A FRENCH CANADIAN VILLAGE
Life at Murray Bay after Captain Nairne's death.--Letters from
Europe.--Death of Malcolm Fraser.--Death of Colonel Nairne's widow
and children.--His grandson John Nairne, seigneur.--Village
life.--The Church's influence.--The habitant's tenacity.--His
cottage.--His labours.--His amusements.--The Church's missionary
work in the villages.--The powers of the bishop.--His
visitations.--The organization of the parish.--The powers of the
_fabrique_.--Lay control of Church finance.--The curé's tithe.--The
best intellects enter the Church.--A native Canadian clergy.--The
curé's social life.--The Church and Temperance Reform.--The
diligence of the curés.--The habitant's taste for the
supernatural.--The belief in goblins.--Prayer in the family.--The
habitant as voter.--The office of Churchwarden.--The Church's
influence in elections.--The seigneur's position,--The habitant's
obligations to him.--Rent day and New Year's Day.--The seigneur's
social rank.--The growth of discontent in the villages.--The evils
of Seigniorial Tenure.--Agitation against the system.--Its
abolition in 1854.--The last of the Nairnes.--The Nairne tomb in
Quebec.
With the death of Thomas Nairne almost end the dramatic events in the
history of the family. It remains briefly to bring this to its
conclusion, and to add to it some general account of a village of French
Canada in the past and in the present. Captain Nairne's mother was now
the owner of the property and it continued in her competent hands until
her death in 1828. "Polly's" marriage had taken that daughter away and,
though there was a reconciliation, no longer was the Manor House her
home. Mrs. McNicol (with her husband and children) and Christine Nairne
still lived there with the widow of Colonel Nairne, and life went on
much as before, save that its interests were now narrowed to Murray Bay;
no more was there an outside career, such as the young Captain's, to
watch.
When Thomas Nairne was killed the struggle against Napoleon in Europe
had reached a supreme crisis. Occasional letters to Murray Bay give
glimpses of great events. On March 16th, 1814, an Edinburgh friend
writes to Christine: "The Castle was fired to-day in honour of the
successes of our allies in France who have again routed Bonaparte, who
has retreated to Paris. His enemies are within twenty-five miles of that
capital so we must hope that the Tyrant's fate is at the Crisis and that
we shall soon enjoy the blessings of a permanent peace; much has Bony to
answer for." Ker wrote a little later from Edinburgh to say that
Bonaparte "is now a prisoner on board of one of our 74 gun ships," and
to express the hope that by his fall Britons will soon get quit of the
property tax.
On March 17th, 1815, we hear from another correspondent of the renewed
firing of the Castle guns at Edinburgh, this time to announce the
arrival from America of the ratification of Peace with the United
States. "We only regret this had not been settled before the disastrous
affair at New Orleans where we have lost so many brave men and able
generals, but such are the horrors of war." Just as this peace came in
America renewed war broke out in Europe. "That monster Bonaparte a
fortnight since landed and raised the standard of rebellion in the south
of France. The accounts from there are very contradictory." On March
22nd the news seems better. "Troops are assembling in defence of France
and the traitor does not seem to have any adherents, so we would fain
hope all may go well." The writer, a Miss Beck, sends, for the amusement
of Murray Bay, the book "Guy Mannering," which is "in very high
repute ... the author unknown, but very generally thought to be Walter
Scott, the Poet."
The hope that all would go well in regard to Bonaparte was soon
dissipated. Ker wrote on April 10th, 1815, a bitter letter:
We were flattering ourselves with being at Peace with the whole
world when like a thunderbolt, the tremendous news of the monster
Buonaparte's Escape from Elba, his landing and rapid progress
through France, and the second Expulsion of the unhappy Bourbons
burst upon us!... We have the immediate prospect of being involved
in a bloody and interminable war, the consequences of which no man
can foretell. The French army, Marshalls, and Generals have covered
themselves with indelible Disgrace and shewn themselves, what I
always thought them, the most perfidious and perjured traitors and
miscreants that the world ever produced, and the rest of the French
Nation are a set of the most unprincipled Knaves and Cowards that
ever were recorded in history. I trust however that their
punishment is at hand and that the Almighty will speedily hurl
vengeance on their guilty heads. Among other evils, a new tax on
Property, with additions, is said to be in immediate contemplation
and God knows how we shall bear all the accumulating Burdens to
which this Country must be subjected.
