This locality of the upper Great Lakes was first surveyed inside 1815 by William Fitzwilliam Owen and Lieutenant Henry W. Bayfield. A recess was known as "Owen's Sound" within honour of Admiral Sir Edward William Campbell Rich Owen, a explorer Owen's older brother.

A city of Owen Healthy was originally referred to as Sydenham once it was foremost settled inside 1841 by Charles Rankin. Before that a front yard experienced been inhabited per Ojibway people. A city gained its todays title inside 1851 and was incorporated in 1857. For lot of its history, Owen Healthy was a major port city, called the "Chicago of the North". Its locatiin on Georgian Bay gave it access to the upper Neat Streams, lakes, & wells throughout, and major line moved consignment south from either there. Larboard duties keep close at hand declined dramatically since a opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway allowed shipping directly to the lower lakes and dramatically lowered costs compared to transhipment via Owen Sound. Farming in the local metropolitan area & touristry come okay, integral area of the local economy.

Owen Healthy was a hometown of the World War I flying ace Billy Bishop and the local drome (Billy Bishop Regional Airport) is known as when him. His boyhood personal is nowadays the museum dedicated to his life & to Canada's aviation history. A town was likewise a front yard of NHL Hall-of-Fame goalkeeper Harry Lumley, the creative person Tom Thomson (buried in the nearby village of Leith) and a surgeon Dr. Norman Bethune. Legendary hockey broadcaster Bill Hewitt was once sports director of the local AM radio station, CFOS.

A city has an Ontario Hockey League team, the Owen Sound Attack, which plays home games in the Harry Lumley Memorial Bayshore Community Centre.

}

Local celebrities include:

Billy Bishop Agnes McPhail Norman Bethune Harry Lumley Thomas William Holmes