Canada built its own canal at the Soo after the US refused one steamer
In 1870 the United States refused to let the Canadian steamer Chicora, carrying Colonel Garnet Wolseley, through its locks at Sault Ste. Marie. Canadians drew the obvious lesson: rely on a neighbour's lock and you can be shut out. They built their own Sault Ste. Marie Canal, completed in 1895.
Long before the lock dispute, the rapids made this a gathering place. The Ojibwe, whose ancestors arrived from the east around 1200, called it Baawitigong, the place of the rapids, and kept a village of about 150 to 200 people that swelled to thousands during the autumn whitefish run. Spring sturgeon, game and berries added to the supply, and the site commanded a view of all river traffic between Lake Superior and Lake Huron.
The first European known to see the rapids was Étienne Brûlé in 1621, and French maps initially called them Sault de Gaston after the king's brother; Champlain's 1632 map uses that name. Jesuits renamed the spot Sault Sainte-Marie in 1668. It became a crossroads on a fur route of some 5,000 km running to Montreal and Europe, and in 1736 a French naval officer built a shipyard nearby that launched the first decked vessel on Lake Superior, hoping to mine its shores for copper.
After France withdrew in 1763, British traders took over, and around 1790 the North West Company opened a post. The household of trader John Johnston and his Ojibwe wife welcomed guests from both nations and raised children in English, Ojibwe and French; their daughter Jane Johnston Schoolcraft is recognised as the first Native American poet in the United States. American troops burned the company depot in July 1814, and after the war the new border cut the community in two.
Railway politics shaped the town too: the Canadian Pacific first bypassed it, then completed a branch in 1888 that met an American line on a shared bridge. During the Second World War, polar maps showed occupied Norway was about as far from the locks as from New York, so troops guarded them. Today the city, home to 72,051 people in 2021, is a steelmaking centre.
Source: Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario
