Appendix G
The Curés of Malbaie
Of the early missionaries I have found no record, though no doubt one could be compiled from the episcopal archives. The registers at Malbaie do not begin until 1790 but I find a note that in 1784 there were sixty-five communicants. Isle aux Coudres, Les Eboulements and Malbaie were then united under one curé, M. Compain, who lived at Isle aux Coudres. He served Malbaie from 1775 to 1788. This curé has a share in the legend of Père de La Brosse, which, since it is characteristic of the region, is worth repeating.
Père de La Brosse was a much loved and saintly missionary priest, dwelling in his later years at Tadousac. On the evening of April 11th, 1872, he played cards at Tadousac at the house of one of the officers of the post. Rising to go at about nine o’clock he said to the company:
“I wish you good night, my dear friends, for the last time; for at midnight I shall be a dead man. At that hour you will hear the bell of my chapel ring. I beg you not to touch my body. To-morrow you will send for M. Compain at Isle aux Coudres. He will be waiting for you at the lower end of the island. Do not be afraid if a storm comes. I will answer for those whom you shall send.”
At first the company thought the good father was joking. None the less did they become anxious to see what should happen. Watch in hand they waited for the hour named. Exactly at midnight the bell of the chapel rang three times. They ran to the chapel and there found Père de La Brosse upon his prie-dieu dead.
The next day, Sunday, a south-east wind blew with violence. Huge white-capped waves made the great river so dangerous that the employés of the post refused to undertake the journey to Isle aux Coudres of forty or fifty miles in a canoe over a raging sea. But the chief clerk at the post said to them: “You know well that the Father never deceived you. You ought to have confidence in his word. Is there no one among you who will carry out his last wish?”
Then three or four men agreed to go. When they put their canoe in the water, behold a wonder! To the great surprise of every one the sea subsided so that before them lay a pathway of calm water. To their further amazement, they made the journey to Isle aux Coudres with incredible rapidity. As they neared the shore they could see M. Compain walking up and down, a book in his hand. When they were within hearing distance he called out “Père de La Brosse is dead. You come to get me to bury him. I have been waiting an hour for you.” When the canoe touched the shore M. Compain embarked and they carried him to Tadousac. At Isle aux Coudres the bell of the chapel had distinctly sounded three times at midnight as at Tadousac. M. Compain knew what it meant for Père de La Brosse had told him what he told his friends at Tadousac. Other church bells in the neighbourhood also rang miraculously on that night. Père de La Brosse had said while curé at Isle Verte, “If I die elsewhere than here, you will have certain knowledge of the fact at the moment of my death.”
The legend, the rather obscure motive of which is to emphasize the saintly virtues of Père de La Brosse, is believed even to this day by many simple people, hundreds of whom know it by heart. But some are skeptical. “I should have been able to give more certainty to this tradition,” says M. Mailloux, the historian of Isle aux Coudres and also its curé, “had I been able to make more extended investigation. Meanwhile,” he adds naïvely, “my investigations suffice to give a high idea of the virtues of this admirable missionary.”
There is little to record of the careers of curés at Malbaie subsequent to M. Compain. Often the annals of the good are not exciting and this is eminently true of these virtuous teachers. M. Charles Duchouquet was curé of Isle aux Coudres and served Malbaie in 1790. In 1791 he was succeeded by M. Raphael Paquet who lived at Les Eboulements. The first curé resident at Malbaie was M. Keller who came in 1797. When he went away in 1799 M. J.-B.-A. Marcheteau who was curé of Les Eboulements and lived there, served Malbaie. In 1807 M. Marcheteau was succeeded by M. Le Courtois, the second resident curé, a French émigré who remained at Malbaie until 1822 and was, as we have seen, an intimate friend of the Nairne family. For a long time M. Le Courtois carried on missionary work among the Indians. In 1822 M. Duguay became curé; he went to Malbaie after being curé at Isle aux Coudres. In 1832 he was succeeded by M. Zephérin Lévêque who, in 1840, was followed by M. Alexis Bourret. This curé was something of a scholar. He read the Greek fathers in the original which is, I fancy, very unusual among the priests of Canada. In 1847 M. Beaudry became curé and in 1862 he was followed by M. Narcisse Doucet. It was under M. Doucet that the great influx of summer visitors began. Naturally they desired to have their own Protestant service on Sunday and M. Doucet did all he could to prevent their getting a place of worship. Protestantism having disappeared from Malbaie the curé was not anxious to see it revived. But the last Mrs. Nairne, a Protestant, then ruled at the Manor House, and she gave for the purpose of Protestant worship the admirable site of the present Union Church. M. Doucet was a man of considerable culture. The parish church, first built in 1806, was remodelled in his time as also was the presbytère; he built, too, the convent for girls. In 1891 M. B.-E. Leclercq became curé—a good man of the peasant type, who retired in 1906 and died at Malbaie in the following year. The present energetic curé is M. Hudon.
