History
This was the first European settlement west of Lake Superior; it was established by French Canadian Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de La Vérendrye, first commander of the western district. In 1731 he built Fort St. Pierre near this spot as support for the fur trade with native peoples. In 1732 his expedition built Fort St. Charles on Magnuson Island on the west side of Lake of the Woods. After some time, Fort St. Pierre fell out of use.
In 1817, following the War of 1812 and redefinition of borders between Canada and the United States, the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) built a fort here. Officials named the subsequent settlement after Lady Frances Simpson, wife of then Hudson's Bay Company Governor George Simpson, who visited the fort many times.
Incorporated in 1903, the town held a big centennial celebration in 2003.
The main employer is a pulp and paper mill established in the early 1900s. It has had numerous owners over the years, notably Edward Wellington Backus. Now owned by Resolute Forest Products, the mill employs about 700 persons.
On June 25, 1946, the town was struck by a tornado which caused major damage. This tornado struck a week after the deadly Windsor tornado.
Read more about this topic: Fort Frances
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Indeed, the Englishman’s history of New England commences only when it ceases to be New France.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)