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Updated: June 19, 2025
The wealth of forest, lake, and river, in this tract furnished abundant promise for the fur and other trade of which the government was to have here a complete monopoly. Malbaie was necessary to round out the territory and so the heirs of Hazeur were invited to sell back the seigniory to the government.
In those days the farmer at Malbaie who looked out, as we look out, upon the mighty river would see great ships passing up and down. Some of them differed from the merchant ships to which his eye was accustomed. They stood high in the water. Ships came near the north shore in those days and he could see grim black openings in their sides which meant cannon.
The French fought bravely a campaign really hopeless. Montcalm massed his chief force at Quebec and there awaited attack. In vain had he appealed to France for further help; he was left unaided to struggle with a foe who had command of the sea, whose fleet could pass up and down before Quebec with the tide and keep the French guards for twenty miles in constant nervous tension as to where a landing might be made. Wolfe carried on his work relentlessly. He warned the Canadians that he would ravage their villages if they did not remain neutral. Neutral it was almost impossible for them to be for the French urged them in the other direction. With stern rigour, Wolfe meted out to them his punishment. He sent parties to burn houses and destroy crops and Malbaie was not spared. On August 15th, 1759, Captain Gorham reported to Wolfe that with 300 men, one half of them Rangers from the English colonies, the other half Highlanders, he had devastated the north shore of the St. Lawrence. The soldiers did their work thoroughly. From Baie St. Paul, the last considerable village east of Quebec, they went on thirty miles to Malbaie where they destroyed almost all of the houses. We do not know whether the competent Dufour was still the farmer at Malbaie. But all the fine pictures of better cattle, better pigs and sheep, better farming, better fishing, ended with the applying of the British soldiers' torch to the wooden buildings: much of the settlement went up in smoke. Some of the cattle, pigs and sheep found their way perhaps to Wolfe's commissariat. But a good many were left and no doubt they are the ancestors of many of the cattle, sheep and pigs we see at Malbaie still. This first visit of Americans and Highlanders to Malbaie has its special interest. A few years later Highlanders came again, not to destroy but to settle, and to become the ancestors of families that to this day show their Highland origin in their names and in their faces, but never a trace of it in their speech or in their customs. The Americans were longer in coming back. But, after more than a hundred years they, too, were to come again, not to destroy but in a very literal sense to build; their many charming cottages now stretch along the shore of the Bay that looks across to Cap
Other Scottish names also appear, Macnabs, Chisholms, Macleans, and among them John Nairne who, like Malcolm Fraser, spent the best part of his life at Malbaie. The head of the Nairne clan, a John Nairne, third Baron Nairne, had fought for the Stuarts in 1745. He died an exile in France.
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.
In 1653 a grant was made of the seigniory of Malbaie to Jean Bourdon, Surveyor-General of the Colony. But Bourdon seems not to have thought it worth while to make any attempt to settle his seigniory and, apparently for lack of settlement, the grant lapsed. Even the Company of New France treasured some idea that would-be land owners in a colony had duties to perform.
He often gets good fares but there is much idle waiting. Bad habits are formed and regular industry is discouraged. The curé finds Malbaie a difficult sphere. We alone get unmixed benefit from this fair scene, its days of glad serenity, and of almost solemn stillness, when even a bird's note is heard but rarely.
André, and crossed the St. Lawrence to Malbaie. He had no trouble there, in finding the little hostelry where Mr. Warwick lodged.
After Waterloo we find in French Canada perhaps the most curious of all the thanksgivings; at Malbaie, as elsewhere, a Te Deum was sung and the people were told in glowing terms of the victory of the "immortal Wellington" which had covered "our army" with glory and ended a cruel war.
The five soldiers of whom Nairne speaks were no doubt men of the 78th Highlanders and ancestors of a goodly portion of the population of Malbaie at the present time. Perhaps some of them had fought at Culloden; certainly all fought at Louisbourg and Quebec. In the first days at Murray Bay Nairne was in debt.
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