NetNewsLedger’s April Fools gags hit hardest when they borrow from Thunder Bay’s real debates

THUNDER BAY – UPDATE – A review of NetNewsLedger’s public archive over the past five years shows a clear pattern in its April 1 tradition: the strongest gags were rooted in places, projects and arguments Thunder Bay readers already knew well.

The clearest stand-alone spoof pieces in that stretch were the 2021 “Thunder Dome” story at Marina Park, the 2024 Sleeping Giant solar farm story and the 2025 piece imagining Thunder Bay split back into Fort William and Port Arthur.

In 2023, we published a short history of April Fools pranks instead of a new local spoof, and in the public archive reviewed for April 1, 2022, no clearly marked prank story surfaced; one of the day’s local items was a routine city survey brief.

That matters locally because these jokes were not random. They drew on familiar civic pressure points: waterfront development, landmark identity, renewable-energy talk and the long shadow of amalgamation.

For Thunder Bay readers, that made the gags feel close enough to reality to be funny, and occasionally believable.

From Marina Park to the Sleeping Giant, the humour stayed close to home

What ties the recent April 1 pieces together is that each one took a real local conversation and pushed it just far enough into absurdity.

NetNewsLedger’s April Fools formula has been less about shock than recognition: readers laugh because they can see the civic logic, right up until it tips into parody.

2021: Marina Park becomes the home of the “Thunder Dome”

In 2021, NetNewsLedger reported that Thunder Bay’s indoor turf facility would not go to its expected location, but instead would be moved to Marina Park under a retractable plexiglass dome.

The piece said the project would cost an estimated $70 million, host sports year-round and even help the Blues Festival run rain or shine.

The joke worked because it borrowed the language of real municipal project reporting — secret meetings, funding formulas and tourism spin — while attaching it to one of the city’s most visible public spaces.

2022 and 2023: A quieter year, then a look back at the prank tradition

The public archive reviewed for April 1, 2022 did not turn up a clearly identified April Fools spoof from NetNewsLedger. Instead, one of the site’s local April 1 items was a straightforward report on Thunder Bay’s 2022 citizen satisfaction survey.

A year later, on April 1, 2023, the site published a brief history of April Fools’ Day and used it to look back at earlier NetNewsLedger pranks, explicitly citing a 2019 toque-law gag, a 2020 roller-coaster tourism story and the 2021 Marina Park indoor turf spoof.

2024: The Sleeping Giant as the world’s largest solar farm

NetNewsLedger returned to the format in 2024 with a story claiming Thunder Bay and Ontario planned to turn the Sleeping Giant into the world’s largest solar farm.

The article said thousands of panels would be installed along the landmark’s silhouette to boost clean energy and lower costs, before ending with the familiar reveal: “Thank you for enjoying our annual April Fools story. Did we get you?”

The joke landed because it fused two ideas that resonate in Northwestern Ontario — the region’s resource-and-energy future and one of its most recognizable natural landmarks.

2025: Reversing amalgamation and reviving Fort William and Port Arthur

In 2025, the site leaned into one of Thunder Bay’s longest-running identity fault lines, publishing a spoof that the Ontario government would erase the city’s name and restore Fort William and Port Arthur as separate municipalities.

The story invented a secret committee, a July 1 split date and even ceremonial map-cutting, before later thanking readers for taking the “annual April Fool’s Gag” in the spirit intended.

The premise was especially potent because amalgamation is not ancient history here: the City of Thunder Bay notes that Fort William and Port Arthur were brought together under provincial legislation effective Jan. 1, 1970. A joke built on unwinding that decision was always going to strike a nerve with readers who still use the old city names in everyday conversation.

Why the gags keep working in Thunder Bay

Taken together, the past five years show that NetNewsLedger’s April Fools pieces work best when they stay rooted in local civic memory. Marina Park, the Sleeping Giant and the Fort William-Port Arthur divide are not throwaway references; they are part of how Thunder Bay talks about itself.

That is why these stories read less like generic internet hoaxes and more like a local wink. For readers across Thunder Bay and Northwestern Ontario, the humour comes from seeing a familiar debate — infrastructure, energy, identity or heritage — pushed one step beyond plausibility.