About Sault Ste Marie

Sault Ste. Marie ("Soo Saint Marie") (nicknamed "the Sault" or "the Soo") is a city on the St. Marys River in Algoma District, Ontario, Canada. It is the third largest city in Northern Ontario, after Sudbury and Thunder Bay, with a population of 74,948. It is supposed to be pronounced "sau" or "sow" but not "sooo" as anglophones typically mispronounced it. Sault translates to "falls" or waterfall in french, considering it was first established as a French mission, and would translate to Saint Mary's Falls or the Falls of Saint Mary. Residents of the city are called Saultites. With a mission established by French Jesuits in 1668, claiming of the area by Simon-François Daumont de Saint-Lusson, in the name of Louis XIV of France, and fur trading posts soon after, this was one of the oldest European settlements in Canada.

Sault Ste. Marie 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, which includes the local services boards of Aweres, Batchawana Bay, Goulais and District, Peace Tree and Searchmont.

To the south, across the river, is the United States and the city of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. The two cities are joined by the International Bridge, which connects Interstate 75 on the Michigan side and Huron Street (and former Ontario Secondary Highway 550B) on the Ontario side. Shipping traffic in the Great Lakes system bypasses the Saint Mary's Rapids via the American Soo Locks, the world's busiest canal in terms of tonnage that passes through it, while smaller recreational and tour boats use the Canadian Sault Ste. Marie Canal.

The city's census agglomeration, consisting of the townships of Laird, Prince and Macdonald, Meredith and Aberdeen Additional and the First Nations reserves of Garden River and Rankin, had a total population of 80,098 in 2006.

Sault Ste. Marie is the seat of the Algoma District.