In 1766, a story appeared in the Gazette de Québec that warned residents of Quebec City that a werewolf (loup-garou) was roaming outside the city walls. Quebec was then a new colony of the British Empire after the settlement of New France was defeated by the British military in 1763. The French colonists were reeling from the war and change of government, plus there was always the fear of the First Nations people they had taken the land from in the first place, and of wild animals. It was a short leap to blame local disappearances and grisly deaths on the loup-garou, a legend they recalled from similar cases in French history. Canadiana explains the werewolf, or rather the fear of the werewolf, that terrorized Quebec for decades. The story is only 6:30, the rest is promotional.
See also: The Beast of Gévaudan and The French Werewolf Epidemic.