<P> Louisbourg was intended to serve as a year - round military and naval base for France's remaining North American empire and to protect the entrance to the St. Lawrence River . Father Rale's War resulted in both the fall of New France influence in present - day Maine and the British recognition of having to negotiate with the Mi'kmaq in Nova Scotia . During King George's War (1744 to 1748), an army of New Englanders led by William Pepperrell mounted an expedition of 90 vessels and 4,000 men against Louisbourg in 1745 . Within three months the fortress surrendered . The return of Louisbourg to French control by the peace treaty prompted the British to found Halifax in 1749 under Edward Cornwallis . Despite the official cessation of war between the British and French empires with the Treaty of Aix - la - Chapelle; the conflict in Acadia and Nova Scotia continued on as the Father Le Loutre's War . </P> <P> The British ordered the Acadians expelled from their lands in 1755 during the French and Indian War, an event called the Expulsion of the Acadians or le Grand Dérangement . The "expulsion" resulted in approximately 12,000 Acadians being shipped to destinations throughout Britain's North America and to France, Quebec and the French Caribbean colony of Saint - Domingue . The first wave of the expulsion of the Acadians began with the Bay of Fundy Campaign (1755) and the second wave began after the final Siege of Louisbourg (1758). Many of the Acadians settled in southern Louisiana, creating the Cajun culture there . Some Acadians managed to hide and others eventually returned to Nova Scotia, but they were far outnumbered by a new migration of New England Planters who were settled on the former lands of the Acadians and transformed Nova Scotia from a colony of occupation for the British to a settled colony with stronger ties to New England . Britain eventually gained control of Quebec City and Montreal after the Battle of the Plains of Abraham and Battle of Fort Niagara in 1759, and the Battle of the Thousand Islands and Battle of Sainte - Foy in 1760 . </P> <P> With the end of the Seven Years' War and the signing of the Treaty of Paris (1763), France ceded almost all of its remaining territory in mainland North America, except for fishing rights off Newfoundland and the two small islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon where its fishermen could dry their fish . France had already secretly ceded its vast Louisiana territory to Spain under the Treaty of Fontainebleau (1762) in which King Louis XV of France had given his cousin King Charles III of Spain the entire area of the drainage basin of the Mississippi River from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Appalachian Mountains to the Rocky Mountains . France and Spain kept the Treaty of Fontainebleau secret from other countries until 1764 . In return for acquiring Canada, Britain returned to France its most important sugar - producing colony, Guadeloupe, which the French at the time considered more valuable than Canada . (Guadeloupe produced more sugar than all the British islands combined, and Voltaire had notoriously dismissed Canada as "Quelques arpents de neige", "A few acres of snow"). </P> <P> The new British rulers of Canada abolished and later reinstated most of the property, religious, political, and social culture of the French - speaking habitants, guaranteeing the right of the Canadiens to practice the Catholic faith and to the use of French civil law (now Quebec Civil Code) through the Quebec Act of 1774 . The Royal Proclamation of 1763 had been issued in October, by King George III following Great Britain's acquisition of French territory . The proclamation organized Great Britain's new North American empire and stabilized relations between the British Crown and Aboriginal peoples through regulation of trade, settlement, and land purchases on the western frontier . </P>

When did canada became a colony of britain