Moving Fort Frances forward
For Kathy McKenzie, the decision to run for Fort Frances council grew out of a sense that the town has stopped moving forward—with Sunny Cove providing the final impetus.
“Sunny Cove really, really pushed me to run,” McKenzie said. When council walked back its decision to sell the former youth camp in July, she thought: “Now’s my chance to get on council and try to save Sunny Cove.”
McKenzie is one of five challengers, alongside four incumbents, for six council seats on Oct. 26. Her platform puts responsible spending first, followed by economic development, housing, tourism and a safe, clean community that listens to residents.
Born and raised in Fort Frances, McKenzie left in 1999 and returned in 2018. Recently retired from nursing, she founded Lift Laser and Spa in 2021, now operating in Fort Frances and Kenora. Since returning, she has observed a town that “has basically become stagnant in a way,” but sees tourism, entrepreneurship and retaining young people as part of the way forward.
Her own search for a storefront showed what she sees holding the town back. Looking for space downtown, she found three empty units, but the landlord told her they wouldn’t put $20,000 into the storefront because they had apartments upstairs. “I think there should be bylaws against that,” she said. “If you own something downtown, it should be available for people to open up shops.”
She’d also give owners of vacant properties, including former schools, a deadline to develop them. “You buy it, you have so long to do something with it.”
Another issue McKenzie emphasized to The Times is homelessness and addiction. “It is a nationwide problem, but I think in a smaller town we do have much more of an ability to help it or fix it,” she said. A 2025 report highlighted by the District of Rainy River Services Board found Northern Ontario’s homelessness up 204 per cent since 2016.
She wants a treatment centre readily available, and a committee that works with surrounding First Nations and communities to seek funding and get people the help they need. In Kenora, where she also has a business, she says street crisis workers help people facing homelessness and addiction, something she feels isn’t as prevalent in Fort Frances.
On the Central Avenue intersection, McKenzie would stick with traffic lights rather than build a roundabout, citing construction disruption, snow clearing and the risk of overruns landing on the town. “I don’t think that it has to never happen, but I don’t think it needs to happen now,” she said. The town, she adds, isn’t growing. “It’s getting smaller.” And the census agrees: 8,103 residents in 2006, 7,466 in 2021.
Asked for the town’s greatest challenge, she needed five words: “Getting it to move forward.” “Everything that they try to do, there’s always a roadblock,” she said, describing work that ought to take a year stretching to three.
Her Exhibit A is the Hallett. The historic logging tug was removed from its waterfront berth during the 2022 flood after damage was discovered in its concrete cradle, and it has sat on dry land ever since. This year marks four years ashore for a vessel once used to tow mile-long booms of timber across Rainy Lake.
McKenzie’s first instinct was to photograph it, put up a plaque and be rid of it. Then she spoke with residents who had raised money to restore the Owandem, its companion tug, and found their case persuasive. “Why would anyone else want to donate their time and fundraise to fix anything else in the town if it’s just going to get shot down?”
She now wants the Hallett back in the water and offers the episode as an example of her method. “When I hear all the facts and everything, I think I would make a very good decision,” she said. Council has leaned the same way, though costs remain unsettled.
The same method is her prescription for council. On large or contentious files, she wants polls, surveys and public question-and-answer sessions to ensure residents feel heard and incorporated throughout the decision-making process.
While a newcomer to politics, McKenzie said that she would bring “an entrepreneur mind,” honesty, grit and a knack for selling ideas to the council if elected. Fort Frances, in her telling, is “a little diamond in the rough”.
Nothing illustrates that belief better than the issue that put her on the ballot. “Sunny Cove just has so much potential. To give up on it would be wrong”. It is the same faith she places in the town as a whole, which she believes can be revived through community initiatives and events, like this year’s Ribs on the Rainy festival, rather than through the tax bill. “It doesn’t have to cost a lot of money,” she said, “to actually get it up and thriving.”
