Local: City Information
Here are some basic facts about Thunder Bay:
Location
|
Thunder Bay is located in the Northwestern part of Ontario on the shoreline of Lake Superior.
It's protected from the lake's stormy seas by a chain of islands
and the Sibley Penninsula on Lake Superior's northwest coast, which form
(appropriately named) Thunder Bay. The community began as an early fur trading
fort protecting trade routes into the interior of the continent. Today it
still is a major trading port and remains home to
North America's largest fur trading post, depicting life in the early 1800's.
The city lies on the Trans-Canada Highway connecting the country's vast prairies with
the more populous Central Canada.
The city is located at a 48 degrees 27 minutes North latitude; and 89 degrees 12
minutes West longitute, and 199 m above sea level. The city is in eastern standard
time (one of the furthest west places in North America in the time zone),
the same time as Toronto and New York, and 6 hours earlier than western Europe.
|
Name
|
Thunder Bay was two separate cities (Port Arthur and Fort William) until 1970, when they amalgamated and held a
referendum for new name. Thunder Bay narrowly beat the second place name, Lakehead.
|
Population
|
The city currently has a population of 117,000, with a metropolitan population of 126,000.
Ontario is the most populous of Canada's provinces, and was one of the original provinces in Canada's Confederation in 1867. Ontario has 11
million residents in its 1,100,000 square kilometres (413,000 sq miles).
Thunder Bay is 927 km (576 miles) from the province's capital city, Toronto "as the crow flies".
|
Industries
|
The city has 4 major pulp and paper mills, it is the headquarters for Buchanan Forest Products (the largest lumber company in
Ontario), has a major rail manufacturing plant for Bombardier, and is also a
major shipping point for the prairie's resources onto the Great Lakes.
|
Weather
|
Thunder Bay has an average of 2,198.2 hours of sunshine annually. The effects of Lake Superior result in cooler summers and warmer winters. The Average temperature in January is -9°C. Summer has an average temperatures of about 15°C. Average annual rainfall is 546.8 mm and average monthly summer rainfall is less than 80 mm, with September being the wettest month.
Average daily temperatures are:
| Scale | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|
Celsius |
-9 |
-6 |
0 |
9 |
16 |
21 |
24 |
23 |
17 |
11 |
2 |
-6 |
Fahrenheit |
16 |
21 |
32 |
48 |
61 |
70 |
75 |
73 |
63 |
52 |
36 |
21 |
An approximate guide to Celsius temperatures is as follows:
Thunder Bay has a total of 546.8 mm of millimetres of precipitation per year. You can expect precipitation in the form of snow in any month whose name contains the letter "r" as well as May.
| |
Some hotels include tips or gratuities with group programs to simplify bookkeeping. This will usually include gratuities for housekeeping, bell service and food service. In a hotel, bell service should be tipped about $1 per bag, and housekeeping $1 to $5 dollars a day (in proportion to your room rate). Visitors should know that the standard tip in restaurants is
10%-15% (on restaurant bills, an average tip will be 50% higher the GST & tax), with 20% (about double the GST & tax) for very outstanding service. This is especially important for visitors from countries where tipping on meals is not done: here the waitering staff depend on tips for a significant portion of their incomes. Tip taxis about 10%, and a dollar a bag they carry for you (not just unload), or at the very least round fares up to the nearest dollar.
|
|
