Who Is Susan Chapelle

Practical experience. Public health leadership. Policy that actually works.

 

Susan Chapelle is a candidate for Toronto City Council in Ward 14, Toronto-Danforth, in the 2026 municipal election. She is a former two-term municipal councillor, healthcare executive, researcher on the mechanisms of pain, small-business owner, and longtime Ward 14 resident.​

 

Highlights

​

Policy depth: I am a two-term elected municipal councillor with experience in housing, transit, budgets, public health, infrastructure, economic development, and land-use planning.

 

Public health leadership: I helped advance access to sexual assault forensic nursing services in the Sea to Sky region and worked to connect healthy communities planning with zoning and city-building.

 

Practical experience: My career has crossed healthcare, research, small business, technology, labour, the arts, construction, and the trades. I understand policy, but I also know what it looks like when policy lands badly on real people.

​

I have never had a straight-line career.

 

I have had a systems career. Moving through the places where policy, work, health, culture, business, and community actually meet. I have built healthcare clinics, published research, run small businesses, developed technology, worked in municipal government, managed theatres, worked at job sites, managed council chambers, and held community meetings. That gives me a practical view of how systems work, and how often they fail the people they are supposed to serve.

 

I was the first female rigger and audio technician to become a member of Toronto’s stagehands union, IATSE Local 58. That experience shaped me. It taught me respect for skilled work, unions, and the people whose labour too often goes unseen.

 

Toronto runs because of workers: tradespeople, artists, caregivers, drivers, technicians, cleaners, builders, public servants, health workers, and small business owners. They deserve a city that works as hard as they do.

 

The arts have also shaped my life. I play violin and banjo, played for 20 years in a community orchestra, and have been part of Toronto’s arts scene since I was 17. Local venues are not just entertainment spaces. They are training grounds, gathering places, community anchors, and part of the living memory of a neighbourhood.

 

Cities need room for creativity, not just another glass box with “retail at grade” and no serious plan for who can afford the rent.

 

I have also spent much of my life doing things women were not always expected to do. I work on engines. I ride dirt bikes. I climb. I have built homes. I have worked backstage, under vehicles, on ladders, and inside systems that were not designed with me in mind.

 

That teaches you how to solve problems, stay calm when things break, and tell the difference between someone who understands the work and someone who just found the microphone.

 

As a researcher, I studied pain, scars, adhesions, and the mechanisms of human recovery. I have published peer-reviewed research, worked in clinical science, and built programs that connect evidence with practical care. My advocacy for women’s health comes from the same place: listen carefully, ask better questions, take people seriously, and build systems that do not dismiss, delay, or ignore the people who need help.

 

That same approach shaped my work in municipal government.

As a two-term councillor in Squamish, BC, I worked to connect public health with city planning because health and zoning should not be separate conversations. Housing, transportation, green space, economic opportunity, climate resilience, access to care, and community safety all shape whether people can live well.

 

I also helped advocate for local access to sexual assault forensic nursing services. That work mattered because survivors should not have to travel hours for care after violence. Sometimes municipal leadership means seeing the gap, naming it clearly, and refusing to accept “that is not our department” as an answer.

 

That is how I approach policy.

I do not confuse consultation with action. I do not confuse a newsletter with accountability. I do not believe municipal government should be treated as a branch office for party politics.

City Hall has real tools: budgets, bylaws, zoning, procurement, service standards, infrastructure planning, public health partnerships, and accountability. The job is to know how to use them.

 

I am running because Toronto-Danforth deserves leadership with lived experience, practical knowledge, policy depth, and a working relationship with reality.

 

A healthy, affordable, creative, connected neighbourhood does not happen through slogans. It happens when leadership is available, policy is practical, and Toronto City Hall remembers who it works for.

​