Going to cheat a bit for Thunder Bay—we have two downtowns!
1. Does your downtown have a brutalist Delta or Sheraton hotel?
No. We actually only have two downtown hotels (soon to be three), and both were built well before Brutalism was popular.
2. Do you have a former Eatons hulking up your best downtown corner?
It's now a call centre, with an art gallery in the basement:
3. Does your downtown have a strip for tourists with the obligatory store that sells "Moose droppings" and has a giant stuffed bear wearing a mountie costume?\
4. Do you have at least one highrise for each of the 5 major banks?
No and no.
5. Do you have an old commercial strip that used to be the place to go in the 1960s but is now full of Donair shops, head shops, sex stores, strip clubs, dance clubs and loitering underclass youth?
Not really, but the Bay and Algoma neighbourhood on the edge of downtown Port Arthur kind of has those things, minus the donairs and strip/dance clubs.
6. Do you have streets with any of the following names:
King - Yes, but not downtown. It's the road that leads to Fort William Historical Park (worth the drive if you like Canadian history).
Queen - Yes, on the southern edge of what would be a very liberal definition for Downtown Port Arthur. Half of it is residential, and the other half is little more than a back alley between a Wholesale Club and a lumber yard.
Princess - Yes, but not downtown. Princess Street is the official name for the driveway to our airport terminal.
Wellington - Yes, it's on the edge of what would be a very liberal definition for Downtown Fort William and like the Southern Ontario county, runs parallel to Waterloo Street.
Victoria - Yes, it is one of the two primary east-west streets in Downtown Fort William, but it's not named after the Queen. It's named after the daughter of Fort William's first mayor. In 1980, we interrupted its route through the downtown by building an ugly mall.
Prince/King Edward - No.
Peel - Yes, but it's located in the suburbs, in a neighbourhood where all the streets are named after counties in England
Elgin - Yes, it's located on the northern edge of downtown Port Arthur. A residential side street.
Dundas - Yes, it's a small residential that branches off of the aforementioned Waterloo, but it's not really downtown
Cartier - Yes, it's a cul-de-sac in the suburbs, directly across from another cul-de-sac called Cabot Place. The street that they branch off of is called Frontenac Street.
Laurier - No
MacDonald - Yes, but it's located in the East End, which is a bit east of Downtown Fort William.
7. Do you have an underground mall or downtown mall that was built in the 1970s?
Kind of. We have a downtown mall that was built in 1980, in Downtown Fort William. (Construction started in 1979 if that counts?)
However, downtown Port Arthur used to have a downtown mall, built in 1974, called Keskus (Finnish for "centre"), and yes...
8. Was that mall built because of an Eatons?
It was. Eatons was the anchor tenant until 1999. The mall was demolished not long after it closed, and a casino and parking lot is in its place.
9. Is the building that houses the Bay invariably older and more architecturally distinguished than the building that housed the Eatons?
We never had a Hudson Bay department store, but we did have an office where The Bay would buy furs from trappers and it sold some other goods. Here is what it looked like in 2008:
My neighbourhood was going through a pink phase at the time. Now the banners are black!
10. Do you have a pre-war Dominion Public Building?
Yes, in Downtown Fort William:
Port Arthur also had one, it was demolished in 1984 and replaced in 1989 by a massive provincial government building.
11. Do you have at least 1 grand Victorian commercial block that has a large-format English or Irish pub in it?
12. Do the waitresses there have to wear kilts?
No, and not applicable.
13. Do you have an adjacent neighbourhood of postwar apartment blocks mostly populated by singles, seniors and gays?
Kind of, for both downtown cores but especially for downtown Port Arthur, since it has direct bus service to the university. (Downtown Fort William doesn't have a direct bus route to the university, believe it or not.)
14. Do you have a cenotaph or war memorial?
Both downtown cores have one.
Port Arthur's, with a senior's apartment across from it (that's also the area full of gays, and senior gays):
Fort William's, in front of City Hall:
15. Do you have at least one brutalist courthouse, government building or hospital? If not brutalist, is it something built in 1982 exclusively out of red brick?
None of those in Brutalist styles, but here is a late-1970s courthouse for you:
It was replaced, last April, by
this.
16. Does your city have a landmark hotel built by a railroad company?
Yes, Port Arthur's Prince Arthur Hotel:
The mayor of Port Arthur at the time offered the president of CP Rail a prime parcel of land, for free, on which to build a hotel, if he could win a card game. He won, and this hotel was built shortly after.
17. Is your downtown built on a grid?
Yes, to both. Fort William's downtown is built on a north-oriented grid, while Port Arthur's grid follows the lake, and is therefore tilted about 35° toward the east.
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