Sheila Wisdom

Sheila Wisdom (born 1950) is a former municipal politician in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. She represented the second ward on the Windsor City Council from 1988 to 1997, and later became a journalist with the Windsor Star newspaper.

City councillor

Wisdom studied linguistics at the University of Windsor, and owns South Shore Books in private life.^[1] She was thirty-eight years old during her first election in 1988, and campaigned on a platform of waterfront renewal and economic diversification. She was also known to oppose student housing plans by Canterbury College in her area of the city.^[2] She was endorsed by Bert Weeks, a former mayor of the city.^[3] Wisdom was not identified with any party, and was regarded a supporter of fiscal restraint.^[4] She won election to the ward's second seat, and was appointed to the board of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra after the election.^[5] She later co-authored a fiscal policy to keep annual mill rate increases at the level of inflation. This document became the cornerstone of Windsor's fiscal policy during the 1990s.^[6]

Wisdom was a prominent supporter of culture and the arts. She fought for increased cultural spending in the 1989 city budget and supported increased funding for the symphony, although she also presided over a musicians' pay cut to stabilize its finances.^[7] She criticized conductor Dwight Bennett, who was forced to resign in 1990, for trying to grow the orchestra too quickly for the city's capacity.^[8] In November 1990, she advocated a significant spending increase in hiking and bike trails.^[9] The following year, she promoted the idea of an international Air Pollution Advisory Board.^[10]

Wisdom was re-elected in 1991, with an endorsement from the Windsor Labour Council.^[11] She supported an inventory of Windsor's green spaces in 1992, and was disappointed when council deferred the decision for another year.^[12] She voted for a comprehensive waterfront renewal plan later in the same year, despite her doubts about a planned aquarium and science centre as the waterfront's centerpiece.^[13] Wisdom served on the city's budget committee during this period,^[14] and was also appointed as executive director of the Windsor Family YMCA in late 1993.^[15] She supported the arrival of a Windsor casino in the mid-1990s, but opposed plans to make it a twenty-four hour operation.^[16] (She later voted against the final deal, citing concerns about the city's concessions to the casino).^[17]

Wisdom was elected to a third term in 1994, again with support from the labour council.^[18] She was chosen as chair of the Essex Region Conservation Authority in 1996, and was re-appointed to the position the following year.^[19] She voted against a new farmer's market plan in December 1996, arguing that she could not support it without further financial details.^[20] The following year, she was the only councillor to vote against a new mall development.^[21]

She declined to run for re-election in 1997.

Journalist

In January 1998, Wisdom was hired to write a regular column for the Windsor Star newspaper. She held the position until 2006, and often used her columns to address and criticize municipal government decisions.^[22] Her articles about provincial, national and international developments were highly articulate, and were usually very objective. She was named executive director of the United Way/Centraide of Windsor-Essex County in June 1998.^[23]

Wisdom supported the Kyoto Protocol in a 2002 article.^[24]

Footnotes