Neighbourhoods in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario only on maps). Today, just one street deviates from the suburban naming rule: Lake Street, which expanded into the neighbourhood from the south. Pointe des Chênes (French for "Point of the Oaks" or "Oak Point") is a waterfront area in the western end of the city, near the Sault Ste. Marie Airport. Named for the beach of the same name that opens onto Lake Superior, Pointe des Chênes contains waterfront homes on country roads and much undeveloped space. A recent development proposal would see a significant wetland on Lake Superior's shore be removed. Steelton was originally its own community developed
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