Sault Sainte Marie

Sault Ste. Marie ("Sault" pronounced "soo;" nicknamed "the Sault" or "the Soo"; 2001 population 74,566) is a city on the St. Mary's River in Ontario, Canada. It is the third largest city in Northern Ontario. It is bordered to the east by the Rankin and Garden River First Nation reserves, and to the west by Prince Township. To the north, the city is bordered by an unincorporated portion of the Algoma District, with Heyden as the nearest community. To the south, across the river, is the United States and the city of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.

Sault Ste. Marie is the seat of Algoma District.

The city's crest contains the words "Ojibwa Kitche Gumeeng Odena" (from Ojibwe gichi-gamiing oodena) which means "Town by the large body of water of the Ojibwe" (or simply "Town by Lake Superior") in the Ojibwe language.

Sault Ste. Marie once was a haven for Italian immigrants. The west-end of the city has a large concentration of Italians for a small city. Many of the major streets, public facilities are named after Italians. The city also has a large First Nations population, with three reserves nearby.

Similarly to many other Northern Ontario municipalities, Sault Ste. Marie's population has declined in recent years. Since the early 1990s, the city has dropped from 84,000 to 74,000 residents.

This area was originally called Baawitigong, meaning "place of the rapids," by the Ojibwa, who used the site as a regional meeting place during whitefish season in the St. Mary's Rapids. (The anglicized form of this name, Bawating, continues to be used in institutional and geographic names in the area.)

After the visit of Étienne Brûlé in 1623, the French called it "Sault de Gaston" in honour of the brother of King Louis XIII of France. In 1668, French Jesuit missionaries renamed it Sault Sainte Marie, which is French for "St. Mary's Rapids", and established a settlement that is now Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, on the river's south bank. Sault Ste. Marie was incorporated as a town in 1887 and a city in 1912.