John George McTavish was a Scottish-born fur trader who played a significant role in the North West Company's activities in North America during the early 19th century. He entered the North American fur trade in 1798 with the North West Company, wherein he challenged the monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Company. Personal controversies arose from his marriages, notably abandoning his common-law wife Matooskie, an Indigenous Canadian woman, for Catherine Aitken Turner, sparking condemnation and rumours.

Matooskie, also known as Anne "Nancy" McKenzie, was a First Nations woman of the Chipewyan nation in Canada. The daughter of Scottish-Canadian fur trader Roderick Mackenzie, Matooskie was abandoned by her father as a young girl, and was left in the care of North West Company trader John Stuart. She was later abandoned by her first husband, John George McTavish. Supported by the Hudson's Bay Company, Matooskie and her family moved to various Hudson's Bay outposts across Western Canada, before settling at Fort Vancouver in the Columbia District following the death of her second husband. In the later years before her death in 1851, she accompanied her daughter and son-in-law.