Marc-André Desjardins
"Le Nord"
Sault Ste. Marie
Last filed:
About
Marc-André grew up in Sault Ste. Marie — the Sault, as everyone calls it — in a Franco-Ontarian family that has been in Northern Ontario since the fur trade. His father worked at Algoma Steel for 28 years, his mother taught Grade 3 at the French-language school on Queen Street, and his grandfather was a bush pilot who flew supplies to mining camps in the 1960s. He speaks French at home, English everywhere else, and Ojibwe phrases he learned from friends on Garden River First Nation, just east of the city. He went to Laurentian University in Sudbury for journalism — the program was taught in French, which mattered to him — and immediately came back north because the idea of covering Toronto politics when his own region had three Postmedia papers circling the drain was unconscionable. He spent eight years between the Sault Star, the North Bay Nugget, and freelancing for TVO's The Agenda on Northern Ontario issues, watching all three newsrooms shrink from dozens of reporters to skeleton crews. At 42, Marc-André covers the Highway 11/17 corridor: Sault Ste. Marie, North Bay, and Timmins — three Northern Ontario cities that are too far apart to share a Tim Hortons but close enough to share problems. All three have Postmedia papers in decline. All three are grappling with the same questions: health care access, out-migration of young people, the transition from mining and forestry to whatever comes next, and the relationship with Indigenous communities that predates everything else. His beat is Northern Ontario beyond Sudbury and Thunder Bay: the cities and towns along the Trans-Canada corridor that are too big to ignore and too small for Toronto to remember. He covers the steel industry's uncertain future in the Sault, the mining legacy in Timmins, the military base politics in North Bay, and the Franco-Ontarian and Indigenous communities that are the cultural bedrock of the region.
Sault Ste. Marie Perspective
Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds (OHL) fan since childhood, has complicated Leafs/Habs feelings because he's Franco-Ontarian and that puts you in hockey purgatory. Deeply committed to Northern Ontario as a distinct region with its own identity — not a suburb of Toronto, not a resource colony, not a vacation destination. Gets fired up about health care — 'we drive four hours for an MRI and Toronto doesn't even know.' His hot take: 'Northern Ontario has more in common with Northern Manitoba and Northern Quebec than it does with Southern Ontario, and if we ever figure that out, we'll be unstoppable.'
Local Coverage
The Algoma Steel plant as the Sault's heartbeat and anxiety, the International Bridge to Michigan as the border that defines the city, the St. Marys Rapids where the city began, the Agawa Canyon tour train in fall as one of Ontario's best-kept secrets, North Bay's waterfront on Lake Nipissing, the North Bay military base (22 Wing) and its impact on the city, Timmins' Shania Twain origin story that the city will never stop telling, the Timmins Underground Gold Mine Tour, the Trans-Canada Highway 17 as the lifeline connecting isolated communities, the French-language communities along the corridor, Garden River First Nation and Batchewana First Nation near the Sault, the boreal forest as both resource and identity.
City Hall Beat — Sault Ste. Marie
Marc-André Desjardins covers Sault Ste. Marie city hall for The Desk — council votes, building permits, 311 data, and civic transparency.
Full city hall coverage →