Montmartre began in March 1893, when a group of wealthy French Catholic settlers, among them Pierre Foursin, Armand Goupil, the Haymann brothers, the Chartiers and Louis Gigot, formed the Foncier Society of Canada to encourage colonization. After stepping off the train at Wolseley, they travelled by horse and buggy to a hilly stretch of land to the southwest and named it Montmartre, after their home in France. Gigot and Haymann stayed in Paris to promote the colony, promising newcomers, mostly office workers with no farming experience, help with land, log cabins, animals, equipment and a hired farming mentor.
The first families, those of Auguste de Trémaudan and Mr. Berneau, arrived on June 1, 1893, and lived at first in sod-covered tepee-like shelters. The first year was hard: an early frost killed the potato crop, a well was abandoned for lack of water, and a prairie fire on October 31 took most of the settlers' belongings and animal feed. Settlers from eastern Canada followed from 1898, and by 1905 English, Irish, Polish and German families had joined the French majority.
The Canadian Northern Railway reached the village in 1908, and Montmartre incorporated as a village that October. Grain elevators followed the rail line. The 1920s brought good crops, electric lights, cement walks and radio, before the Great Depression's falling wheat prices, rust, drought and dust storms. Residents got through by helping one another, and the Montmartre Co-op began in 1938. A hospital was started in 1948, and the Cenotaph was dedicated in 1946.
Today agriculture remains the main industry. The village calls itself the "Paris of the Prairies" and has a replica Eiffel Tower built in 2009, the year it celebrated its centennial. It also hosts the All Folk'd Up Music Festival each July and shares Kemoca Regional Park with Kendal and Candiac.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Montmartre, Saskatchewan” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.