Just at this time came old Malcolm Fraser's end. At the age of 82 he
died on June 17th, 1815, the day before the battle of Waterloo. He had
entered the army in 1757 and apparently was still serving in the
Canadian militia at the time of his death so that his military career
covered well nigh sixty years. One instruction given in his will is
characteristic; it is that his body might "be committed to the earth or
water, as it may happen, and with as little ceremony and expense as may
be consistent with decency." His removal was a heavy blow to the family
at the Manor House. It was Christine who kept most in touch with the
outside world and to her the letters of the period are nearly all
addressed. They contained the gossip of Quebec,--how in December, 1814,
a Mr. Lyman--"a bad name for a true story to come from,"--had brought
word of peace negotiations at Ghent; news of General Procter's Court
Martial and of a fee of £500 paid to Andrew Stuart, one of the lawyers
in the case. The letters are few and in 1817 they cease altogether.
During the spring of the year Christine had been ailing. On a June day
she drove out for an airing and, as she alighted from the carriage,
expired instantly. The feeling of the Protestant family towards the
Roman Catholic Church is shown in the fact that she left a small legacy
to the curé, Mr. Le Courtois.
There now remained but two daughters. In May, 1821, "Polly" died in
Quebec at Judge Bowen's house. Her old mother followed in 1828. Of
Colonel Nairne's large family but one child remained, Mrs. McNicol. Her
husband, Peter McNicol, appears to have been a quiet and retiring man
and of him we hear little. He was an officer in the local militia and,
in 1830, became a Captain in the second Battalion of the County of
Saguenay. There were two sons, Thomas and John. Thomas, the elder, was
to get the estate at Murray Bay; for John India was talked of; but his
mother could not let him go--"our family has been too unlucky by going
there." In 1826, when a youth of twenty, Thomas made a tour in Europe.
Then, or later, the young man fell into dissipated habits and he died in
early manhood. There remained only John. When he came of age in 1829 he
too travelled in Europe; in April he was at Rome and there saw the
newly-elected Pope, Pius VIII. He returned to Canada quite a man of the
world and for a time lived in Quebec, engaged in business. But in 1834
when his father Peter McNicol died[25] John's prospects changed. The
seigniory belonged to his mother, during her lifetime, but he was the
heir. It seemed desirable that the name of the first seigneur should be
continued and, in 1834, by royal warrant, John McNicol adopted the name
and arms of Nairne. Once more was there a John Nairne. In 1837 we find
him empowered to take the oath of allegiance from the habitants--to show
that they were not in sympathy with the rebel Papineau. His mother, the
old Colonel's last surviving child, died in 1839. She was a kindly
woman, of genial temper, with a fine faculty for friendship; so intimate
was she with Malcolm Fraser's daughter that she wrote "I do believe, nay
am sure, she has not a thought with which I am not made acquainted." She
never lost her sympathy with young people and her delight in their
"innocent gaiety."
As in 1762, so now again in 1839, a John Nairne ruled at Murray Bay. The
young seigneur soon took a wife. In 1841 he married Miss Catherine
Leslie, of a well known Canadian family, a bride of only seventeen, and
then settled down at Murray Bay to live the life of a country gentleman.
He became Colonel in the militia, took some part in politics on the
Conservative side, and studied agriculture. He was resolved to keep up
the dignity of his position and set about rebuilding the manor house.
