Ontario · Civic arena
Sault Ste. Marie drinking water hardness is 207 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#287 of 343
43% City Score XP
6/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Sault Ste. Marie packs 6 of eight open-data pillars into its composite standing. Tap a rival below to see how the hometown stacks up head-to-head.
Rivalries on deck
Hardness, pH, and lead from municipal reports on the OpenStats water atlas. This page uses a regional estimate — open the water atlas for method notes.
Full Sault Ste. Marie water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Aylmer · vs PerthHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Sault Ste. Marie from municipal and provincial water records. Open the animated map for the full watershed-to-tap diagram — no nested topic navigation here.
Permits, tax, internet, radon, hazards, drinking water, and sports rankings where a CHL hometown applies.
Sports
65 GP · 86 pts · Compare CHL cities
Sault Ste. Marie sits at City Score rank #287 with a standing of 43%, from 6 of 8 open-data pillars (tax, construction, connectivity, indoor air, water, seismic hazard, growth, safety). Missing pillars score at median standing so thin coverage cannot inflate the rank. Dropping 46 places versus 2022 (#241 → #287).
Latest owned placements: indoor radon rank #204 of 327 at 93 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #17 of 57 (15.42 mill rate). Full tables and method notes live on each study edition; atlas readings for the same slug open from the topic buttons.
Against the national corpus, Sault Ste. Marie carries a City Score standing of 43% (rank #287 of 343) with 6 of 8 pillars observed. That sits 10 points below the Ontario peer average across 123 ranked cities. Within Ontario, Sault Ste. Marie ranks #112 of 123 on City Score.
The strongest signal in the current chart is seismic hazard (standing 91%, rank #312 of 343, raw score 0.019). The weakest observed pillar is broadband download (ISED seed tier) (standing 17%, rank #287 of 343).
Drinking-water hardness on the water atlas reads 207 mg/L as CaCO₃ for Sault Ste. Marie. Compare that figure to the hardness pillar on the chart and to the national hardness guide on the hub.
Arena loadout
Arena rank #287 of 343
6/8 pillars · main XP bar
Pillar avg · hardness #104
No placement
Rank #287
Rank #204
Rank #312
Rank #17
Sault Ste. Marie pillar standing
Eight equal-weight City Score pillars, 2025 panel year.
Source: OpenStats composite / study editions
City Score standing trend
Standing percentage by panel year (higher is better).
Years: 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025
Source: OpenStats composite timeseries
Achievements
Published residential mill-rate context for Sault Ste. Marie.
Historic hangar attraction focused on bushplanes and forest-fire aviation. It pairs with the outdoor calendar that sells the Soo as a trail
Full-day scenic rail trip leaving from Huron Street into Northern Ontario forests and canyon stops. Tourism pages treat it as the classic
Sault Downtown Plaza at 526 Bay Street sits beside Soo MRKT and runs seasonal outdoor skating.
Where Sault Ste. Marie sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Older hometown notes stay on the desk archive (noindex) — this section shows recent highlights only.
Sault Ste. Marie is the Soo: a Northern Ontario border city where Lake Superior and Lake Huron geography meet the International Bridge to Michigan. The city homepage greets people with Welcome, Biindigen, and Bienvenue, and tourism pages sell an adventure-town calendar of trails, snow, and Great Lakes water. Downtown, the Sault Downtown Plaza on Bay Street hosts concerts, markets beside Soo MRKT, seasonal ice, and the Rotary Interactive Fountain. Roberta Bondar Park puts a tent pavilion right on the St. Marys River for bigger outdoor nights. Hot August Nights and Margaritaville bookings keep the plaza lit after supper.
Bellevue Park is the main passive park, with splash pad, greenhouse, sensory playground, and links into the John Rowswell Hub Trail. Visitors still book the Agawa Canyon Tour Train for a full-day run into the bush, and the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre keeps the Ontario Provincial Air Service hangar story in town. The Sault Star sports desk talks Soo Greyhounds the way other cities talk their junior clubs, and wildfire season often leads the regional news stack. Sault Area Hospital and player billet searches share the same local-desk mix of hard news and community asks.
Municipal life stays practical. East Street reconstruction updates sit on the homepage beside Summer Concert Series promos and election worker calls. Housing CIP notices and downtown development committee dates keep planning talk close to Bay Street. On OpenStats City Score for 2025, Sault Ste. Marie sits at rank 319 of 343. Locals still start the introduction with the Soo, the riverfront, and the bridge before they mention the train or the bushplanes.
Drawn from City of Sault Ste. Marie, Sault Downtown Plaza, Bellevue Park, Roberta Bondar Park, Tourism Sault Ste. Marie, Sault Star.
City Score from 2016–2025 across eight open-data pillars. Individual study placements are listed in the panels below.
Each study below is its own ranking. Where a study has more than one edition for this city, the chart shows standing across those years only.
