After Twenty-Three Years On Windsor City Council, Jo-Anne Gignac Is Looking Toward New Horizons
Story by Matthew St. Amand
Photography by Gene Schilling
It was autumn 2003 and newly elected Windsor City Councillor, Jo-Anne Gignac, eagerly awaited delivery of her first agenda as a new member. When the agenda finally arrived, Jo-Anne opened her front door and stood there looking at it with a mixture of wonder and horror.
“The package sitting on my front porch must have weighed six or seven pounds!” she recalls. “At that time, we had two council members that represented each of the five wards. My partner was Tom Wilson. So, I brought this massive package into my house and I thought, ‘Oh, my God…’ And I called Tom Wilson and said, ‘Tom, can I offer you coffee in my kitchen? I need your help.”
Jo-Anne chuckles at the memory. “God bless, Tom.”
After twenty-three years, Windsor’s longest-serving Councillor, and the only woman at the table, has decided not to seek re-election.
What led to this decision?
“I checked the calendar,” Jo-Anne says with a laugh. “I’ve been doing campaigns publicly since 1988. It’s not that I don’t think I can undertake another campaign—I can—but I have two adult children and I want to do more of the things we used to do.”
She continues: “And… it’s time. You know when it’s time. I’m proud of the achievements, proud of the collaboration that we’ve had around that table and having played a part in terms of where the City of Windsor is today.”
Jo-Anne was born and raised in Windsor and lives on original family heritage property.
“I’m the last of the St. Louis family,” she explains, “still on land that my ancestors settled in the 1700s. It has been a wonderful thing to grow up and raise my own family in an area that goes very deep. I’m the last one here. My children didn’t stay in the city. My daughter, Katharine lives in Europe and my son, Patrick, lives in the Ottawa area.”
The notion of public service was not a remote or intangible concept in the St. Louis home, something reserved for others to perform.
“We’ve always had involvement in politics,” Jo-Anne says. “We were taught as children that it’s not a question of serving your community, but the timing of it—when you have the time to devote to it, and in what ways. Long before 1988, before running my first public campaign, I was involved locally in Riverside at my children’s school and my church, volunteering in non-profit organizations that I’d been invited to participate with.”
In 1988, Jo-Anne successfully ran for a seat as a School Board Trustee.
“We had issues we wanted addressed,” she recalls. “The entire experience was very educational. You go into something like this thinking you’re prepared in terms of representing, but I found that I was always learning. I had the benefit of working with remarkable people, sitting on the Finance and Negotiating Committees, among others.”
Jo-Anne eventually served as Vice-Chairperson and Chairperson of the School Board until 2000. Before that, however, she had her eye on Windsor City Council.
“In 1998, there was a by-election being held in Windsor because City Councillor Rick Limoges was pursuing a federal seat,” Jo-Anne says. “And at that time, I was finishing at the School Board and I decided to throw my hat in the ring to represent the area.” She pauses for effect. “History is very clear. A young man by the name of Eddie Francis womped me.”
Never one to give up, Jo-Anne ran again for Windsor City Council and became a City Councillor in 2003. After serving for years on the School Board, how different could City Council be? Apparently, quite a bit. The sprawling City Council agenda that landed on her front porch was the first indication.
“It’s a human tendency to think you’re well prepared,” she explains. “City Council was like a tsunami of information. It was jumping from an organization whose sole responsibility was education to one that offered everything from senior extended care at Huron Lodge, water treatment, electricity, picking up refuse, policing, fire, etc.”
Among the accomplishments Jo-Anne is most proud of during her tenure on Council is the early work on the proposed new border crossing, which many years later became the Gordie Howe International Bridge.
There was also the distinctly unglamourous work of getting City finances in order.
“We were encumbered with a huge debt load in 2003,” Jo-Anne says. “We hadn’t really done a lot of work looking at our service delivery, evaluating its sustainability. And so, we rolled into that 101-day strike. It was a very, very, very difficult exercise. It was a horrible thing, but it had to be undertaken when we figured out that the Corporation wasn’t sustainable. It caused stress—not just for residents, but for our employees and for the elected body of the City. But we put ourselves on a more positive, sustainable path.”
Many improvements to Windsor occurred during Jo-Anne’s time on City Council, such as the new City Hall and promenade, the enhanced waterfront and the Windsor Family Credit Union (WFCU) Centre.
“It was an incredible privilege working on the WFCU Centre,” she says. “We debated a new arena for the City of Windsor for thirty years. We landed on a possibility, one that we knew was going to serve the community for decades, but it would not come without pain. The Riverside people loved the Riverside Arena. And my own father at the time was not very happy with me because he had been one of the supporters for an arena to locate in the town of Riverside back in the 1960s.”
Jo-Anne adds: “That said, I’d have to add the Miracle Diamond as something I was very proud to be a part of. It is on the location of the former Riverside Arena. Riverside Baseball championed that project.”
She is quick to say the support and guidance of mentors, such as Jim Molnar, Director of Education in the 1980s and City Councillor Tom Wilson, was invaluable to her growth as a civic leader. She also credits the support of her family.
What’s next for Jo-Anne?
“Right now, I’m going to take a deep breath,” she says.
Another measurement that indicates her time on City Council was a success. After twenty-three years of sparing, wrangling, compromising and collaborating, Jo-Anne leaves the chamber with fond memories and her good humour intact.
Published in the Anniversary 2026 Edition.
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