as many as 95% of the population claimed to be of Irish ethnicity in 1941. While much of Irish immigration can be attributed to the 19th-century famines, the Irish were also drawn to the Ottawa Valley for work opportunities, examples being in the thriving timber industry at the time as well as infrastructure projects. Scottish influence Following the Napoleonic Wars, Scottish groups settled primarily in the Glengarry, Lanark, and Renfrew Counties. Soldiers who had served the British Crown during the wars were offered free land grants throughout Upper Canada, particularly in the area known today as the Ottawa Valley. Over-represented in the British armed forces, Scottish men and their families received grants and ended up settling in the valley. Those who settled in Glengarry County were mostly Gaelic-speakers arriving from the Scottish Highlands, who eventually learned English from the neighbouring Loyalists to the west and the south. Many of Lanark County's residents, however, originated from the Scottish Lowlands. While Renfrew County was also a Scottish Highland settlement, many of its original settlers seemed to have already known English upon their arrival. Phonological features The fronting of before and the consistent raising of and in any context, all of which is reminiscent of Irish and Scottish English, have been reported in traditional speakers of the Ottawa Valley. The north shore of the St. Lawrence Valley is home to Loyalist dialect pockets from the United States, including a dominant trend of the absence of the cot-caught merger, unlike most speakers of Standard Canadian English. Lexical features English in Glengarry features occasional borrowing from Gaelic words, an example being "gruamach" to describe a gloomy and overcast day. Some phonological features are also transferred from Gaelic, such as the marked devoicing of final voiced consonants as well as the alteration of consonant clusters. Many residents of Lanark County originated from the Scottish Lowlands, bringing vocabulary elements of their heritage dialects as well. The term "ben," for example, is used to refer to what most Canadians would call a "living room" or what Ottawa Valley inhabitants would call a "parlour." "Rones" is used in place of "eavestroughs" and "gutters." Phonologically, the English of Renfrew County is influenced by Polish-speakers in the region but also by a greater contact with Irish populations. One of the strongest Irish influences on Ottawa Valley twang and the English of the area, in general, is the introduction of "for to."