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 that 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 previously published four books of BC history, including The Trials of Albert Stroebel: Love, Murder and Justice at the End of the Frontier, and Before We Lost the Lake: A Natural and Human History of Sumas Valley, which received an honourable mention in the BC Historical Federation’s Historical Writing Awards. He holds a BA in Honours History from the University of BC, along with an MA and PhD in History from York University. He was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and now lives in Williams Lake, BC.

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“Deadly Neighbours is an important corrective for the colonial nostalgia that still stubbornly depicts BC pioneer settlers as mere pawns of powerful elite…. [Reimer’s] 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