When the Salem witch trials were going full swing, what factors prevented similar mass Hysteria from spreading into Canada? Or did it?

by Gargatua13013
[deleted]

What is today Canada had very few English settlements at the time of the Salem witch trials. The major colonies were Quebec/New France and Acadia (also French). The principal religion in these areas was Roman Catholicism. Since the people there were culturally and religiously distinct from the English speaking colonists of New England, they wouldn't necessarily have the same social conditions that led to witch hysteria. In particular, as discussed in Witchcraft in New France in The Seventeenth Century: The Social Aspect, concern about witchcraft in French society been rampant in the earlier part of the 17th century, but French clergy and intellectuals had lost interest and the Parliament of Paris 1640 officially brought an end to witch hunting there, and this was extended throughout the kingdom by 1682 (which would have applied to New France and Acadia as well), about a decade before Salem.