Mayoral candidate · Sault Ste. Marie
The Preacher
Blues artist. Sault Ste. Marie neighbour. An independent voice running to serve the city he calls home.
Meet the candidate
Known onstage as The Preacher, Josh McNally is a blues artist from Sault Ste. Marie. He is running for mayor to bring a grounded, independent voice to City Hall.
Josh earned the name “The Preacher” at the famed Buddy Guy’s Legends while studying blues in the heart of Chicago. Learning fingerstyle Chicago blues from friends and mentors helped shape the sound he brings to the stage today.
Music is built on listening: hearing the room, finding the rhythm, and bringing people together. Josh believes local leadership should work the same way—listen first, speak plainly, and stay accountable to the whole city.
Whole notes, without half steps.
Good solutions start by understanding the whole problem. Then we bring the right people together and follow through—without settling for half measures.
The campaign priorities
Tourism and creative work can broaden the economy. Affordable housing, accessible care, and support built around each person can make daily life better. Both belong at the centre of the plan.
Read the full platform →Give people reasons to visit, stay longer, and come back. Connect music, festivals, food-truck parks, heritage, downtown, and the waterfront—with paid opportunities for local creators and customers for local businesses. A broader economy can give residents and investors more confidence in the Sault’s future.
Explore tourism & the creative economy →Take social disorder and despair seriously. Work toward affordable homes, timely voluntary treatment, and individualized support with the organizations already serving people. Fill service gaps, make shared spaces safer, and change the approach when the evidence changes.
Explore housing & social support →Create fair chances for entrepreneurs, inventors, builders, students, and performers to demonstrate their work. Give people an open route to feedback, mentorship, and a next step.
Read this chapter →Make more room for music, film, comedy, stories, heritage, and neighbourhood gatherings across the city. Set up designated places for regular and scheduled busking so artists can earn income and bring public spaces to life.
Read this chapter →Offer clear ways to raise an idea, follow what happens to it, and understand why a decision was made. Keep opinions, proposals, practical help, and campaign communications separate.
Read this chapter →Start free foundational life-skills learning in existing spaces while carefully exploring a permanent all-ages community centre. Let the learning begin before any property decision is made.
Read this chapter →Policy questions for discussion: Prohibit adult-entertainment establishments citywide—or regulate designated locations? Should the City ask Ontario for a tightly controlled smoking and cannabis-hospitality pilot?
This is home
Sault Ste. Marie is shaped by the water, built by working people, and strengthened by neighbourhoods with their own stories. City Hall should see the whole picture—and never lose sight of the people who live inside it.
Our history, environment, tourism, and future all meet at the waterfront.
Local business, safer streets, and public spaces people are proud to use.
The platform applies across the whole municipality while recognizing that downtown, waterfront, residential, industrial, and rural-edge communities do not all face the same questions in the same way.
One city, every neighbourhood
From the waterfront and downtown to every residential street and rural edge, residents deserve the same thing: to be heard, treated fairly, and kept informed.
Community School for Life
Josh proposes free foundational life-skills classes for all ages and wants to explore an all-ages downtown community centre.
The commitments are separate: classes can begin with willing partners in existing spaces. Permanent use of the former downtown high school would require an agreement, a building assessment, accessibility and safety work, clear operating responsibility, and a sustainable budget.
Room to think bigger
Josh is interested in exploring larger visions for Sault Ste. Marie, including Mosaic—a project described by Jeremy Hannah that brings together ideas for tourism, economic development, and community life.
Its starting question is simple: what could our streets, waterfront, buildings, and surrounding landscape become if we looked at how they could work together?
Josh also sees an economic reason to examine that question. If the ideas prove viable and are delivered responsibly, their combined effect could broaden the city’s economic base, support more local work, and build longer-term confidence for residents and investors. Those are outcomes to test—not results to assume.
Mosaic is one possible contribution to a broader destination-led growth strategy, not the strategy by itself.
Gore Street
A destination-street concept built around food, culture, and small enterprise.
02The waterfront
A permanent fairground with attractions, food, performance, and gathering spaces.
03Stay longer
A hotel or resort connected with surrounding experiences.
04Station Mall
A major exhibition and convention centre within part of the mall.
05Agawa Canyon
Overnight experiences, including a proposed gondola-accessed ridge stay.
06Regional exploration
Distinctive rail-connected destination and community concepts.
These are connected possibilities for places to visit, businesses to build, events to host, and reasons to spend more time in the city.
Mosaic · The waterfront today
These waterfront views put the Mosaic discussion in its real setting. Across the river behind Josh in the blue-sky photograph is the former proposed Gateway site and fish hatchery area—a connection between the places we know today and the waterfront possibilities being explored.
Photographs of the waterfront today, not renderings or confirmation of approved development sites.
Exploration is not a promise
Being interested in an idea is not the same as promising to build it. Josh wants room for residents, property owners, businesses, community groups, and potential partners to examine larger possibilities, suggest changes, and bring forward ideas of their own.
The intention is to make space for those conversations—and give worthwhile ideas a proper look.
Bring a question or idea → Read the complete platform section →Mosaic concepts are attributed to Jeremy Hannah and are presented here for exploration. Project feasibility, sites, approvals, ownership, funding, and partnerships have not been established. Any land or rail proposal would require appropriate engagement with landowners, operators, public bodies, and Indigenous governments and rights holders.
Explore all six Mosaic conceptsCommunity commitment
Every Child Matters.
A city moving forward must make room for truth, honour survivors and families, and listen to Indigenous voices with care and consistency.
Work in this area must be shaped through sustained listening with local Indigenous governments, communities, survivors, families, language speakers, and knowledge holders—not through a website question or a claim of endorsement.
Community participation
A community conversation should leave room to ask a question, compare different answers, and say what still needs work. This is one example of the questions residents could help examine. You do not have to agree with Josh or with a proposed idea to take part.
Community discussion · Nonbinding campaign feedback
A city name carries history, identity, and practical consequences. This question is being opened for discussion—not presented as a decision already made.
How easy is the present name to say, spell and find online? Have you encountered confusion, and would a different name actually help?
The Ontario city shares its name with Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Would a different name make our Canadian city’s identity clearer, or is the shared name a connection worth keeping?
Bawating is one name proposed for this discussion. Batchewana First Nation uses the spelling “Bawahting” in its account of the area’s history and identifies it with the rapids. Any serious naming discussion should involve local Anishinaabe governments, language speakers, and knowledge holders, including decisions about spelling, meaning, and pronunciation. No endorsement is implied.
What would be gained or lost? A change would affect local attachment, French-language heritage, signs, businesses, addresses, records, and transition costs. Recognition of more than one name is also an option to examine.
Accountable public input
Josh wants public input to lead to clear answers: what was raised, what was checked, what changed, what did not, and why. This is the approach he wants to bring to civic decisions.
Response summaries
Any future summary will show the question version, dates, valid response count, option distribution, inclusion rules, data timestamp, and the limits of a voluntary self-selected sample. It will not claim to represent the city.
Disagreement belongs
Harassment, threats, exposed personal data, spam, and unlawful content can be excluded. Good-faith disagreement with Josh or any proposal remains eligible.
Different actions, separate choices
Reading the platform, expressing an opinion, proposing an idea, offering practical help, and receiving campaign communications are different actions. One never signs you up for another.
Consider the city-name question, with room for different views.
Review the question →See what a useful resident proposal would include and how it would move through review.
Explore the idea process →Instructor, venue owner, organizer, operator, technical adviser, potential funder, or campaign volunteer.
Email the campaign →Taking part in a discussion or offering help does not sign you up for campaign emails.
Your privacy and choices →
