Business View-Oct 2023

243 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 10 SAULT STE MARI E AI RPORT “Sault Ste. Marie is actually at the heart of the Great Lakes, the heart of Ontario, and some will argue we’re also at the heart of Canada,” says Terry Bos, President, and CEO of Sault Ste. Marie Airport Development Corporation. “There’s a lot of natural beauty in the area and I think that’s the main attraction, whether it be fishing on the big lakes or heading up north and fishing on the inland lakes. There’s a lot of good hunting up to the north as well. In the wintertime, we have a large ski hill, Searchmont Resort which brings a lot of people in for the ski season. We also have a lot of cross-country ski trails.” “We have a long snow machine trail that ties in and runs throughout the North, and in the summertime, we have now gotten into mountain biking and the city’s been working on building trails for that. We have a beautiful boardwalk that runs across the entirety of our downtown area and along the Saint Mary’s River, as well as a hub trail named after our former mayor that’s called the Rowswell Hub Trail which goes around the entire city for 16 kilometers, and you can either bike it or walk it,” Bos describes. It is no wonder that the tourism slogan is Take the time, live in the moment, find yourself. The Canadian government opened the airport in 1961 and operated it until 1998 when it handed control over to the newly formed Sault Ste. Marie Airport Development Corporation. The corporation has since become the only private regional sized not for profit airport. That means there is no alignment with any governmental or municipal entities. This also means it does not benefit from either government funding or civic tax benefits. “So, we are very unique,” Bos chimes in, “We have two 6000-foot runways, and we currently have three airlines who fly out of our airport, Air Canada, Porter Airlines, and Bearskin Airlines. In the past, we have also seen seasonal travel to the south with Sunwing. We have two AviaNG.ca www.AviaNG.ca