[For Père de La Brosse, see Casgrain, Œuvres, Vol. 1, “Une Excursion a L’Ile aux Coudres”; Mailloux, “Histoire de L’Isle aux Coudres” (Montreal, 1879). M. Mailloux has particulars about some of the curés named above. The dates for the successive curés are found in the registers at Malbaie.]
Footnotes
1 Exact information in regard to the brothers Hazeur, who have a place in this story merely because they held the seigniory of Malbaie, may be found in articles by Mgr. H. Têtu, in the Bulletin des Recherches Historiques (Lévis, Quebec) for August, 1907, and the following numbers. They were the Canon Joseph Thierry Hazeur, born in 1680, and Pierre Hazeur de L’Orme, born in 1682, both apparently at Quebec. The younger brother took the name de L’Orme from his mother’s family. He was for many years the representative in France of the Chapter of the Cathedral at Quebec, which held, from the Pope and the King, four or five abbeys in France. His copious letters published by Mgr. Têtu illustrate with some vividness details of the ecclesiastical life of the time. For several years after the British conquest of Canada the Quebec Chapter continued to receive the revenues of the Abbey of Meaubec. The elder Hazeur, less able than his brother, was Curé at Point aux Trembles. An invalid, he spent his later years chiefly in Quebec.
2 Malcolm Fraser, an officer in the 78th Highlanders and afterwards first seigneur of Mount Murray, one of the two seigniories into which Malbaie was divided, was sent out on these ravaging expeditions. Years after, some of Fraser’s neighbours of French origin rallied him on his capacity for devastation as shown at this time. See Fraser’s Journal, Appendix A, p. 253, and the Mémoires of Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, 1866, Ch. II.
3 The name Simon Fraser appears with credit more than once in Canadian history. It was a Simon Fraser who crossed the Rocky Mountains and first followed for its whole course the Fraser River named after him.
4 Waverley, Chapter II.
5 See Appendix A., p. 249. “Journal of Malcolm Fraser, First Seigneur of Mount Murray, Malbaie.”
6 See copy of the grant in Appendix B., p. 271.
7 The Lake is no doubt Lake Nairne, the present Grand Lac.
8 Diary of an English Officer. Proceedings of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, 1871-72, p. 61.
9 See Appendix C., p. 273, for the text of his letter to his sister describing the operations of the winter at Quebec. It is an able review of the campaign.
10 Proceedings of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, 7th Series, 1905, p. 75; “Blockade of Quebec,” etc.
11 The men’s names were Peter Ferris, Squir Ferris, Claudius Brittle (Sr.), Claudius Brittle (Jr.), Nathan Smith, Marshal Smith, Justice Sturdevant, John Ward.
12 The book in which Nairne kept the accounts, with the names of the recipients of the king’s bounty, is still at Murray Bay.
13 It may be convenient to state at once the dates of the births and deaths of each of these children:
| Magdalen (Madie) (Mrs. McNicol) | born | 1767 | died | 1839. |
| Christine Nairne | ″ | 1774 | ″ | 1817. |
| John Nairne | ″ | 1777 | ″ | 1799. |
| Mary (Polly) Nairne | ″ | 1782 | ″ | 1821. |
| Thomas Nairne | ″ | 1787 | ″ | 1813. |
14 See Appendix D., p. 277., for a formal memorandum drawn up by Nairne for his son’s guidance.
15 See Appendix E., p. 279. “The ‘Porpoise’ (Beluga or White Whale) Fishery on the St. Lawrence.”
16 “Les Anciens Canadiens,” Chapter IV.
17 Sir Alexander Mackenzie who accomplished in 1793 what was then the astonishing feat of crossing the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean and whose book, “Voyages from Montreal on the River St. Lawrence, through the Continent of North America, to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans,” first published in 1801, attracted general attention, including even that of Napoleon Bonaparte.
18 John Warren, the ancestor of the numerous family at Murray Bay of that name.
19 Warren, Nairne’s neighbour, had been visiting Quebec apparently for business reasons.
20 See Appendix F., p. 286, for this Prayer of Colonel Nairne.
21 The inscription to be placed on Nairne’s tomb was long a subject of debate in the family. Two drafts remain at Murray Bay, both copious in length, and neither like the inscription now to be found at Mount Hermon Cemetery. (See p. 221.) In the taste of the time inscriptions were expected to give a full account of the career of the dead man. One of these inscriptions speaks of Nairne’s “enjoying as a reward of his services a gift of Land on the River St. Lawrence. He had alike the merit and the happiness of converting a wild and uninhabited desert into a flourishing colony of above 1000 inhabitants, who regarded him as their Tender Friend and Patriarch. He died honoured with the esteem of all who knew him.” The other inscription mentions what, otherwise, we should not have known, that Nairne received a wound on the Plains of Abraham. It goes on in verse:
“Though ’gainst the Foe a dauntless Front he reared,
Ne’er from his lips was aught assuming heard;
Modest, though brave; though firm, in manners mild,
Strong in resolve, though guileless as a child;
To honor true, in probity correct;
To falsehood [stern] and urgent to detect;
To party strange, to calumny a foe;
The good Samaritan to sons of woe;
At a late hour he heard the fatal call,
Obeyed and died, wept and deplored by all.”
