In April 1759, the Marquis de Montcalm noted that necessities cost eight times more than when his troops had arrived four years earlier – that's an annual inflation rate of almost 70 per cent! "People fear," he wrote, "I think without foundation, that the government will . . . authorize a depreciation.
This opinion induces them to sell and speculate at an extravagant scale" 17 And indeed, immediately after Montcalm's defeat, paper money became all but worthless. 18 Following the Treaty of Paris, and on into the 19th century, many different forms of money circulated at the same time in Lower and Upper Canada, and in Nova Scotia and elsewhere.