John Milson

 

By: Dan Gray

A people person with a plan and a promise. A father, entrepreneur and former city councillor. More experiences, more time and more ideas to dedicate to a city he once led.
From under a bushy white mustache a beaming smile meets anyone that he encounters travelling through the open space. That smile and his happy go lucky attitude backs up his claims of who he is when you strip back all the politics; someone who wants to help people.

Green and white placards make a makeshift wall in a headquarters that is otherwise sparse. Volunteers man a front desk, a bunch of tables put together. Maps hang off the walls showing every section of the city.

Since Grade 9, John Milson has shown signs of being a forward thinking business person. At the time he opened up a shop inside the cafeteria at J. L. Forster secondary school to sell school supplies and gym wear. He’s moved forward from that point, serving Windsor as a councillor and then mayor. He said he left politics – years ago for family reasons. Now his kids are grown up and spread all across the world from Dubai, UAE to his youngest who still works right here in Windsor.

“It’s an opportunity for me once again to come back, I just didn’t like what I saw as far as the candidates that had their name going forward,” said Milson. “No one I felt had the experience to do the job and I know I do.”

Milson believes his current resume, which highlights his experience as President of Windsor Raceway and owner of his own business shows reasons he is fit to lead. One of his businesses was responsible for bringing contracts from the oil sands back to Windsor for local companies to fill. Our tool and die industry is a highly-skilled relatively untapped resource this city should be exploiting. Expand those companies past working for the automotive industry and get a younger workforce involved. Including St. Clair College in the training of the workers and the University in training the engineers helps keep young people in Windsor. Doing this would accomplish another goal, growing our small businesses into big ones.

Milson says if he is elected he will be open and transparent. He is looking to bring a change to city hall by making what is old new again. Using his age and experience he will attempt to revitalize a city like he did a raceway and use his ability as a people person to move forward from here.

“I just like people and am concerned about people, if I had one thing, I’m concerned about people and want to work shoulder to should with them.”