Wolfgang Schoor for Mayor
Contact me at: Wolfgang.Schoor.For.Mayor@gmail.com
Visit me at my home base on: 238 Villa St Unit #2, Thunder Bay, Ontario, P7A 3Y2, Canada.
I will be available from 4 PM to 6 PM Monday through Friday.
Wolfgang Schoor for Mayor
“The Plan Man”: Hard Hat Politics for Thunder Bay
Vote for the Plan Man… and you will find better days ahead.
I’m Wolfgang Schoor, and I’m running for Mayor of Thunder Bay on a simple promise: real solutions, built by someone who has spent his life actually building things, not talking about them. After 30 years living in this city, raising my family here, and running a licensed residential facility on Villa Street, I believe Thunder Bay doesn’t need another politician. It needs a planner, a builder, and a problem-solver at the helm.
Background: My Education, Experience & Qualifications
I’m not a career bureaucrat, and I’m not “just” a tradesman either. I’m both, at a level few candidates for public office can claim.
Trades & Field Experience
- Certified Carpenter and Joiner in both Canada and Germany, having served formal apprenticeships in each country
- More than 45 years of combined practical and theoretical work in the building sciences and construction industry, including work as a Certified Construction Superintendent, Clerk of the Works, and Certified National Construction Safety Officer (NCSO)
- Decades of hands-on project experience across residential, industrial, commercial, and institutional (ICI) construction, agricultural building, construction camps, and surface mining projects across Canada and Germany
- Quality Assurance/Quality Control, cost control, and on-time project delivery on multi-million dollar builds
University & College Education I’ve pursued formal, academic-level study well beyond my trade credentials, across a genuinely wide range of disciplines:
- University of Waterloo: a university-level (BIS) course of study and thesis-level work in Applied and Domestic Ergonomics and the Building Sciences, akin to a master’s-level focus
- University of Guelph and University of Waterloo: further study preparing for a master’s degree in Regional and Environmental Planning for Livable Worldwide Winter Cities
- Lakehead University: a qualifying year toward a master’s degree in Canadian History and Material Culture, including Indigenous Studies and the North American fur trade
- Confederation College of Applied Arts and Technology: a Business Management Diploma, along with full- and part-time study in Construction Technology and Engineering/Architectural Design Technology spanning eight years
Inventor & Problem-Solver I hold registered patents, industrial designs, and trademarks in both Canada and the United States, including life-safety systems, hand-tool systems, and engineered lumber and building systems. I solve problems from first principles rather than waiting for someone else to fix them.
Community Builder Since the late 1980s, I’ve owned and operated Villa House, a licensed lodging house on Villa Street that has served three very different purposes over three decades. Details below.
Why I’m the Right Choice for Mayor
Thunder Bay’s problems today (housing, crumbling infrastructure, public safety, addiction) are physical, social, and structural problems. They call for someone who has actually built things, managed people, balanced budgets, and lived alongside the populations the city is now struggling to serve. That’s exactly the résumé I bring, and it’s why I’m not asking anyone to just trust my promises. I’m asking them to look at what I’ve already built.
A track record inside the exact issues the city is facing
Villa House is the clearest proof of this. Since 1990, I’ve run it through three distinct chapters, each one a hands-on education in exactly the kind of housing and social challenges the city now faces:
- 1990-1997: Villa House operated as a transition home for socially disadvantaged individuals and people who had offended against the law, with a mandate to provide supportive yet independent living, helping people rebuild stability on their own terms.
- 1997-2000: Villa House became an official Halfway House under contract with Correctional Service of Canada, housing federal parolees for six-month terms. I was directly responsible for supporting reintegration into society while maintaining public safety under the Correctional Services Act, proof I can hold two competing priorities, compassion and public safety, in balance at the same time.
- 2000-Present: Villa House continues as a municipally licensed lodging house, now providing furnished residential housing to Canadian residents and international students from five continents.
Few, if any, candidates for Mayor have thirty years of direct, personal, on-the-ground experience managing housing, tenant relationships, community reintegration, and public safety under one roof. I do.
Education that matches the breadth of the job
A mayor doesn’t just need to understand construction. They need to understand planning, history, human behaviour, and how the built environment shapes a community. My academic background was built for exactly that: building sciences and ergonomics from Waterloo, regional and environmental planning for winter cities from Guelph and Waterloo, and Canadian history, including Indigenous studies, from Lakehead. That’s not a résumé built for laying bricks. It’s a résumé built for leading a city.
