The Beaver Club was a gentleman's dining club founded in 1785 by the predominantly English-speaking men who had gained control of the fur trade of Montreal. According to the club's rules, the object of their meeting was "to bring together, at stated periods during the winter season, a set of men highly respectable in society, who had passed their best days in a savage country and had encountered the difficulties and dangers incident to a pursuit of the fur trade of Canada". Only fragmentary records remain of their meetings, but from these it is clear that the Beaver Club was "an animated expression of the esprit de corps of the North West Company". The men of the Beaver Club were the predecessors of Montreal's Square Milers.

The North West Company was a fur trading business headquartered in Montreal from 1779 to 1821. It competed with increasing success against the Hudson's Bay Company in the regions that later became Western Canada and Northwestern Ontario.  With great wealth at stake, tensions between the companies increased to the point where several minor armed skirmishes broke out, and the two companies were forced by the British government to merge.