The Seven Years' War between Great Britain and France resulted in the conquest of New France by the British in 1759 at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, an event that reverberates profoundly even today in the national consciousness of Quebecers. Although there were a number of attempts made by the British authorities to assimilate the French speaking population to the English language and culture, most notably the 1840 Act of Union that followed the seminal report of Lord Durham, British colonial policy for Canada on the whole was one which acknowledged and permitted the continued existence of French language and culture. Nevertheless, the efforts at assimilation of French Canadians, the fate of the French-speaking Acadians and the revolt of the "patriotes" in 1837 would not be forgotten by their Québécois descendants. "Je me souviens", (English: "I remember"), the motto of Quebec, became the watchword of the Québécois. Determined to maintain their cultural and linguistic distinctiveness in the face of Anglophone cultural hegemony and massive immigration of English speaking people to the pre-Confederation Province of Canada, this survivalist determination is a cornerstone of current Québécois identity and much of the political discourse in Quebec. The English Canadian writer and philosopher John Ralston Saul also considers the Ultramontane movement of Catholicism as playing a pivotal and highly negative role in the development of certain aspects of Québécois identity.