I'm from the Sault, home of Algoma Steel and a lot of railway tracks, none of which are for transporting people from one place to another. There used to be Greyhound but it's gone now too. Other than drive yourself or take a flight I don't think there's any other way to come and go from the Sault.
My mother has gone to her great reward, as she used to say, so although my first friends are still there... well... maybe next year I'll make the trip. It's a long haul and I've done it a thousand times from Toronto and a thousands times more from Ottawa.
The Sault has seen better days.
Back when I was growing up, pogey was the name of the game. Get enough shifts in at the plant, get laid off, collect pogey. Rinse. Repeat. Not girls, though. Girls were only allowed to do office work. That is until Sandy challenged Algoma Steel's discriminatory practices and got hired to work in the plant.
I think, like Devonshire House at the University of Toronto, it used no girls washrooms as the excuse as to why no girls allowed.
My cousin was the first female employee, I believe, to work on the "cat walk" guiding molten steel through the plant. My brother worked in Coke Oven #7 one summer. His skin had turned grey by the end of August.
My mother used to say to the other high school teachers who complained about how much more money they could make working at the plant, "So go work at the plant."
We lived across the street from the president of Algoma Steel, although there was a field between our middle-class 'hood and his gated enclave. He kept guard dogs and I once ended up caught between a screen door and the inside door, the dogs ready to rip me apart. If his wife hadn't been home I'd likely be dead. Later I heard my mother tear a strip off him for having guard dogs at all.
She was fearless, my mother.
He was a miserable man who left his unhappy wife in later years.
I believe in the 80s there were accusations of Algoma having been making bad steel and so losing contracts as a result but I have no idea if it's true. It has certainly downsized over the years, as has the Sault, now dealing with the same crisis of poverty and addiction as every other city in Canada, the US, and around the world.
Something I noticed in the 90s when I was visiting every year with my kids was a lot of "Jesus Saves" stuff, not a thing when I was living there in the 60s and 70s, not that there's necessarily a connection between evangelicalism and the crisis of poverty and addiction, but social conservatism doesn't seem to do much for our collective standard of living.
Too much voting for the afterlife, not enough voting for the life right here and now.
By the way, if not for government bailouts of one kind or another for Algoma Steel, the Sault would be a ghost town.
So I watched with some annoyance the video of Bob the Steelworker, by way of a bunch of made-up self-serving neighbour-slandering bullshit, flip off Justin the Prime Minister, in the Sault to promote the latest government investment in Algoma Steel, replacing coal with electric power to reduce emissions.
I mean, not only was Bob the Steelworker, well paid and with excellent benefits, thanks to years of government largesse to both Algoma Steel AND Sault Ste. Marie (ffs, Lotto HQ is there), flipping off Justin the Prime Minister, he was flipping off everybody who has not only invested in his very privileged existence in Sault Ste. Marie, but flipping off every generation to follow in his workboots.
But there it is, right? The difference between Bob the Steelworker, well paid, excellent benefits, a young middle-aged beneficiary in 2024 of decades of taxpayer funded bailouts, er, investments in Algoma Steel AND the Sault, but for whom the government must do even more while he pays less, and those of us who aren't Conservative and understand the only true measure of a society is how well it treats its most vulnerable members.
Anyway, of course Justin the earnest Prime Minister stuck to the script with Bob the full-of-shit Steelworker, but wouldn't it have been fun if he'd called him out instead?
Maybe even put him in a headlock first and administered a few noogies?
A Sault girl can dream.
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