The work was begun in 1845 and completed by the autumn of 1847; the new
structure with little change is the present Manor. It is of stone
covered with wood, a capacious dwelling with some fine rooms, and
admirably suited to its purpose. To John Nairne an heir was born in 1842
and named John Leslie Nairne and the prospect seemed excellent for the
final establishment of a Nairne dynasty in the seigniory. But, alas,
this was not to be. The child died in his third year and the last of the
Nairnes ruled at Murray Bay knowing that with himself the family should
become extinct.
We must turn now to study the type of community of which he was the
chief. A singular type it is, French in speech, Roman Catholic in faith,
half feudal in organization, in a land British in allegiance, if not in
origin. Long the determined rival of the Briton in America the French
Canadian, though worsted in the struggle, remains still unconquered in
his determination to live his own separate life and pursue his own
separate ideals. When the British took Canada they fondly imagined that
in a few years a little pressure would bring the French Canadians into
the Protestant fold.[26] Immediately after the conquest preparations
for this gradual absorption were made. The Roman Catholics were to be
undisturbed but, as soon as a majority in any parish was Protestant, a
clergyman of that faith would be appointed and the parish church would
be given over to the Protestant worship. The minority would, it was
hoped, acquiesce, and, in time, adopt the creed of the majority. The
most illuminating comment upon these expectations is the fact that,
during the half century after the conquest, Protestantism made probably
not more than half a dozen converts among the Canadians, while of
Protestants coming to the country during that time hundreds went over to
the Church of Rome. In other ways too the type in French Canada has
proved curiously persistent. A Lowland Scot of twenty-five married an
Irish woman of twenty-three and went to live in a French Canadian
parish. Hitherto they had spoken only English but after twenty-five
years they could not even understand it when heard. They explained that
at first they spoke English to each other but when the children went to
school they used only French. So the parents yielded "_C'était les
enfants, M'sieu!_"
A modern critic of France[27] has announced, as a sounding paradox, that
the French, even of present-day anti-clerical France, are a profoundly
religious people. Certainly this appears in France's efforts in Canada.
When the Roman Catholic faith was first planted there the ground was
watered with the blood of martyrs, done to death by brutal savages. At
the very time when in France Pascal's satire and scorn were making the
spiritual sincerity of the Jesuits more than doubtful, in Canada these
same Jesuits were dying for their faith almost with a light heart. They
and others, like-minded, won New France for the Catholic Church and to
that Church the conquered habitant has since clung with a tenacity
really heroic. He accepts its creed, he believes in its clergy. Whatever
license of conduct marked the clergy of France in the bad days before
the Revolution, the clergy in Canada during the 300 years of its history
have been notable for a severity in morals so austere that hardly once
in that long period has there been a whisper of scandal. In consequence,
they have always retained the respect of the people and to-day, in every
village, the curé commands extraordinary influence.
It may be that to the Church chiefly does the habitant owe the
preservation of his identity. Inferior to the heretic conqueror in
social status, the habitant yet retained in religion the sense of his
own superiority. Was he not a member of an ancient body, in the presence
of which Protestantism represented a mushroom growth of yesterday? The
Church taught him that wealth, honour, and worldly power were not always
given to the faithful; they had the truer riches of spiritual
privileges and spiritual hopes. What mattered the pride of life in the
face of these eternal treasures? So the habitant went his way. Led by
his teachers he showed striking tenacity of character. He would not
follow the customs of the English. He looked with suspicion upon their
methods. Even in agriculture, where he had everything to learn, he would
not imitate him. Their language he would not learn, their religion he
abhorred; so he remained, and he remains still, true to his own
traditions, a Gallic island in the vast Anglo-Saxon sea of North
America.
The habitant has not proved a pliable person. The very name shows his
sense of his own dignity. Though he held his land under feudal tenure he
would not accept a designation that carried with it some sense of the
servile status of the feudal vassal in old France. So the Canadian
peasant, a feudal tenant _en censive_ or _en roture_, yet wished not to
be called _censitaire_ or _roturier_, names which he thought degrading;
he preferred to be called a habitant, an inhabitant of the country, a
free man, not a vassal. The designation obtained official recognition in
New France and has come to be the characteristic word for the French
Canadian farmer among English-speaking people.
