On May 20, 2021, he announced his candidacy for mayor of Montreal, as a candidate of the Mouvement Montréal party, in the 2021 Montreal municipal election. In 2019, he successfully petitioned the city to have public consultations on the police and municipal departments’ systemic prejudice and racism.

Winning the mayoralty would be the latest achievement in a 38-year career, that has included breaking into the CFL with his 5-foot-11-inch, 180-pound frame, being accepted into law school at McGill University after his sports career, and collecting the 22,000 petition signatures that legally forced the city to hold public hearings on racism, which culminated in a damning report that shook the ground all the way to the National Assembly.

Holness was nine months old when his parents divorced. He was born in Montreal to a Québécois mother (Murielle Beaudreau) and a Jamaican father (Bevin Holness).

Murielle Beaudreau relocated to a Hindu ashram in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia with Holness and his twin brother, Jagganatha – a place Holness describes as “Mount Royal times 50”, and where he felt like he was being raised by Mother Nature.

Balarama and his brother moved to Canada with their mother when they were ten years old, residing briefly in Rosemont, where he attended a welcoming class for immigrant children studying French.

Holness’ mother then relocated the family to Boisbriand, north of Montreal, where he discovered that “apparently, I’m a visible minority”. One classmate called him the N-word, while another said he had mud on his face.

His daughter is named after Marie-Joseph Angélique, a black slave from Portugal who lived in New France.

His first cousin is Jamaica’s current Prime Minister, Andrew Michael Holness.