Robertson took poetic license with the historical record. The deportations happened during the French and Indian War that had erupted in North America prior to the opening of the wider conflict of the Seven Years War, so "the war" was not "over" but in fact had only just begun. The expulsion commenced immediately after the British capture of Fort Beauséjour (1755) in present-day New Brunswick and not after "What went down on the Plains of Abraham," a battle fought in 1759 in Quebec. The deportations ended when the war ended, with the signing of the Treaty of Paris (1763).