Last year I posted about dialects specific to Northern Ontario, where I grew up. Recently I came across a column from Soo Today that has more examples of some terms from Sault Ste. Marie. It's not a complete list (I can think of at least four terms that aren't included) but it does expand the number of words by quite a bit.
It had started when someone allowed as how they had to go down the line the next day to their camp at Tunnel Lake.
“I’ve heard that Northerners call their cottages ‘camps’ and I imagine Tunnel Lake is a recreational body of water somewhere around here,” our guest blurted out, “but what the heck do you mean by down the line? And somebody also mentioned up the line and over the river. What line? What river?”
Having been born and raised in the Soo area, the rest of us burst out laughing at the consternation our “patois” was causing our visitor. It had never occurred to us until then that someone from “away” would find these expressions confusing. What ensued was a kind of parlour game where we decided to see how many local expressions we could come up with.
The result was a pretty fair starter list of words and phrases that could make life easier for visitors to and new residents of an area the Ojibwe – the indigenous Anishinaabe inhabitants of the region – originally called Baawitigong (Bawating), meaning "place of the rapids."
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