Angélique started the fire or was wrongfully accused, the barbarity with which her body and spirit were broken was reminiscent of enslavement in many other contexts in the Americas (Beaugrand-Champagne, 2004).  
In the mid-eighteenth century, as the enslavement of Africans was being extended to the rest of the Americas, the institution of slavery gained further support in Canada. Winks notes that, as the Seven Years' War - known as the French and Indian War - drew to a close, the French treaty of capitulation (1760) to the British included article 47, which 'affirmed that all slaves would remain the possession of their masters, that they might continue to be sold, and that they could be instructed in the Roman Catholic faith' (Winks, 2000, p. 24). With the formal end of the conflict and the Treaty of Paris (1763), France ceded its colonial claims in North America to Britain, and the said article further strengthened the institution of slavery. In this context, James Murray, the first British governor of Quebec, corresponding with persons in New York in 1763, declared that 'Black Slaves are certainly the only people to be depended upon' and that he would 'begrudge no price' in order to procure 'two Stout Young fellows, who have been accustomed to Country Business' along with 'a clean young wife' for each (Elgersman, 1999, p. 23; Riddell, 1919, p. 396; Winks, 2000, p. 26).