Media & Journalism in Ottawa/Gatineau

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Long time Sun columnist Sue Sherring has past away.

'SHE WILL BE MISSED': Longtime Ottawa Sun columnist Susan Sherring has died

Megan Gillis, Ottawa Sun
Jul 25, 2022

"She was a tough, tenacious, stubborn journalist with a colourful reputation and a keen eye for the shortcomings of politicians."



Tributes poured in Sunday at news of former Ottawa Sun columnist Susan Sherring’s death, with colleagues and competitors paying tribute to both her tenacity at city hall and her warm heart.

Mayor Jim Watson, for one, sent his condolences on Sherring’s sudden passing to her sons, Peter and James Knowlton, family and friends.

“Sue covered all of my campaigns going back to student politics at Carleton University, and she was always tough but fair in her approach to journalism,” Watson said in a statement.

“She will be missed.”

Peter Knowlton, who confirmed Sherring’s death at 63, said funeral arrangements would be announced. The 29-year-old said she was always a supportive mother, volunteering with Nepean minor hockey when her sons were playing and passing on a passion for politics and news at family dinners.

“Her day was obviously about the city, so I, from a young age, was growing up talking about Ottawa city municipal politics,” said Knowlton, a lawyer, who remembered her as encouraging and fun.

Sherring, a Carleton University grad, had long joked that she got Watson’s first quote as a politician while working at The Charlatan as a student.

She didn’t mince words despite their long acquaintance. After returning with a weekly column in 2021, she tackled the “toxic” relationship between Watson and Coun. Diane Deans last October. In September, she contended that Ottawa’s struggling LRT system “hasn’t given us any indication it’s up to the challenge of transporting Ottawans. And we deserve an airing of the issues.”

But another pandemic-era column revealed her warmth for her many readers. Sherring — who loved to host a party — confessed to being “horribly mistaken about my ability to weather the isolation that the pandemic has forced on all of us.”

However, she worried most about the impact on seniors, shut in after a life of hard work, and young peoples’ lost chances to learn life lessons.

“So treat yourself,” Sherring told her readers. “Call a friend. Go for a walk. Talk to a doctor or health-care professional if you’re having difficulty coping.

“Remember that you’re worth it.”

Former Ottawa Sun publisher and local broadcaster Rick Gibbons paid tribute to Sherring as a fellow Day 1 employee at the paper and a key player in its newsroom for a quarter of a century. Sherring took a buyout from new owner Postmedia in 2016.

“She was a tough, tenacious, stubborn journalist with a colourful reputation and a keen eye for the shortcomings of politicians,” Gibbons said. “Woe be the politico who got in her way.

“Her loud, infectious laugh punctuated many a newsroom conversation. She also had a giant heart.”

Postmedia municipal reporter Jon Willing shared the Sun’s windowless office at Ottawa City Hall with Sherring and recalls the “daily education” in beat reporting and local government.

“There are few people in Ottawa with the kind of understanding that Sue had of Ottawa politics,” Willing said.

“She was a tough columnist with the best BS detector in the business. More importantly, she was a proud mother and a caring and thoughtful friend, someone who was always in your corner.”

CBC municipal affairs reporter Joanne Chianello first met Sherring when she started reporting from city hall for the Ottawa Citizen in 2010 and recalls “a force to be reckoned with.

“One of the first things I did every morning was check her Sun column to see what news she had that I had missed, which too often resulted in expletives being muttered in my kitchen,” Chianello said.

Competitors soon became friends, in a moment switching between arguing property tax increases and celebrating a colleague’s wedding.

“Sue was funny and fierce, she cared about fairness and honesty and kindness,” Chianello said.

In 2014, the longtime Barrhaven resident and defender of the city’s growing suburbs took a leave from the Sun to join a crowded field running for city council in Gloucester-South Nepean.

For years, she said, readers had urged her to run.

“I’m hoping, obviously, that people have been reading me in the Sun and that I have struck a note with them, and that they’ll keep an open ear to what I have to say,” Sherring said.

“For the most part, the things I strongly believe in are all in the column.”

https://ottawasun.com/news/local-new...5-4cdf68971ef9