Sask. village in the spotlight after model Eiffel Tower appears on Kit Kats

Montmartre, Sask. got some well deserved attention after becoming one of the focuses of a road trip ad campaign by the popular Kit Kat brand.

Around 450 people call the village of Montmartre home and a 1/38 scale model of the Eiffel Tower is among the southern Saskatchewan community's attractions.

As to how the village’s principal attraction came to be, long time Mayor Robert Chittenden has a personal connection to the miniature icon, which was built in 2009.

“It was actually my brother-in-law that fabricated the tower himself,” he said. “Then some other individuals from the area painted it and poured the concrete for it and it was all local contractors.”

Montmartre is named after Montmartre, France, a hill in Paris that inspired the name of its surrounding district.

Both the village and City of Light have a long storied history other than the two sharing an icon and a name.

“In the 1960’s back then, our mayor was a French gentleman. We actually paired up with Montmartre, France and sent a couple of delegates from our village,” Chittenden said.

“Then a couple came back here. It was the ‘Sisterhood of Montmartres’ is what they called it back then and it was kind of forgotten about it over the decades.”

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The community’s motif was again put in the spotlight due to a certain chocolate goliath.

“Back in September of last year, Glen Davis Group, an agent for them contacted me regarding the Eiffel Tower and just stating a client of theirs wanted to use the Eiffel Tower in a road trip campaign of some sort,” Dale Brenner, the administrator for Montmartre, told CTV News.

“At that time. I didn't know what it was.”

Brenner had to sign a confidential agreement once he provided photos of Montmartre’s most well known attraction.

“At the end of March we got two boxes of the Kit Kat bars in the mail and I still had to sit on them,” he laughed.

“I couldn't say anything until they started their campaign.”

Special edition Kit Kat bars are available with Montmartre's signature Eiffel Tower. (Source: Instagram kitkatcanada)

But once it began and the word was out, the reaction of the town was nothing but positive.

“The Eiffel Tower itself has been nothing but a huge bonus for the village,” Chittenden said.

“We've had so many people stop in. Take pictures of it, drive around our little town and check out all the amenities we have. It's been great.”

“I would have never guessed in a million years that it would have brought that much activity to our town,” he added.

The campaign, Road Trip Breaks by Kit Kat, highlights attractions across Canada.

“They selected six communities or six, I guess, attractions across Canada, and this was wonderful,” Brenner said.

“So how they came about to choose it. We don't know. But they did and that's great news for the community.”

As for the bars themselves, they’re in short supply in the village for good reason.

However, Chittenden was sure to get his hands on a few for safekeeping.

“So they’re pretty hard to get in Montmartre, I’ll tell you that,” he laughed.

“But my wife actually picked up quite a few here a couple weeks ago, and we got a whole bunch in our deep freeze. So we're going to keep them and give them to our kids as mementos of Montmartre.”

For Chittenden and the rest of the community, the contest and the spotlight that comes with it are only positives for the small Saskatchewan town.

“That's gonna be hopefully a great little thing for the village of Montmartre,” he said.

“Any little bit of publicity we can get, no matter how it comes about in regards to our little town and making it grow and prosper.”