Thunder Bay City Overview
(Go to the Thunder Bay Sport Hotels Section)

The Great Lakes' port of THUNDER BAY is much closer to Winnipeg than to any other city in Ontario, and its population of 117,000 is prone to see themselves as Westerners. Economics as well as geography define this self-image, for this was until recently a booming grain-handling port, and the grain, of course, is harvested in the Prairies. The grain still arrives here by rail to be stored in gigantic grain elevators and then shipped down the St Lawrence Seaway to the Atlantic, but not in the same quantities as before. In the 1990s, the economics of the grain trade changed in favour of Canada's Pacific ports and Thunder Bay suffered accordingly. Consequently, many of the grain elevators that dominate the harbourfront are literally rotting away, while others are hanging on by the skin of their teeth. This unwarranted reversal of fortunes has encouraged Thunder Bay to reinvent itself by encouraging manufacturing and tourism. To boost the latter, the city council has created a cheerful marina and built a spanking new casino, though this proved very controversial. Such was the opposition that the casino was, in a rather bizarre compromise, called the "Charity Casino" to remind the citizenry that the profits be spent on good works.

Thunder Bay was created in 1970 when the two existing towns of Fort William and Port Arthur were brought together under one municipal roof. Fort William was the older of the two, established in 1789 as a fur-trading post and subsequently becoming the upcountry headquarters of the North West Company. It lost its pre-eminent position when the North West and Hudson's Bay companies merged, but it remained a fur-trading post until the end of the nineteenth century. Meanwhile, in the middle of the nineteenth century, rumours of a huge silver lode brought prospectors to the Lake Superior shoreline just north of Fort William and here they established Port Arthur.

On October 26th, 1964, Mr. Saul Laskin, Mayor of the City of Port Arthur presented a written submission to the Provincial Cabinet requesting a study of various issues which were confronting five of the larger municipalities in the Lakehead area. These entities included the City of Port Arthur, the City of Fort William, the Municipality of Neebing, the Municipality of Paipoonge and the Municipality of Shuniah. In due course, this submission by the City of Port Arthur was endorsed by the City of Fort William as well as the Lakehead Chamber of Commerce and the Fort William-Port Arthur and District Labour Council.

In early 1965, a letter jointly signed by the heads of the councils of the five municipalities was sent to the Hon. J.W. Spooner, the Minister of Municipal Affairs. The letter requested that the regional study as originally proposed by the Mayor of Port Arthur should be undertaken. In Sept. of 1965, Mr. Spooner announced the appointment of Mr. Eric Hardy who had been appointed to undertake the local government review for the Lakehead.

The recommendations of the Hardy Report were accepted by the Provincial Government and as a result, the City of Thunder Bay was created through a Provincial bill on May 8th, 1969 and became a reality of January 1, 1970. Headed by Mayor Saul Laskin, the new City consisted of Fort William, Port Arthur and the adjacent geographical Townships of Neebing and McIntryre.

Since amalgamation, developments such as Lakehead University, Confederation College of Applied Arts and Sciences, and the reconstruction of Old Fort William as it existed in the early 1800s have increased the community profile as an education centre and tourist destination. The City has hosted sporting events from the 1974 Ontario Winter Games, the 1981 Jeux Canada Games, and the World Nordic Skiing Championships 1995.

Thunder Bay Ontario has great opportunities for sport tournaments of all kinds. Sport tourism is a part of Thunder Bay Ontario and it features a wide variety of sport tournament opportunities.