Located south of the St. Lawrence River and north of the New York State border the Eastern Townships of Quebec were first opened up to settlement in 1792. They encompass about 1600 square miles in four divisions: Compton, Sherbrooke, Wolfe and Frontenac Counties, which are divided again into townships. Lower Canada, as the province was then known, was predominantly French and landowning followed the Seigniorial system established before the English had taken over. As the Eastern Townships were then unexploited territory planning was done on the model found elsewhere in Canada, this arrangement still lends the area a flavor unique to the province. The Scottish settlers named many of their towns after the homes they had left behind in Scotland, Ballalan in Compton, East Angus, Keith, Lingwick, and Tolsta in Frontenac and Gisla, Ness Hill and Stornoway in Sherbrooke County.

Life was hard for the early migrants. The majority arrived with little or nothing and found that the land promised to them was covered with virgin forest. In Gaelic Canada was then known on both sides of the Atlantic as "Tir nan craobh", the land of the trees. It would take several years of backbreaking labor to build a house and clear enough farmland for a very basic subsistence. In the mean time money lenders and storeowners would grant the settlers mortgages and lines of credit at exorbitant rates of interest. This ensured, for the first few years at least, a continuation of the poverty and exploitation that these poor people had been hoping to escape from in Scotland.

The majority of the immigrants to this area were Highlanders and the majority of those were from the island of Lewis. Commonly they spoke only Gaelic and could neither read nor write. In the early years of the 19th century, it is said, the Eastern Townships became the third largest Scottish Gaelic speaking area in the world after the Highlands and Cape Breton.

In 1867 Confederation, the union of the Provinces into the country of Canada, saw Lower Canada renamed the 'Province of Quebec'. Then as now dominated by the French, the Government of Quebec adopted a policy that encouraged the return of the large population of Francophone who had settled in New England. Further, there was a concerted effort to increase the French presence in the Eastern Townships which, prior to Confederation, had been negligible. By 1875 about 400 French families were settled in the area. In order to provide the incomers with affordable land the Government expropriated that which had been set aside for British immigrants and sold it to French families for about 50 cents an acre (the market price was at that time was $1.00 an acre), from 1881 to 1901 the French presence rose from 24% to 48%. In reaction the local Scottish population formed 'The Protestant Defense Alliance" and " Eastern Townships Colonization" (1882) which tried to bring in more British immigrants. That the situation was beyond their control is evidenced by the fact that twenty years later, in 1907 newspaper editor Robert Seller wrote his book "The Tragedy of Quebec; the Expulsion of the Protestant Farmers". Scots considered the growing French population to be an invasion although typically the French became laborers and the Scots the bosses.

While the original Lewis immigrants had overwhelmingly remained within the Townships their children continued to follow the established pattern of migration. With local opportunity for the most part limited and growing French pressure most succumbed to the lure of a brighter future in other parts of Canada and the United States.

From the earliest years and throughout the Scottish tenure (to about the 1930's) the area's economy had been overwhelmingly based on farming and lumber.