“Just some really fun memories,” she said. “Ĭhristiaens was a next-door neighbor to Doig back in the day, and her late husband played football with the future author in Valier. He loved this area, and it just came to me what we should do,” she said. Tonkovich, Ali Newkirk and Rita Christiaens formed a committee to look into the highway designation.Ĭhristiaens, owner of Inn Dupuyer Bed and Breakfast, met with Carol Doig as she looked for a final resting place for her late husband (he wasn’t ultimately buried in Dupuyer). The fictionalized town of Gros Ventre and Two Medicine country were the settings of many of Doig’s 17 books, among them “This House of Sky,” “Dancing at the Rascal Fair,” “English Creek, Ride With Me, Mariah Montana,” “Mountain Time,” “The Eleventh Man,” “Bartender’s Tale” and “Last Bus to Wisdom.”

She plans to read from “English Creek” at Monday’s event. “Every time I drive from Choteau to Dupuyer, that’s what I see,” she said. She highlighted one of her favorite passages from his “This House of Sky”: “The western skyline before us was filled high with a steel-blue army of mountains, drawn in battalions of peaks and reefs and gorges and crags as far along the entire rim of the earth as could be seen.” Her favorites are those novels set along the Front and his memoirs. Tonkovich is reading Doig’s final book, “Last Bus to Wisdom,” now. No writer could tell the story of the people and place better. The Dupuyer club is working on a downtown memorial as well. The highway designation is just the first step to honor Doig since his 2015 death. Monday, June 27, at the Dupuyer Community Hall. 89 with Montana Highway 219 near Pendroy, where the Doig family lived on the Jensen place, to the intersection with Montana Highway 44 near Valier, where Doig graduated high school in 1957.ĭupuyer is celebrating the designation from 4-6 p.m. The designation stretches from the intersection of U.S. The Dupuyer Community Club and the Montana Department of Transportation have worked together to establish the Ivan Doig Memorial Highway on U.S. “People are as enchanted by his writing as any of us are. “There’s worldwide interest,” Tonkovich said. She sells more copies of “This House of Sky” than any other book stocked at the Dupuyer Cache. He bought the first two of Ivan Doig’s McCaskills trilogy here and came halfway around the world to get the third, ‘Ride with Me, Mariah Montana.’ Fortunately it was in stock,” Tonkovich said. “The western skyline before us was filled high with a steel-blue army of mountains, drawn in battalions of peaks and reefs and gorges and crags as far along the entire rim of the earth as could be seen.” – Ivan Doig, “This House of Sky”ĭUPUYER – A man in front of Buffalo Joe’s Eatery and Saloon tipped his hat at Mary Tonkovich as she returned to town after a hike along the Rocky Mountain Front.

Dancing at the rascal fair trilogy