Home to the Ojibwe, the Crown took control as part of the Robinson Huron Treaty. CP Rail set up a temporary work camp during its westward expansion in 1883. Sudbury was established after the discovery of nickel ore. Mining dominated the economy for over a century. The area was decimated by the practice: acid rain stained the Canadian shield and led to devastating loss of vegetation. Inco built the superstack in 1970 to spread the damage of air pollution. Sudbury is now celebrated for its efforts to bring back the local environment to its former glory. As of June 2020, the superstack is dormant, said to be retired and slated for demolition.

Settled by Spanish River Pulp and Paper company workers, the town boomed until the Great Depression when the facility closed. For 16 years production was shut down, the settlement became a ghost town. The mill site was used as a POW camp during WW2. After the war, Michigan's KVP Company bought the facility. They released upwards of five tons a day of chemically contaminated wood fibres into the river instead of using a settling basin for effluent disposal, which the manager cited as: a matter of economics. The downstream community along with local wildlife organizations sued KVP. Despite being found guilty, and again in the courts of appeal, KVP were given a de facto license to pollute by the provincial government, who feared loss of jobs. Premier Leslie Frost upon retiring from politics, became a member of KVP's board of directors. He also managed to receive the Companions of the Order of Canada, and declared in his final interview: I am an environmentalist. Frost has numerous buildings and schools named after him. In 1983, 18 thousand gallons of toxic soap spilled into the river killing over 120 000 fish. The river is said to have recovered, the new owners boast a clean mill, and a fish sanctuary has been established.

Located at the mouth of the river on Lake Huron, the area was along Ojibwe and Voyageurs routes. The Northwest Company established a fur trading post. Logging began as the rivers facilitated the movement of timber, and so Blind River became a sawmill town. For forty years, they were the largest white pine sawmill in Central Canada, until the Great Mississagi Fire devastated local forests and the mill closed. Refinement of Uranium is now its leading resource-based economy.

This farming township, named for the physical meeting of local land and water, is centred in Iron Bridge, itself named after a crossing of the Mississagi River. The early economy was also driven by lumber, with horses hauling cut logs to the river, where they were shipped to Dyment Mill, a nearby sawmill in Day Mills.

Stretching the entire length between St. Mary's River and Georgian Bay, French explorers used the North Channel of Lake Huron as part of their voyageur route. It has hosted commercial fishing for hundreds of years, and is now a renowned boating destination. It is also home to Manitoulin Island, the only place where Hawberries grow.

Named after the bay on which it sits within Lake George, itself situated in the North Channel between Lake Huron and St. Mary’s River. Settled by lumberers and agriculturists as a result of the nearby mining boom, it became an active harbour for boats trading between Lake Superior and the lower Great Lakes. Now perhaps most famous for being home to the designer of the Loonie, it uses the tremendous slogan: Worth Repeating.

The Ojibwe called it Baawitigong -place of rapids. The French called it Sault Sainte Marie -St. Mary’s rapids After the War of 1812, the Canada-US border was drawn along the middle of the river, so it now borders what was once its other half, Soo Michigan. Francis Clergue, from Philadelphia, was responsible for most of the town’s early success: a hydroelectric dam, St. Mary’s Paper, Algoma Steel, and Algoma Central Railway. Iron ore was mined from his Helen Mine, where he established a whole town for the workers, though coal for the plant had to be imported from the US. Within 10 years, his industrial empire collapsed. St. Mary’s Paper underwent a similar fate to most pulp mills: changing hands a number of times, being owned by Abitibi at some point, and ultimately closing down. After the closing of the mine, Helen Mine became a ghost town. Algoma steel was forced to import iron ore from the US. They produced rails until railroad expansion ceased, artillery until the war ended, suffered the usual booms and busts of industry, sadly tied to the machinery of war and later to the whims of policy in international trade. In the early 2000s after its 2nd bankruptcy of the decade, CEO Denis Turcotte was credited for its newfound success. Contracts with the United States Armed Forces, who were busy outfitting wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, were never given any of the credit nor received the same praise as Turcotte, though they had likely played a much bigger role. After a decade of ownership under Essar Global, the mill was once again insolvent. Owned now by investors, the question is simply: who will buy next?

After a series of loans, defaults, and reorganizations in the early 1900s, the province stepped in and bailed out Clergue’s many failed ventures. The province did so again in the late 1900s after a pair of bankruptcies and layoffs at Algoma Steel. When St. Mary’s Paper closed, it was briefly reopened and run by its employees. OLG split up its offices and moved corporate headquarters from Toronto in a make-work program to help the struggling Northern Ontario city. The building was named after local astronaut Roberta Bondar. City councillors now criticize the division of the offices in their pleas to move the rest of OLG to the Sault. Then came the call centres... When the industrial pillars were shedding high paying union jobs, the business process outsourcing industry came in to save local employment rates with low paying unprotected jobs. …and now the call centres are gone. The plant, and therefore the Sault, continue to struggle. It remains the largest employer, and everyone is tied to its well-being. In dire need of economic diversification, there is still hope.