The Port of Thunder Bay is hosting its annual opening of Navigation Luncheon tomorrow and there is indeed much to celebrate moving into the future even given the current turbulence of the international economic environment. The port has long been a key piece of infrastructure for Thunder Bay’s economy and is really the main reason that Thunder Bay exists. Thunder Bay or "The Lakehead" as it was more commonly known was the transshipment point on the east-west economic axis erected by Canadian Confederation and the subsequent national policies that put through a railway linking the agricultural production of the west with the manufacturing production of the east.
Thunder Bay exists in its current incarnation because of Canada and Canada in turn requires Thunder Bay as a transport hub. The role of the port was key in the east-west flow that defined Canada after Confederation. The chief export product flowing through the Lakehead twin-ports of Port Arthur and Fort William was of course prairie grain but over time there was a diversification into other products though grain was always by far the most important product shipped. At the peak of the grain trade, dozens of grain elevators lined Thunder Bay’s waterfront and thousands of people worked in either the railways, the grain elevators or the port.
Of course, change has been constant when it comes to the Port of Thunder Bay. And nowhere is that change more evident than in the data compiled and available through the Port Authority itself. Figure 1 plots total tonnes of cargo from 1952 to 2023 with a polynomial trend fitted. Total tonnes of cargo peaked in 1983, and the port then underwent a decline in total cargo shipped. Much of this decline was due to a reorientation of the grain trade away from traditional European markets to the Asia-Pacific region which generated more activity for grain facilities in Vancouver and Prince Rupert. However, as Figure 2 illustrates, it was not just a decline in grain that affected the port but also the end of iron ore mining at Steep Rock in Atikokan as well as the phasing out of coal. Indeed, as Figure 3 illustrates, grain as a share of total cargo became even more important over time with the linear trend showing an increase from 60 percent of cargo in the mid twentieth century to over 80 percent by the present.
What is also notable in these charts is that since the start
of the 21st century, the Port of Thunder Bay has seen a recovery and
activity is generally on an upward trend.
While activity is still well removed from the peaks of the early 1980s,
the Port of Thunder Bay is poised to increase its role in Canada’s transportation
network. It is probably a coincidence but
the decline of the port’s activity in the 1980s also paralleled the increasing north-south
orientation of Canada’s economy in the wake of first the Canada-US Free Trade
Agreement (1988) and later its NAFTA and CUSMA successors. However, with the continental economic
relationship with the United States under stress and a push to remove
inter-provincial trade barriers and increase east-west economic activity within
Canada, Thunder Bay and its port are well poised to again build on its
historical role as the east-west transportation hub. Thunder Bay and its port exist because of
Canada’s east-west economic orientation and anything that strengthens that link
will inevitably benefit the Port of Thunder Bay. What is good for Canada, is good for Thunder Bay.