Safety · OpenStats
Statistics Canada does not publish a police-service Crime Severity Index that OpenStats can match to Sault Ste. Marie without copying a province, CMA, or another city. The safety pillar scores at median standing (50%) on City Score, the same rule used for other missing pillars.
Connectivity · OpenStats
OpenStats
Cities ranked by household-weighted maximum advertised download (Mbps) from ISED National Broadband Data hex ISP rows, with hex-to-city assignment by population-weighted gravity. The headline 2025 score is the dwelling-weighted mean of per-hex technology ceilings (fibre and cable at 1 Gbps, DSL lower). Household-weighted 50/10 availability (%) is stored on atlas rows as avail_5010_pct. Earlier panel years backcast along a national speed curve with city-specific fiber and availability paths.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Sports · OpenStats
OpenStats
Canadian Hockey League (OHL, WHL, QMJHL) member cities ranked by regular-season points percentage. One CHL team maps to each OpenStats hometown slug; standings snapshot is curated from public league tables.
Single edition · 2025
Only one published edition places Sault Ste. Marie in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
Composite · OpenStats
OpenStats
Dimensional average of OpenStats open-data pillars for each panel year 2016-2025: tax, construction, connectivity, indoor air, water, seismic hazard, population growth, and crime severity. Each series is scored 0-1 within its edition; series in the same pillar are averaged, then all eight pillars are averaged with equal weight. Missing pillars score at median standing (0.5). Crime severity uses StatCan police-service CSI only (Tables 35-10-0026-01 and 35-10-0063-01); cities without a police-service match take median standing on the safety pillar. Growth uses StatCan CSD estimates; construction uses verified municipal building-permit value per resident (population field on each city record, 2021 Census vintage); mill rates and broadband use live rows plus documented year-varying estimates where needed. Radon, water, and PGA may be survey/model vintages carried forward and are flagged when static for more than two years. External commercial livability lists are never inputs.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Water · OpenStats
OpenStats
Communities ranked by municipal drinking-water hardness (mg/L as CaCO₃). Hardness changes slowly; the atlas vintage is carried across panel years and flagged when static for more than two years.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Water · OpenStats
OpenStats
Communities ranked by reported lead (µg/L) on the OpenStats water atlas. Carried across panel years until annual municipal report panels are ingested.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Health · OpenStats
OpenStats
Communities ranked by Health Canada survey mean indoor radon (Bq/m³). Rank 1 is the highest mean. Decade panel years without a new survey carry the CMA survey vintage forward; they are not annual retests.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Sports · OpenStats
OpenStats
Hometowns with a mapped junior hockey franchise ranked by local sports depth: league tier (CHL member leagues = 1.0, MHL = 0.65) multiplied by regular-season points percentage. Surfaces cities with both a franchise and a strong standings year; not a City Score pillar input.
Single edition · 2025
Only one published edition places Sault Ste. Marie in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
Growth · OpenStats
OpenStats
Cities ranked by year-over-year population growth from Statistics Canada annual CSD estimates (Table 17-10-0155-01). Rank 1 is fastest growth. A few places without a clean CSD match use a provincial-path estimate anchored to seed population.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Property tax · OpenStats
OpenStats
Municipalities ranked by residential mill rate (education levies are shown on property-tax pages but not added here). Rank 1 is the highest rate. Atlas seed and published municipal rows anchor the panel; off-panel tax years (e.g. 2026) carry across 2016–2025; remaining gaps follow provincial paths.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Hazards · OpenStats
OpenStats
Communities ranked by NRCan peak ground acceleration (higher = stronger shaking hazard). Rank 1 is highest PGA. The seismic model is multi-year; values are carried across the City Score panel and flagged as static until NRCan publishes a new generation.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Livability
MoneySense
Annual composite ranking of Canadian municipalities on economy, housing, crime, health, and weather.
4 editions · 2014–2018
Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.
The city homepage opens with Welcome! Biindigen! Bienvenue!
Sault Downtown Plaza at 526 Bay Street sits beside Soo MRKT and runs seasonal outdoor skating.
Bellevue Park spans about 17 hectares with a splash pad, greenhouse, and 2.4 kilometres of walkway.
Roberta Bondar Park's Tent Pavilion sits on the St. Marys River and can seat large outdoor events under cover.
Bay Street gathering place with Village Media Stage, Rotary Interactive Fountain, and winter ice. Soo MRKT sets up beside it on market days.
Full-day scenic rail trip leaving from Huron Street into Northern Ontario forests and canyon stops. Tourism pages treat it as the classic first-visit outing.
Historic hangar attraction focused on bushplanes and forest-fire aviation. It pairs with the outdoor calendar that sells the Soo as a trail and snow town.
Main passive park with playgrounds, greenhouse, and Hub Trail connections. Summer survey work shows how closely residents watch its upkeep.
When Sault Ste. Marie moves in a ranking, posts new permit figures, or lands in a study, get a short note. A few sends a year, only when something changes.
No spam. Unsubscribe with one reply.
