Louisa Morse

A Female "Sport" on the Tobique River.

adies had been coming to New Brunswick rivers since the late nineteenth century, mostly in the company of their husbands or as part of a family. Louisa Morse (nee Spruance) was part of this mould but stayed on through life's changes, attracted by a love of the sport and the river. Born in Wilmington, Delaware, she began visiting the Tobique with her parents in the early 1920s. Her father was a co-founder of the Nictau Fish and Game Club in 1924, and with her mother, all three fished on the river until William Spruance's death in 1935. Thereafter mother and daughter continued to come north and Louisa remained an ardent sport fisher as a single and, later, a married woman. She fished until 1974 when the Nictau club ceased operations, a victim of dams on the Tobique and St. John Rivers.