On a cold night in February, 1884, just metres north of the border on Sumas Prairie, BC, an Indigenous boy named Louie Sam was lynched by a mob of mounted vigilantes. The vigilantes had ridden up from Nooksack Valley in Washington Territory, hell-bent on avenging the murder of one of their neighbours, which they had pinned on Sam. The American origin of the mob, and the fact Sam's murder was one of only two recorded lynchings in Canadian history, have led historians and writers to represent it as an isolated and foreign incident -- disconnected from people and events north of the border and an aberration from the norm of Canadian history. When placed within the historical context of that time and place, the vigilante murder of Sam no longer appears to be an isolated and foreign incident. Rather, it emerges as the result of a series of events and causes on both sides of the border, with the active participation of locals in both BC and Washington Territory. DEADLY NEIGHBOURS takes a closer look at the lynching, and in so doing reveals a more complex and disturbing chronicle of the deadly grip the leading White settlers in Nooksack and Sumas held over the area -- and most notably, over their Indigenous neighbours.
Chad Reimer has a BA Honours in History from the University British Columbia, along with an MA and PhD in History from York University. He is the author of Before We Lost the Lake: A Natural and Human History of Sumas Valley, published by Caitlin Press, which received an honorable mention at the British Columbia Historical Federations Historical Writing Competition. He also wrote Chilliwacks Chinatowns for the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of BC and Writing British Columbia History with UBC Press. Reimer has been published in BC History, Pacific Northwest Quarterly and a number of other journals. He was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where he spent his first fourteen winters before moving to the gentler climate of Abbotsford, BC, teaching for some years at the University of the Fraser Valley.
Deadly Neighbours is an important corrective for the colonial nostalgia that still stubbornly depicts BC pioneer settlers as mere pawns of powerful elite
. [Reimers] writing so masterfully reveals that many of those who have been celebrated in Canadian society as pioneer heroes were the same men who engaged in morally indefensible actions against Indigenous people. The history depicted in these pages contributes meaningfully to the important work of truth-telling for a country that is taking halting steps towards the vitally important goal of building reconciliation. -- Keith Carlson, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous and Community-Engaged History, from the foreword to Deadly Neighbours
