Welcome to The Gateway.

Learn from the past, look to the future

The Gateway explores the rich history, current issues, and future directions of the beautiful city of North Bay and its surrounding communities. With thoughtful analysis of a variety of themes and events, we aim to learn from the past, and consider the future of our city.

The Gateway Story

“North Bay…must be cold.”

I’m sure anyone who has lived in our city has heard this line at least once. And hey, it’s true after all. But it also goes to show that people just don’t know much about North Bay. We’re 4 hours North of Toronto by car, and yet for people in Toronto, ‘North Bay’ evokes images of a desolate arctic tundra.

But after 7 years of living in the Gateway City as a Nipissing Student, I realized that frankly, I don’t know much about North Bay either. It’s easy for students to exist in ignorance of local issues, as for many, it is an overtly temporary home. But some of us stick, and we owe it to ourselves to learn about the rich history of the city, the current issues of the city, and to deliberate carefully over the type of city we want to live in five, ten, or thirty years down the road.

At its core, this blog is my desire for a journey from ignorance to understanding of the city that acts as the setting of our day to day lives.

David Foster Wallace once famously told a joke about two fish who are confronted with the question: “How’s the water?” The fish continue swimming before one finally asks the other: “What the hell is ‘Water’?”

The Gateway aims to explore what we rarely consider but is inherent to everything we do: our sense of place.