Espanola, Ontario 5.51

Espanola is a town in Northern Ontario, Canada, and is the seat of Sudbury District. It is situated on the Spanish River, approximately 70 kilometres west of downtown Sudbury, and just south of the junction of Highway 6 and Highway 17.HistoryOriginThe name "Espanola" has been attributed to a story which dates back to the mid 18th century. The story goes that a First Nations Ojibwa tribe of the area sent a raiding party a long distance to the south and brought back with them a white woman who spoke Spanish. The Spanish woman married a local Annishnabeg (First Nations) of a family living near the mouth of the river and taught her children to speak Spanish. Later, when the French voyageurs and coureurs des bois came upon the settlement and heard fragments of Spanish spoken by the local natives, they remarked "Espagnole", which had been later anglicized to "Espanola", and the river was named the Spanish River.Company townEspanola was founded in the early 1900s as a company town for the employees of the Spanish River Pulp and Paper company, a subsidiary of the Mead Corporation, which opened a pulp and paper mill there. The town expanded quickly becoming a bustling company town with a hotel, school and theatre. On January 21, 1910, a Canadian Pacific Railway passenger train derailed off a trestle 10 km. east of Espanola. Forty-three people died from the railcar's 27-foot plunge into the icy water of the Spanish River. It was one of the CPR's worst railway accidents.