In memoriam
Martin Willschick, who led the Capital Markets team of the City of Toronto’s Corporate Finance division until his retirement, was a stalwart TAF champion.
At TAF’s inception in 1992 he helped structure a loan from TAF to the City to finance changing all the streetlights from metal halide to sodium vapour, reducing the City’s electricity bills and greenhouse gas emissions. Under Martin’s guidance in 1999 City Council approved TAF’s first independent investment policy which allowed moving out of City-managed fixed income into broader strategies that improved yield and grew the endowment. TAF’s Board appointed Martin to our Investment Committee to monitor investment advisors’ performance and provide accountability to City Council, and to the precursor of TAF’s Direct Investment Committee which initially had an allocation of $2 million to this new asset class with a mandate to leverage $10 million in private financing for sector-leading initiatives that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
For over two decades Martin’s encyclopedic knowledge of investment policies and practices, his wise counsel to TAF’s staff, Board and City leaders, and the understated advocacy for achieving both financial and mandate-related performance, enabled TAF’s development as a world-class municipal climate action and impact investing agency. TAF would not be here without Martin, and he will be missed.
Photo of Martin by Karyn Spiegelman, City of Toronto
Banner image by Ferdinand Stöhr on Unsplash
Thanks for acknowledging Martin’s stellar contribution to city building. I worked in the City’s EDC twenty years ago, and Martin was instrumental in setting up city-backed loan guarantees to non-profits that sustained many worthy organizations.
I met Martin on the first day of orientation at Rutgers University held at The Robert Treat Hotel in Newark, New Jersey. The room was crowded and he offered me a seat next to him. We became very good friends and often met for lunch went shopping together, museums and sang Simon and Garfunkel songs in the park. Although Canadian, Martin’s family rented a house behind my grandparents’ and we would signal good night before going to sleep from our rooms by turning the lights on and off. Martin was a scholar and gave me his papers to read after being graded and returned to him. We became best friends. I was engaged to another and I should have broken ot off but got married and moved away. Martin searched for me for decades then found me. Our friendship rekindled., but like before, we were both spoken for. I believe we were soulmates. Martin would be the right person to be associated with lights because he was all light. My condolences to his family and friends who loved him. May he rest in peace.