international notoriety in 1911 in the case of Angelina Napolitano, the first person in Canada to use the battered woman defence for murder.
During World War II, and particularly after the US was attacked at Pearl Harbour in 1941, concern turned to the locks and shipping channel at Sault Ste. Marie. A substantial military presence was established to protect the locks from a possible attack by Nazi German aircraft from the north. The new development of long-range bombers created fears of a sudden air raid. Military strategists studied polar projection maps which indicate that the air distance from occupied Norway to the town was about the same as the distance from Norway to New York. That direct route of about 3000 miles is over terrain where there were few observers and long winter nights.
A joint Canadian and US committee called the "Permanent Joint Board on Defence" drove the installation of anti-aircraft defence and associated units of the United States Army Air Forces and Royal Canadian Air Force to defend the locks. An anti-aircraft training facility was established 100 kilometres (62 mi) north of Sault Ste. Marie on the shores of Lake Superior. Barrage balloons were installed, and early warning radar bases were established at 5 locations in northern Ontario (Kapuskasing, Cochrane, Hearst, Armstrong (Thunder Bay District), and Nakina) to watch for incoming aircraft. Military personnel were established to guard sensitive parts of the transportation infrastructure. A little over one year later, in January 1943, most of these facilities and defences were deemed excessive and removed, save a reduced military base at Sault Ste. Marie.
On January 29, 1990, Sault Ste. Marie became a flashpoint in the Meech Lake Accord constitutional debate when council passed a resolution declaring English the city's official language and the sole language for provision of municipal services. The Sault Ste. Marie language resolution was not the first of its kind
