Initially, officials in Quebec felt the island was too remote a location for a fort. Principally, it was Dorchester who was opposed to a garrison on the upper Great Lakes. He felt the strongest defensive position in the event of an American attack would be to concentrate the relatively thin British forces closer to the strategic centres of Quebec and Montreal. Upper Canada, he felt, was indefensible and not worth defending if it meant losing Quebec. However, Sir John Graves Simcoe, the lieutenant governor of Upper Canada disagreed. He was insistent that a fort on Lake Huron was essential to promote good relations with First Nations people whose support was essential to secure British North America from the expansionist Americans. Land grants to the Americans resulting from the Treaty of Paris and the Jay Treaty had left First Nations feeling badly betrayed by the British. To Simcoe, abandoning Lake Huron entirely would do nothing to repair relations and would only add to their discontent. Simcoe pressed forcefully for a garrison on the lake, though his preference was for Penetanguishene, some 400 km east of St. Joseph Island. Simcoe argued against St. Joseph, citing the then still ambiguous border on the Great Lakes to say that the island was outside British territory; writing in 1794 that "from the map of the Sault of St. Mary's in Charlevoix which I have generally found to be true it would appear that the Island of St. Joseph by treaty is within the line of the United States."