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The City of Sault Ste. Marie, for which the riding is named, is a three-hour flight from Ottawa. The city has an international airport, and a bridge connecting to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. It is accessible via Hwy. 17 — part of the Trans-Canada Highway. Constituents also have access to city buses.
The riding covers not only the city, but surrounding land including Echo Lake, Sandy Islands Provincial Park, Pancake Bay Provincial Park, Batchawana River Provincial Park and part of Algoma Headwaters Provincial Park. It also includes a chunk of Lake Superior and St Mary’s River along the Canada-U.S. border.
About 8.5% of the riding’s population are immigrants, with some of the largest populations born in Italy, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
Italian is the most common non-official mother tongue in the riding.
Approximately 13% of the riding’s population identify as Aboriginal. Ojibway is the most commonly spoken Indigenous language.
Average individual income is $42,023.
With the abundance of provincial parks, biking, hiking, camping, canoeing, boating, fishing, snowshoeing, cross country skiing, birding, and swimming are all recreational activities available to residents of Sault Ste. Marie. The riding is also home to the Sault Ste. Marie Canal National Historic Site, Casino Sault Ste. Marie, a museum ship called MS Norgoma, and a wilderness train tour run by Algoma Central Railway.
Dr. Roberta Bondar, Canada’s first female astronaut, was born and raised in Sault Ste. Marie, graduating from Sir James Dunn High School. She was the payload specialist on the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1992 and worked at NASA as a researcher studying the effects of space travel on the human body.
The industries that employ the most residents in the riding include health care and social assistance, retail trade and manufacturing. Over 50% of the workforce has a post-secondary education of some kind. In 2011 the unemployment rate in the riding was 10.3%.
The municipal government of Sault Ste. Marie has undertaken an environmental initiative since 2007 to reduce the city’s carbon footprint. Measures include a public awareness campaign and efforts to reduce municipal building energy usage, reduce fossil fuel waste in public transport, and greater waste management along with audits of the efforts.
The Sault Ste. Marie region has been inhabited for thousands of years, with indigenous communities using the river for fishing and as a gathering spot. European settlement began in the mid-1600s with the arrival of French Jesuits who set up a mission. The fur trade followed and later a village developed. The Sault Ste. Marie Canal was constructed in the late-1800s after tension between the United States over the use of American-controlled infrastructure. The settlement became a town in 1887 and a city in 1912.
Indigenous communities in the riding include:
Batchewana First Nation
Garden River First Nation
Missanabie Cree
MNO Historic Sault Ste. Marie Métis Council
