Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario sides of the river. Sault Ste. Marie is one of the oldest French settlements in North America. It was at the crossroads of the 3,000-mile fur trade route, which stretched from Montreal to Sault Ste. Marie and to the North country above Lake Superior. A cosmopolitan, mixed population of Europeans, First Nations peoples, and Métis lived at the village spanning the river. The city name originates from "Saults de Sainte-Marie", archaic French for "Saint Mary's Falls", a reference to the rapids of Saint Marys River. Etymologically, the word "sault" comes from an archaic spelling of "saut" (from "sauter"), which translates
Sault Ste. Marie language resolution the controversy. The resolution was struck down by a court ruling in 1994, and ceased to have legal effect. In 2010, John Rowswell, a subsequent mayor of Sault Ste. Marie, apologized to French Canadians across the country for the resolution. Sault Ste. Marie was founded by French-speaking missionaries in 1623 but had become overwhelmingly English-speaking by the twentieth century. In response to a French-language education controversy which began in 1987 when a group of Franco-Ontarian families lobbied to have a new French school opened in the city, the Sault Alliance for the Preservation of English Language Rights (SAPELR) was formed