I glanced at the reactions to a Facebook story that claimed Eureka was almost like a Canadian town. There was a lot of disagreement – but I recall being asked my nation of origin at Mount Capulin, by a National Parks Employee who insisted that I sounded Canadian. Later, in Brookings (SD) I encountered a Vietnamese physician who didn’t believe that I speak with the perfect, unaccented American accent that I have. When a Quebec driver delivered a Quonset to me, he asked what part of Alberta I was from (I answered with on the word: “Southwest.”)
That experience aside, I suspect the Canadian influence on our speech declined in the mid-sixties, when we became a boomtown because of the huge influx of workers who came to the Tobacco Valley for the many jobs associated with Libby Dam.
It was another boomtown experience in 1904 that made the Tobacco Valley readily accessible from the US (Kalispell). Prior to that railroad relocation , a lot of the settlers came in from Canada to homestead – when Eureka’s request for the town to be named Dewey was turned down, direct access along the Kootenai ended at Jennings Rapids – but until 1904, the easiest access was through Canada and went through Gateway (flooded by Libby Dam).
To visually recognize the significance of 1904, slow down as you drive past the Point of Rocks (around mile marker 155) and look at how little space there is for the railroad, the Stillwater, and Highway 93 at the point. The old restaurant was named for the Point – a small area discovered around the turn of the century, and the relocation of the Great Northern to going through Stryker, Trego, Fortine and Eureka, then down the Kootenai valley made exporting lumber practical, and opened the valley to direct settlement from the US. There really isn’t room for much more than the railroad, the highway and the river.
Even in 1960, a lot of my neighbors either remained Canadian citizens or had been naturalized. Mary Westwood comes to mind as keeping her Canadian citizenship, while I’m fairly certain Pat Hume mentioned becoming a US citizen (in the army?). Some of my high school classmates came from Canada – and lived closer to LCHS than the kids from Trego. (Other Canadian families bit the bullet and sent their kids north, where they could be immersed in a curriculum that emphasized Brit history. Several Eureka businesses were operated by Canadian citizens or naturalized citizens.
Drive south on 93 – and when the traffic permits, examine the narrow gap between the rocks, the highway, the river and the railroad. Stevens opened the Tobacco Valley up to direct US settlement when he surveyed a line through the point of rocks for the railroad – but the earlier settlers, who came through Canada, had a head start. And I’m pretty sure we did sound kind of Canadian to folks nearer to the Mason-Dixon line. Or even Quebec, when a French Canadian trucker is dropping off the last of his deliveries in rural South Dakota.
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