A builder’s discipline, not a bureaucrat’s process
My entire career has been governed by deadlines, budgets, safety codes, and measurable outcomes, not committee cycles. As “the Plan Man,” my pitch to Thunder Bay is straightforward: put someone in the mayor’s chair who is used to being held accountable for whether a project actually gets finished, on time and on budget, safely.
My Platform
1. Affordable Housing & Homelessness
The problem: Homelessness was estimated to affect 693 people in Thunder Bay in 2021, according to the District of Thunder Bay Social Services Administration Board, and independent estimates suggest the real number is considerably higher and has continued climbing through 2024. Encampments, or “tent cities,” have become a fixture in multiple locations around the city, limiting both the dignity and opportunity of the people living in them and the public’s ability to enjoy shared green spaces and parks.
Why past approaches haven’t worked: Thunder Bay is not short on empty rooms. It’s short on rooms landlords are willing to rent. About 3% of the city’s apartments and units currently sit unoccupied (CMHC, 2023), even as the shortage worsens. Meanwhile, of the 29 licensed lodging houses operating in the city 15 years ago, only around 10 remain today (Villa House among them), meaning an estimated 100 lodging rooms have been taken off the market entirely. Two forces are driving this: constantly changing regulatory and upkeep requirements that have pushed city officials to shut facilities down, and landlords who have simply opted out of renting because damage caused by destructive tenants routinely costs more than the rental income those units generate. Existing policy has not addressed either of these root causes.
My solutions:
- Tiny Home Clusters and pocket neighbourhoods. Small, affordable clusters of 3 to 5 tiny homes, built around fostering close, supportive interaction among neighbours rather than isolation, the same principle that has guided my own research into how living environments shape behaviour. I’m proposing a pilot project in the inner-city core, modeled on similar projects already tested in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
- Bringing non-rented units back into the market. Rather than leaving landlords and tenants to work at cross-purposes, I’m proposing a learning centre to educate both landlords and tenants on their rights and obligations, a voluntary program aimed at rebuilding the trust needed to bring lost lodging rooms and vacant units back into service.
- Glamping as a short-term bridge. As an immediate, low-cost, and quickly deployable step up from raw tenting, I support glamping-style shelter as a safer, more dignified short-term alternative while longer-term housing solutions are built out.
2. Infrastructure
The problem: I’ve watched years of drift at the top of city departments: crumbling infrastructure, rising property taxes, and high water rates that are hitting the average taxpayer hard, all while public trust in how the city delivers on its commitments has eroded.
My approach: This is the area where my professional background translates most directly. I’ve spent 45+ years as a Certified Construction Superintendent and Quality Assurance/Quality Control advisor on multimillion-dollar institutional, commercial, and industrial projects, the same discipline of cost control, safety compliance, and meeting mandated timelines that has been missing from too many city infrastructure projects. Rather than accept cost overruns and delays as inevitable, I intend to bring hands-on construction management accountability to how the city plans, tenders, and delivers infrastructure work, with the goal of getting more done for taxpayers’ dollars and easing the property tax and water rate pressure residents are currently absorbing.
3. Social Issues: Public Health, Public Safety & Addiction
The problem: Thunder Bay has slipped from being a vibrant, safe, and prosperous community into one with the third-highest crime rate in Canada on a per-capita basis. Public health and safety concerns, drug and alcohol-related harm, and behaviour in public spaces that falls outside long-standing community standards have left many residents feeling unsafe and unable to move freely around their own city.
My approach: My case here rests on direct experience rather than theory. For years, as operator of a halfway house under contract to Correctional Service of Canada, I was personally responsible for supporting the reintegration of federal parolees into the community while maintaining public safety under the Correctional Services Act, a balancing act that gave me a ground-level understanding of how supportive, well-managed living environments reduce risk, rather than simply displacing it. My research and experience have reinforced a consistent conclusion: people reflect the environments they live in. A harmonious, well-structured living environment tends to produce more stable behaviour in the community, while a chaotic or neglected one reflects that same instability outward. I intend to bring that same applied, ergonomics-informed approach, real housing and social supports built around human behaviour, not just enforcement, to the city’s public health, public safety, and addiction challenges.
Get In Touch
I’m not looking for financial support, but if you’d like a lawn sign or a few brochures to hand out to family, friends, or neighbours, I’d love to hear from you.
Wolfgang Schoor, BIS.CCS 238 Unit #2 Villa Street, Thunder Bay, Ontario, P7A 3Y2
Email: Wolfgang.Schoor.For.Mayor@gmail.com
Vote Wolfgang Schoor: Your Man, Your Plan, for Mayor.