Fort Francians got a chance to weigh in on a new tagline for the town last week during a special meeting at the Memorial Sports Centre, as council seeks to find a fitting replacement for “Boundless,” a slogan that was adopted in 2014.
The search for a new phrase that nails the local identity has been in the works since September 2024, when an administrative report to council indicated that the brand name had ultimately failed to capture the spirit of Fort Frances. A survey at the time suggested that 80 to 90 per cent of respondents saw the tagline in a negative light, and public comments suggested confusion around what “Boundless” actually referred to.
With a new plan to adopt an identity that would better resonate with its people, the town turned to a public vote on different categories from which it will take suggestions.
“Right now, we’ve got our top five categories for themes, and today we’re trying to decide which direction the public would prefer us to go in,” said Ally Lewis, the town’s communications coordinator and deputy clerk. “I really just wanted people to come out and have a chance to do something physical while they give their opinion.”
“When we were asking around, a lot of suggestions had to do with nature and the outdoors. In a survey, we asked, ‘What elements would you like to see captured in the tagline?’ Nature, outdoors, lake and river were some of the top choices that people gravitated towards.”
To give their opinions, people who came to the sports centre could vote for two of the five themes and were able to describe what words and colours they associate with their selected categories.
The themes listed were photography, fishing, sunsets, auroras and play (sports and recreation).
Craig Miller, Fort Frances’ environmental superintendent, felt that some of the prompted themes didn’t reflect the unique identity of the town.
“A lot of places can claim sunsets as their thing,” Miller said. “It’s very generic; the sun literally sets on every town. For northern lights, we’re too far south to really grab a claim on those, and photography is generic, too. So, play or fishing, I think.”
Everyone has their own opinion about what best represents the area. Tara Gunderson, a local with a differing viewpoint to offer, said the themes that highlight the natural beauty of the region are what make the most sense, as that is how she always remembers the area.
“My belief is that when you’re from this area, these types of things like sunsets and the auroras, the natural beauty of the area is where my heart is at,” Gunderson said. “We literally live in a postcard. What we lack in cooler things like a big museum or a movie theatre, we make up for in all of this because it’s not every city or town that has it.”
Votes from the event have not yet been tallied, but are expected to be included in the next report to council on the subject.
