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Updated: June 6, 2025
Certainly the pictures sometimes drawn of the brutality, violent manners and ignorance of the British officer at this period find no confirmation in Nairne's monitions to his son, or in the account of his own military experience which dates from the mid-eighteenth century.
The more easterly force met with ignominious defeat by a handful of French Canadians at Chateauguay. Wilkinson did little better. British troops, among them Nairne's regiment, were hurried down the river under Colonel Morrison to harass, if possible, Wilkinson's rear and to fire upon his 300 boats from the points of vantage on the shore.
Peace was not to come during Tom Nairne's lifetime. He was getting ready meanwhile for an enlarged career. At Gibraltar he pressed his guardian to purchase him a captaincy.
Miss Nairne's friend in Quebec, Judge Bowen , wrote to her in November, 1812, announcing the armistice for six months, arranged some time before, and assuring the ladies at Murray Bay that all cause for anxiety was now past, an illusive hope for the armistice was not ratified by President Madison and the war went on. We get echoes of social jealousies that may now amuse us.
Thoughts of flight from Scotland to Murray Bay. Nairne's last letter, April 20th, 1802. His death and burial at Quebec. Colonel Nairne's life was troubled with many sorrows. In 1773, when he was on a visit to Scotland, Malcolm Fraser had had the painful duty of writing to tell him of the death of three of his infant children at Murray Bay from a prevailing epidemic.
The lock of hair cut off by Colonel Plenderleath at the funeral was brought to Quebec by young Sewell, one of Nairne's companions; the remainder of his effects, sent forward in a box, seem to have been lost on the way.
For us therefore the interest at Murray Bay now centres chiefly in Nairne and his family. Colonel Nairne's portrait. His letters. The first Scottish settlers at Malbaie. Nairne's finance. His tasks. The curé's work. The Scottish settlers and their French wives. The Church and Education. Nairne's efforts to make Malbaie Protestant. His war on idleness. The character of the habitant.
Nairne's friend and business agent James Ker, an Edinburgh banker, was obviously no admirer of Pitt, for he writes on July 20th, 1797, of the struggle with revolutionary France which, though it was to endure for more than twenty years, had already, he thought, lasted too long: After a four years' war undertaken for the attainment of objects which were unattainable, in which we have been gradually deserted by every one of our allies except Portugal, ... too weak to leave us; and after a most shameless extravagance and Waste of the public money which all feel severely by the imposition of new and unthought of taxes, we have again sent an ambassador to France to try to procure us Peace.... If our next crop be as bad as our two last ones God knows what will become of us.
We went and saw Colonel Nairne's garden and grotto. Here was a fine old plane tree. Unluckily the colonel said, there was but this and another large tree in the county. This assertion was an excellent cue for Dr. Johnson, who laughed enormously, calling to me to hear it. He had expatiated to me on the nakedness of that part of Scotland which he had seen.
The retreat of the Americans. Nairne's later service in the War. Isle aux Noix and Carleton Island. Sir John Johnson and the desolation of New York. Nairne and the American prisoners at Murray Bay. Their escape and capture. Nairne and the Loyalists. The end of the War. Nairne's retirement to Murray Bay.
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