A few acres of snow

However, "Canada" was also commonly used as a generic term to cover all of New France, including the whole of the Louisiana territory, as well as modern-day southern Ontario, Labrador, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island.

It can be summarized as comprising an economic premise and a strategic premise, both of which concur to a practical conclusion, as follows: The year 1758 included the Battle of Fort Frontenac (August 26–28, a French defeat) and French naval secretary Nicolas René Berryer's October refusal to provide Louis Antoine de Bougainville with much-needed reinforcements to defend Quebec City.

The British siege of Québec City ended in a French defeat in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in September 1759, and Montréal surrendered the next year.

Voltaire's idea of the Canadian colony based essentially on fur trade was even during his own writings already outdated by almost a century.

Thus, although it may be difficult to determine exactly what part of his depiction of Canada might be attributed to deliberate exaggeration for polemical purposes, attachment to a preconceived idea, or mere misinformation, his few writings on the subject seem to display a certain level of short-sightedness regarding the actual level of economic evolution that had already been reached in the settled parts of Canada and about the colony's potential for further development.

Boundary disputes in their American colonies had been an early casus belli between Britain and France in 1754 in the war, which was in 1756 further complicated by purely-European considerations and ended in 1763.

...Those bad countries have nonetheless been an almost continual object of war, either with the natives, or with the English, who, being the possessors of the best territories, wanted to take that of the French, so as to be the sole masters of the commerce of that boreal part of the world.

[1][2]In this letter to François Tronchin, written at Monriond, near Lausanne, dated January 29, 1756, Voltaire mentions the earthquake that destroyed Lisbon, Portugal, on November 1, 1755.

The relevant passage of the letter reads as follows: ...I am a bad actor in the winter in Lausanne and I have success in the roles of old men, I am a gardener in the spring, in Mes Délices near Geneva, in a climate more southern than yours.

Also, one dabbles in some philosophy and some history, one mocks the follies of the human race, and the charlatanism of our physicists who believe that they have measured the Earth, and of those who pass for wise men because they have said that eels are made with sourdough.

Thus, it is immaterial to ponder if by "a few acres" Voltaire had in mind one of the areas in dispute in 1754, such as the Ohio Valley (in itself hardly an insignificant patch of land) or the Acadian border.

Under Voltaire's pen, the term is deliberately vague, and the point of using it is to convey the idea that any acres of land in the general area of Canada are so unimportant that even their location is not worth worrying about.

[7]This letter from Voltaire to César Gabriel de Choiseul (1712–1785), who had replaced his cousin Étienne de Choiseul as French Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in 1761, was written at Les Délices, on September 6, 1762 and is one of the best known of Voltaire's letters about Canada and is mentioned anecdotally in some high school history textbooks.

A short letter, it can be quoted in full: Aux Délices 6 septembre 1762 If I wanted to speak only for myself, milord, I would remain silent in the crisis of affairs where you find yourself.

The State lost, during that disastrous war, the most flourishing youth, more than half the money that circulated in the realm, its navy, its commerce, its credit.

One would have believed that it would have been very easy to prevent so many woes through some accommodation with the English for a small litigious patch of land somewhere in Canada, but a few ambitious, to acquire prestige and to render themselves necessary, precipitated France into this fatal war.

[9]Although the quotation is not directly in it, this letter from Voltaire to Charles-Augustin de Ferriol d'Argental (date uncertain, likely around 1763) illustrates Voltaire's position and actions about the matter: Will the government not forgive me for having said that the English took Canada, which I had, incidentally, offered, four years ago, to sell to the English, which would have ended everything, and which Mr Pitt's brother had proposed to me.

In the 1980s, the marketers of the Quebec edition of the game Trivial Pursuit punningly named their product "Quelques arpents de pièges" (A few acres of traps).