A rougher town on Lake Superior, just north of the Minnesota border

Since Thunder Bay is the combination of former cities Port Arthur and Fort William, is there now a new city center, or do the two original centers persist, and if the latter, did one center take the dominant role?

^ years ago we drove up here for the day on a visit to duluth. i dk about port arthur, but afaik fort william is just a reservation area that had a park we went to that i recall more than the city. also that it was 100 degrees that week haha. duluth is a wonderful place, but geesh tb and superior are depressing.

what happened to that place? My sister and brother-in-law lived there in the late 60's for a couple of years (they lived in Fort William) and I spent much of one summer there. Both cities had active downtowns and they were fairly sizable, so I'm guessing they both still exist. I don't remember much of either one but I'm pretty sure the nearly white 8-story office building which appears a couple of times was in Port Arthur, which also had a large Eaton's department store. The surrounding area is beautiful though, on Lake Superior. There was a lookout called Mt. McKay you could drive up to and get a view of the both cities and the lake. Lots of Indian influence (oops, I mean "First Nations," as it's called now in Canada) and culture in the area. This is also the hometown to David Letterman band leader Paul Shaffer.

Edited May 4May 4 by eastvillagedon

With multiple downtowns and not a large population, it makes sense that one of them is a bit..uh, drab.

The first 20+ pictures are of the old Fort William downtown (southern business district), which is generally rough and contains the indoor Victoriaville mall built across city streets.

The remainder of the photos show the old Port Arthur downtown (northern business district), which is more lively today with the casino, convention center, marina area, etc. This area is not exactly thriving, but seemed healthier than the southern district.

Marion?

My perception of what Thunder Bay may have been is nothing like those photos. Looks like a blighted small town somewhere in the Plains or off route 66.