Name Sheila Wisdom | Role Politician | |
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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.
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City councillor
Wisdom studied linguistics at the University of Windsor, and owns South Shore Books in private life. 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. She was endorsed by Bert Weeks, a former mayor of the city. Wisdom was not identified with any party, and was regarded a supporter of fiscal restraint. She won election to the ward's second seat, and was appointed to the board of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra after the election. 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.
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. 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. In November 1990, she advocated a significant spending increase in hiking and bike trails. The following year, she promoted the idea of an international Air Pollution Advisory Board.
Wisdom was re-elected in 1991, with an endorsement from the Windsor Labour Council. She supported an inventory of Windsor's green spaces in 1992, and was disappointed when council deferred the decision for another year. 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. Wisdom served on the city's budget committee during this period, and was also appointed as executive director of the Windsor Family YMCA in late 1993. She supported the arrival of a Windsor casino in the mid-1990s, but opposed plans to make it a twenty-four hour operation. (She later voted against the final deal, citing concerns about the city's concessions to the casino).
Wisdom was elected to a third term in 1994, again with support from the labour council. She was chosen as chair of the Essex Region Conservation Authority in 1996, and was re-appointed to the position the following year. She voted against a new farmer's market plan in December 1996, arguing that she could not support it without further financial details. The following year, she was the only councillor to vote against a new mall development.
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. 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.
Wisdom supported the Kyoto Protocol in a 2002 article.