

Actress, director and politician was "just one of these people that could do anything."

She was not on the list.

Montreal playwright and screenwriter Steve Galluccio said he’s never met anyone else quite like Sonya Biddle.

“She was brilliant, she was intelligent, funny, warm-hearted and completely from another planet, she was just other-worldly,” said Galluccio, who is best known for his hit play and movie Mambo Italiano.

“She was wild but in a good way,” said Galluccio. “She was such an amazing human being. It was 30 years ago (when I knew her) but she left such an imprint on me that when I heard the news (Wednesday) I just could not believe it. I’d lost contact with her for a number of years but she still influenced me in a way that I can’t even describe. That was the kind of personality she was. She was a superwoman. She just did what she had to do. She didn’t care what people thought of her.

“You look at her career. When I knew her, she was an actress, she directed my show (My Mom Was on the Radio). Then she went into politics. Then she retired and was living on a farm. She’s just one of these people that could do anything. And she was so funny and always with a smile on her face.

“She was very into helping people who were underprivileged. I remember her telling me: ‘Whenever people need help, they call me.’ And I said: ‘That’s because they know that you’ll help. They can count on you.’ She was exceptional.”

Biddle died Wednesday, after a battle with intestinal cancer that began last summer. She had just turned 64 on Dec. 31.

Biddle was the daughter of the famous Montreal jazz bassist Charlie Biddle, who lent his name to the long-running Montreal jazz club of the same name, and Sonya Biddle’s siblings — brother Charles Jr. and sisters Stephanie and Tracy — are also performers. Biddle was an actress, director and politician.

She was a familiar presence on stage in the local theatre scene in the 1980s and early 1990s, appearing in the plays For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf, A Woman Alone and Fool Blast. She had supporting roles in a number of films including the Montreal-shot thriller The Bone Collector. She was also involved for years with the independent theatre company Fool House Theatre Corporation, in tandem with her longtime life partner Allan Patrick.

She was elected as a city councillor in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce in 1998, narrowly defeating longtime councillor Sam Boskey. She ran for Pierre Bourque’s Vision Montreal party and in 2005 she ran for mayor of Côte-des-Neiges—N.D.G. for Vision, losing to incumbent mayor Michael Applebaum. She and Patrick, who at the time lived on Marcil Ave. near the former Cinema V, lobbied hard to have the city buy the abandoned theatre building and the city did finally purchase the building on Sherbrooke St. opposite Notre-Dame-de-Grâce Park in 1999.

Biddle helped spearhead the drive to have the city fund a project to renovate and reopen the building as a cultural centre, and that elicited controversy at the time, with critics pointing to her and Patrick’s ties to the movement to preserve the building.

“She was an incredibly popular person and politician,” said Patrick. “She was unbridled and unfiltered and honest and courageous and she said what she thought. She was loved and she was a little bit controversial at times, but at the same time the people that loved her loved her extremely. She was a fantastic personality. She laughed. She joked with people. She’d deal with everyone equally. She met the Dalai Lama when he came to town and she made him laugh. She lit everyone’s life up.

“She lit up every room that she walked into. She had no fear. She’d just walk into places and start talking to people as if she’d known them all of her life. People love that. Her greatest gift was her capacity to communicate with absolutely everybody and to make them feel good. She was one of the most social people I’ve ever met. She was very much like her father. Charlie loved meeting people. Sonya was very much like Charlie.”

Her brother Charles Jr. said it was always a pleasure for anyone to walk into Sonya’s house.

“She’d go out of her way to help out her neighbours,” said Charles. “Her house was always open. There was always something cooking on the stove. People were walking around. There was life, there was action, honestly chaos sometimes. But that beautiful chaos that makes for life. Sonya thrived on that. She’d become alive when all that stuff would buzz around her. She was a mixture of dark humour and sunshine. There was always this light emanating from her soul.”

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

She is survived by her two sons, Charles Biddle Williams and Callum Biddle Patrick.