In other respects too the Canadian has been hardly less assertive.
Earlier writers, while they call him obliging, honest and courteous,
speak also of his self-conceit, boastfulness, fondness for drink. At
Malbaie Nairne found him defiant when his spirit was aroused. Not less
tenacious than the men were the women. Malcolm Fraser tells how when he
was stationed at Beaumont, near Quebec, in January, 1761, he sent one of
his men to cut wood on the property of a certain habitant, the man
himself consenting. But Madame, his wife, was not pleased. She abused
Fraser, called him opprobrious names, and, in a war of words, remained,
he admits, mistress of the field. The wrathful virago carried her appeal
to Murray in Quebec, who, she said, had passed many officers under the
rod and Fraser found himself called upon to explain the matter. In a
petition he humbly begs that some "recompence" (of punishment of course)
may be made to the woman for "the insolent expressions used by her as
well against the general, as the officers, who have the honour to serve
under His Excellency."
Even when he knows only rude frontier life the French Canadian often
retains something of the politeness and deference in manner of the
nation from which he springs. But, unlike them, he has retained little
sense of what is artistic. No thought of beauty of situation seems to
determine his choice of the site for his dwelling. What he has in mind
is protection from the prevailing wind, if this is possible, and, for
the rest, convenience. So he puts his house close to the highway, in
many cases even abutting upon it. He shows no taste in grouping his
farm buildings. He plants few trees and his house stands bare and
unattractive by the road side. The absence of trees near his dwelling is
sometimes accounted for by the need, in earlier times, of clearing away
everything that might offer a chance of ambush to his Indian enemies. If
this is the true origin of the habit, an instinct survives long after
the need which developed it has disappeared. The houses are persistent
in type and nearly always of wood. The principle doorway opens into the
living room, usually of a good size. It is kitchen, diningroom, parlour,
often even workshop. In this chamber cooking, sewing, repairing of
tools, all the varied family activities, take place. One large guest
chamber or two small bedrooms open off it. In the corner there is a rude
staircase and up under the sloping roof are two more rooms; one a
bed-room probably with three or four beds, the other a general lumber
room. Often there are two families in a household. As always with the
French, family feeling is very strong. As soon as they are old enough
the elder sons may go out into the world; it is usually a younger son
whom the father selects to remain with him on the family property. This
son is free to marry and to him, when the old father dies, the land goes
on condition that he will always keep the door open to members of the
family who may seek its refuge. It is not easy to see how so small a
cottage can discharge these hospitable functions; in addition to adults
there are often, in a French Canadian family, from ten to fifteen,
sometimes twenty or twenty-five children. Through the long winters,
doors and windows remain closed. The family gets on without fresh air
and it gets on also without baths.
Since there are often many hands to do the work habitant farming is
greatly diversified. But improvements come only slowly. Some of the most
fertile areas in Quebec have been half ruined because the habitant would
not learn the proper rotation of crops. Of the value of fertilizing he
has had only a slight idea. His domestic animals are usually of an
inferior breed, except perhaps the horses. Of these he is proud and, no
matter how poor, usually keeps two, an extravagance for which he was
rebuked by successive Intendants under the French régime. In recent
times the French Canadian farmer has been making great progress. He is
pre-eminently a handy man. Though his versatility is lessening, to this
day, in some of the remoter villages, he buys almost nothing; he is
carpenter, farmer, blacksmith, shoemaker; and, if not he, his wife is
weaver and tailor. The waggon he drives is his handiwork; so is the
harness; the home-spun cloth of his suit is made by his wife from the
wool of his own sheep: it is an excellent fabric but, alas, the young
people now prefer the machine-made cottons and cloths of commerce and
will no longer wear homespun. Sometimes the habitant makes his own
boots, the excellent _bottes sauvages_ of the country. The women make
not only home-spun cloth, but linen, straw hats, gloves, candles, soap.
