The Decennial DonTigny Voyage
Havre Daily News, Havre, Montana, June 6, 1962
DonTigny Is in Charge of Post-Session Boat Trip
By Norma Sorenson
In charge of the post-session
MIA (Montana Institute of the Arts) Festival boat trip will be Emil DonTigny,
local businessman whose knowledge of the upper Missouri and its history has made
him a local authority on the White Cliffs and Stone Wall region being accented
by the MIA. He was born on the St. Maurice River north of the Gulf of St.
Lawrence in French Quebec, Canada, where his family owned vast timber lands. His
early education in this isolated area came from French tutors who came to live
with the family for seven months out of each year to instruct the children in
elementary education, as well as arts and crafts. Emil later attended the
L'Academie Du Sacae Couer at Grand Mere, Quebec.
During his early youth he found recreation along the beautiful St. Maurice River with canoeing, swimming, skating and snow-shoeing.
DonTigny is a graduate of the Chicago Painting School of Interior Decoration and Design and studied art appreciation at the Chicago Art Institute of Chicago. Early day tales of adventures of the exploits of French "courier-de-bois" and others as told to him by his parents and tutors led him to take to the Lewis and Clark trail to rediscover its history and adventure.
He has been a vital, one-man force in the furthering of good neighbor relations between Canadian neighbors to the north and the people of his beloved Montana. He has collaborated with San Francisco photographer Maurice C. Wright on the design and production of a pictorial book about Montana entitled "When You Come West You Will See Montana, Land of Shining Mountains." The text of this book was written by F.F. Runkel, and publication was made possible by the Havre Chamber of Commerce, civic, business and professional groups, and other public-spirited citizens of Havre.
In explaining the purpose of the book, the text states, "When you come west you will want to see ... not alone the mountains in all their grandeur, or the plains in all their greatness ... Sought out for you are the trails of the pioneer ... marked for you are the rendezvous they kept with death ... preserved for you are the priceless heritages of the 'West That Was' ..."