Stephen Holyday

Stephen Holyday is a Canadian politician who has served on Toronto City Council since 2014 and currently represents Ward 2 Etobicoke Centre. He was first elected in the old Ward 3 Etobicoke Centre during the 2014 [Toronto municipal election|2014 municipal election].

Background

Holyday was born in Toronto, Ontario. He is the son of Doug Holyday, who was the previous ward councilor, Mayor of Etobicoke, and briefly a Member of [Provincial Parliament (Ontario)|member of Provincial Parliament]. He and his wife Margaret have three children.
He graduated from Ryerson University with a Bachelor of Technology in Architectural Science. From 1999 to 2014, he was a manager at the provincial Ministry of Energy.

Holyday is a fiscal conservative. He describes himself as taking "a tough stance against congestion causing initiatives", including the Eglinton Crosstown LRT and the King Street Transit Priority Corridor. He opposes building new bike lanes and new multi-unit housing in neighbourhoods that consist of single-family homes.
Alex Bozikovic, The [Globe and Mail]'s architecture critic, called Holyday "furiously anti-development". He has also been described as one of "three Toronto councillors hopelessly exacerbating the housing crisis" by More Neighbours Toronto.
Holyday is often an outlier among city councillors, and has been the only dissenting vote on dozens of council votes.
He endorsed Mark Saunders in the 2023 Toronto mayoral by-election.

Both Holyday and John Campbell were incumbents in the 2018 Toronto election because Ward 2 and Ward 3 were merged into a single ward.