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Despite the recent wave of layoffs, residents of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., see reason for optimism
The Globe is reporting from cities and towns in Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia to hear from residents about the issues affecting their communities and their votes in the municipal elections.
On Day 565 of a trade war that has bombarded Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. , with bad news and pink slips, the city vibrates with an ear-splitting cover of Fat Bottomed Girls . Down on Queen St., adult Saultites line up at a Northern Superior Brewing tent, drink tickets in hand, while the kids wait on face-painting and mini-putt.
About 4,000 locals will filter through this downtown block party on their way into the Soo Greyhounds season opener, many wearing the Hounds jersey that has graced the teenaged likes of Wayne Gretzky, Paul Coffey and Joe Thornton – all now Hockey Hall of Famers. Their opponents tonight are another junior hockey OHL team, Michigan’s Saginaw Spirit, whose logo is a bald eagle with stars and stripes for plumage. But nobody wants to call it a proxy battle.
While adult fans mill around the beer garden at the Sault Ste. Marie block party, Janna Chapman, owner of Perfectly Painted, adds some colour to the children’s faces. Mayor Matthew Shoemaker, middle, is here with restauranteur and local celebrity Frank DeMarco and Lisa Ritchie from the Alzheimer’s Society of Sault Ste. Marie.
The Canada-U.S. trade dispute is casting a long shadow over upcoming municipal elections in the city of 80,000, where Algoma Steel recently laid off 1,000 workers as it struggles for profitability in the face of punishing tariffs. But beyond the economic setbacks, many residents see a case for long-term optimism.
“We’re not gloomy people here, we’re very positive,” says Frank DeMarco, his plastic beer cup frothing as he offers up bear-hugs and handshakes to other party-goers, many of them steelworkers like him. Their kids go in for high-fives. Many call him Uncle Frank. U.S. President Donald Trump has put that positivity to the test, slapping 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian steel in the spring of last year, doubling to 50 per cent by summer.
The levies yanked Saultites onto the front lines of a trade war with the nation just across the St. Marys River. The casualties piled up. Last December, Algoma Steel, the city’s molten economic heart for more than a century, issued Mr. DeMarco and 1,000 other steelworkers layoff notices, which took effect on March 23. For Mr. DeMarco, the timing was awful.
He and his wife, Maarit, had opened a restaurant, DeMarco’s Boots & Saddles Roadhouse, in 2025, the same week Trump announced the 50 per cent tariff.
“Boom, I think my career is over,” he says. “I’m massively under stress at that point. ” He wondered how they would endure without his Algoma cheque. And for that matter, how would his city fare with 1,000 fewer Algoma paycheques.
DeMarco’s Boots and Saddles opened just as new U.S. tariffs cast a pall over the Sault’s economy. The restaurant is co-owned by Mr. DeMarco and his wife, Maarit. Six months on from the layoffs, the city is holding its own welfare check in the form of local elections on Oct. 26. Incumbent mayor Matthew Shoemaker is pitching an economic Hail Mary – construction of a $250-million multimodal port estimated to support more than 2,000 jobs.
Challenger Joel Rowswell has focused on fixing the crime and disorder associated with lean times. His sense of the city clashes with the boosterish likes of Mr. DeMarco.
“Everybody is negative,” said Mr. Rowswell inside GFL Memorial Gardens, as the Hounds and Spirit headed for overtime. “I hear it every day when I go to the doors. ” It doesn’t take long to find what he’s talking about. A few pot-holed blocks from the Hounds arena, past broken windows and boarded-up homes, Connie Raynor Elliott has seen the lines outside her non-profit organization grow since the layoffs.
“The people who used to donate are now in our line-up,” says Ms. Raynor, who founded Save Our Young Adults in 2011. Dozens of volunteers provide free food, clothing and other support to the growing numbers of those in need. In the last three years, her clientele has grown from 350 to 600. Mr. DeMarco’s own low point came shortly after the December layoff notice.
Every year he runs a hockey tournament in January to raise money for local medical students who want to practise here. With massive job losses in the wind, he started making arrangements to cancel. The Soo wouldn’t let him.
“A lot of laid-off guys came out, donated,” he says, his voice trembling. “It was … Sorry, I get a little emotional thinking about it. We’re a very interesting city. We support these things.
Times can be low. Depressing times. But we still come. We still support one another.
” The city had seen worse. Many people here remember 1982, when around 4,500 steelworkers were laid off. Through the decade, the workforce shrunk from 13,000 to around 6,000. Multiple generations of local families had worked the mill.
The cutbacks terminated paycheques and bloodlines at Algoma. Mr. DeMarco’s bricklayer dad moved here from Italy in 1965 to work at Algoma, part of a wave of post-war Italian migration still evident in the many eponymous restaurants: Giovanni’s, Arturo’s, Gus’s. He brought an immigrant’s work ethic and a recipe for sublime chiff-choff, a kind of Italian chili. The son took after the father, laying brick all over the booming city before taking a position at Algoma 20 years ago.
For the last five, he’s worked as a warehouse supervisor, everything from a 10-cent pencil to a million-dollar transformer passing through his hands. His son and daughter worked at Algoma until the recent layoffs, too. This time around, the layoff letters didn’t come as a complete surprise. Algoma had long planned to transition away from traditional coal-based blast furnaces and adopt a lower-cost electric arc system that requires about half its 3,000 workers.
Heavy financial losses from the Trump tariffs only hastened the need for that transition. Some workers resigned as soon as the layoff notices landed, preferring not to wait until their termination date.
“I decided I was still at the right age to switch gears,” says Regis Emond, aged 57. He decided to resign with severance. He retrained for mining jobs before applying for 22 positions. By mid-September, Mr. Emond said he still hadn’t heard any job offers.
Regis Emond, making salsa at home with wife Melanie, quit the steel company with severance. Others had better luck. Chris Casagrande went for retraining shortly after the layoffs. In September, he started his first two-week shift at a northern gold mine.
“A lot of guys are trying to ride out EI waiting to get called back to Algoma,” he said by phone from the mining camp. “I wanted to pivot. The industry is booming. ” Amid the gloom, something unexpected happened.
Though Mr. DeMarco received a layoff notice, he was never let go. His job was extended beyond the layoff date, and then made permanent. He didn’t miss a shift. Many friends had the same experience.
His son is back at the steel plant while his daughter found a new job within days of leaving Algoma. At 5 p.m. on a recent Saturday, DeMarco’s Boots & Saddles Roadhouse was filling up. Uncle Frank stood at the front, kissing cheeks, shaking hands. The existential dread he once felt – for his family, his city, his country – has died down.
This summer, there were line-ups out the door for Tuesday wing night. People can’t seem to get enough Big Frank burgers or Franktastics or his father’s chiff-choff recipe.
“It’s a slow incline up, but we’re getting there,” he says, taking a moment from seating tables to wipe his brow and down some water. “It’s a positive place. ” The Soo Greyhounds had a 3-1 victory in this game against the Saginaw Spirit, to the elation of the locals. Children lined up to greet Mr. DeMarco for bear hugs.
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