In the company's absence, Chief Shakes took control of the post and of the Stikine River trade. Discovery of gold in the Queen Charlotte Islands in 1850, and then in the Thompson Country and Fraser Canyon in the later 1850s, led to wider encroachments and exploration by whites far beyond the locus of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush of 1858-1861. One intrepid adventurer, Alexander "Buck" Choquette, originally from Quebec and who had been in the California goldfields, had already explored in the area of the Nass and other rivers between there and the Stikine. Equipped with an acquired proficiency in the Chinook Jargon, Choquette was at Fort Victoria when he met some of Shakes' people and persuaded them to bring him with them to the Stikine and what was left of Fort Stikine, which had by then become known as Shakesville (though still also referred to as Fort Stikine despite the absence of a formal post or a Chief Trader). Choquette was to earn the respect of Shakes and also the hand of his daughter Georgiana (or Georgie) as his wife, with the marriage consecrated according to the elaborate ceremonials of Tlingit custom.