Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario the mayoralty was won by incumbent Christian Provenzano, who garnered 70.15% of the vote. Provenzano's predecessor, Debbie Amaroso, was the first woman elected to this office. The city's crest contains the words "Ojibwa Kitche Gumeeng Odena" (from "Ojibwe gichi-gamiing oodena") which means "Town by the large body of water of the Ojibwe" (or simply "Town by Lake Superior") in the Ojibwe language. The city is served by the Sault Ste. Marie federal electoral district and the Sault Ste. Marie provincial electoral district. The boundaries of these two districts are not identical; the provincial district encompasses the city alone, while the
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