22 See Appendix G., p. 287. “The Curés of Malbaie”.
23 Bowen’s career was remarkable. He continued on the bench until 1866, having held the office of a Judge in Canada for well nigh sixty years.
24 He had recently died, and it did not diminish the Nairnes’ interest in him that he left £5,000 to their relative Ker.
25 He must have been a Roman Catholic for he was buried in the churchyard at Murray Bay.
26 We have seen (ante p. 49) how at Malbaie Colonel Nairne expected that a Protestant missionary would soon make the community Protestant.
27 Professor Barrett Wendell, France of To-day, New York, 1907.
28 Roy, Histoire de la Seigneurie de Lauzon, IV: 169, 170.
29 The Abbé H.R. Casgrain: Une Paroisse Canadienne au XVII. Siècle. Œuvres, Vol. I, pp. 483 sqq.
30 Roy, La Seigneurie de Lauzon, IV: 247.
31 M. Léon Gérin in “L’Habitant de Saint-Justin”, p. 202.
32 Roy, La Seigneurie de Lauzon IV: 245.
33 De Gaspé, Mémoires, p. 533, 4.
34 Mr. Nairne claimed as compensation for his lods et ventes £4,560, 9s. 6d., (Halifax currency) and for the banal rights £3,400. He probably received considerably less. More than 400 dwellers in the seigniory still pay the annual cens et rentes.
35 Malcolm Fraser’s seigniory, Mount Murray, remained somewhat longer in the family of its original owner. On Fraser’s death in 1815 his eldest son William, who had become a medical practitioner and a Roman Catholic, succeeded. He died without issue in 1830 and his brother, John Malcolm Fraser, then fell heir to the seigniory. When he died in 1860 the property passed by will to his two daughters, both married to British officers. The elder, Mrs. Reeve, succeeded to the manor house. The younger, Mrs. Higham, soon sold her share to the Cimon family who became prominent in the district and one of whose members sat in Parliament at Ottawa on the Conservative side. Mrs. Reeve died in 1879 leaving the use of the property to her husband, Colonel Reeve, for his life. When he died in 1888, his son Mr. John Fraser Reeve, Malcolm Fraser’s great-grandson, became seigneur. In 1902 he sold the property to the present seigneur, Mr. George T. Bonner, of New York, a Canadian by birth. Though there are numerous living descendants of Malcolm Fraser, Murray Bay knows them no more.
36 Sacred to the memory of Lieutenant Colonel John Nairne, First Seigneur of Murray Bay. This Gallant Officer during 38 years distinguished himself as an able and brave Soldier. For simplicity of manners as a man, for Intrepidity and humanity as a Soldier, and for the virtues of a Gentleman, his memory will long be respected and cherished. Born in Scotland, March 1, 1731. Died at Quebec, July 14, 1802.
Lieutenant Colonel Nairne first entered the Dutch Service where he belonged to that distinguished Corps, the Scotch Brigade. He afterwards entered the British Service where under Wolfe he was present at the taking of Louisbourg and Quebec. He also served under Murray and Carleton and distinguished himself in a most gallant manner when Quebec was attacked by the Americans in the years 1775 and 1776.
And of his eldest son, Lieutenant John Nairne of the 19th Regiment of Foot, who fell a victim to the climate of India when returning with the victorious troops from the capture of Seringapatam in the 21st year of his age; also of his youngest son, Captain Thomas Nairne, of the 49th Regiment of Foot who bravely fell at the head of his Company in the Battle at Chrysler’s Farm in Upper Canada November 11, 1813, aged 26 years.
Also of John Leslie Nairne, great grandson of Colonel Nairne, born July 23, 1842, died March 18, 1845; and of John Nairne, Esq., Grandson of Colonel Nairne, born at Murray Bay, March 22nd, 1808, died at Quebec June 8, 1861; and of his Widow, Maria Katherine Leslie, died at Quebec, August 25, 1884, deeply regretted by her friends and by the poor of whom she was the constant benefactress.
This monument is erected in affectionate remembrance of much kindness by one who was privileged to enjoy their friendship during the best part of his life.