At the beginning of the 19th century, the great majority of English-speakers who lived or worked in eastern Quebec were the descendants of Scottish soldiers who had settled there as seigneurs (John Nairne, Malcolm Fraser) or farmers (the McNicolls and McLoughlin families). Some also became businessmen (William Price, John MacNider) in the flourishing logging industry.
Several of them maintained close ties with Scotland and England. This is why British visitors began coming to eastern Quebec for salmon fishing at the end of the 18th century. This was the case of Mr. Gilchrist, a Scotsman who visited his friend John Nairne at the seigniorial manor of La Malbaie, then Murray Bay, in 1761. The British nobility had been refining the art of fly fishing for centuries.