User:Alexreid
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Alex Reid was born to two CBC radio broadcasters in New Brunswick in 1976. Reid moved around New Brunswick until moving to Winnipeg in 1989. He moved out at the age of 16 and moved to Prince Edward Island where he finished High School while working as a dishwasher at a Charlottetown bar. After high school, Alex returned to Winnipeg for employment.
From 1997 to 1998, Reid was a volunteer video camera operator for Videon Cable (now Shaw Cable) and he took a brief Film Studies class at Red River Community College in 1997. In late 1998, Reid became Winnipeg's youngest person to run for Mayor. He had four key platforms; subsidizing daycare for single parents on social assistance, reduced transit fares, enhanced recycling and debt reduction. While he only recorded expenditures of $15 on his election campaign, he received exactly 1200 votes.
A former NDP member, Reid joined the Green Party of Manitoba and ran for MLA in Fort Rouge during the provincial election of 1999 - earning 3% of the vote. In early 2000, Reid started a company called New Winnipeg Media. Reid was also the Burning Man regional contact from 1999 to 2003.
Reid was later offered to work at City Hall as an Executive Assistant to City Councillor Harvey Smith in 2000. In early 2001, while at City Hall, Reid established the Skateboarding Association of Winnipeg to help lobby the government and the private sector for a world-class skatepark to be built in Winnipeg. Reid quickly gained the attention of Mayor Glen Murray and City Council and was successful in getting the City of Winnipeg to recognize the need for skateparks in Winnipeg's Public Use Facility Study in 2004. On May 2005 - almost four years to the day that Reid started the Skateboarding Association of Winnipeg, it was announced that the world-class skatepark would be built at The Forks - thanks to an anonymous donation of $1 million.
Reid resigned from City Hall in late 2002 - two weeks after co-ordinating a successful re-election campaign for Smith. Reid was co-ordinator of the West Broadway Citizen Patrol from late 2002 to early 2005 and continues to volunteer for community groups.