When there are maple trees, the habitant provides his own sugar; he
makes even the buckets in which the sap of the maple tree is caught.
Tobacco grows in his garden, for the habitant is an inveterate smoker:
sometimes the boys begin when only five years old or less. The women and
the girls, indeed, do not smoke and an American visitor, who declares
that he saw pretty French Canadian brunettes of sixteen puffing clouds
of smoke as they worked in the harvest field, is solemnly rebuked by a
French Canadian writer; the brunettes must have been Indian women.[28]
Though nearly all the children now go to school, yet reading can hardly
be considered one of the amusements of the habitant. In the
neighbourhood of Malbaie, at least, rarely does one see other than books
of devotion in a habitant household; the book-shelf is conspicuous by
its absence. Of course newspapers are read but many of the habitants are
still illiterate, or nearly so, and read nothing. Not less gay are they
for this deprivation. They are endless talkers, good story tellers, and
fond of song and dance. They have preserved some of the popular songs of
France,--_Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre_, _En roulant ma Boule
roulant_, _A la Claire Fontaine_, and others--and these airs simple,
pleasing, a little sad, have become characteristic of French Canada.
Nearly every house has its violin, often home-made, and though this
music is rude it suffices for dancing. But some of the bishops are as
severe in regard to dancing as is the Methodist "Book of Discipline" and
in their dioceses the practise is allowed only under narrow
restrictions. The short Canadian summer makes that season for the
habitant one of severe labour. Winter, though it has its own labours,
such as cutting wood, is the great season of social intercourse. For a
long time the habitant would not consider a mechanic his social equal;
perhaps, still, the daughters of a farmer would spurn the advances of
the village carpenter. But whatever the social distinctions, baptisms,
marriages, anniversaries, are made the occasions for festivity. There
are _corvées récreatives_, such as parties gathered for taking the husks
off Indian corn, when there is apt to be a good deal of kissing as part
of the game. At New Year, the _jour de l'an_, the feasting lasts for
three days. Hospitality is universal and it is almost a slight not to
call at this time upon any acquaintance living within a distance of
twenty miles. Every habitant has his horse and sleigh and thinks little
of a long drive.
Often in the foreground of the habitant's life, always in the background
at least, stand the Church and the priest. Malbaie, like a hundred other
populous, present-day Roman Catholic parishes, was nursed in the first
instance by the travelling missionary. In winter he could go on snow
shoes but his usual means of travel in a country, covered by forests,
but with a net-work of lakes and rivers, was by canoe. Malbaie could be
reached either from Tadousac, at the mouth of the Saguenay, one of the
earliest mission stations in Canada, or from Baie St. Paul in the other
direction. The St. Lawrence was oftentimes a perilous route. Its waves
rise at times huge as those of Ocean itself; a frail canoe could only
hug the shore and at times would be storm bound for days. The missionary
travelled usually with an attendant. They carried a portable chapel with
the vessels necessary for the celebration of the mass. We have a
description of the arrival of one of these missionaries, the Abbé Morel,
as long ago as in 1683, at Rivière Ouelle where one now takes the ferry
to cross to Murray Bay. A group of people stand on the shore watching a
small black object round a distant point. As it comes nearer they see it
is a birch bark canoe, paddled by two men. In a short time the bow of
the canoe has touched the sandy beach where stands the waiting group. As
the figure in the bow rises a long black cassock falls down to his
feet; he is the long expected missionary come to celebrate mass. With
the sun sinking behind the mountains of the north shore, a kind of
triumphal procession escorts the missionary to one of the neighbouring
houses. The evening is spent in preparation for the service of the
morrow. The priest hears confessions and imposes penances. At daybreak
on the following morning the people begin to gather, some coming by land
from the neighbouring clearings, others, in birch bark canoes, from
points more distant. Perhaps fifty persons gather before the house.
Meanwhile in its best room the portable altar has been arranged. Silence
falls upon the people as they enter the door. The mass begins; after the
gospel the priest preaches a practical sermon with impressive solemnity.
The mass over, a second service, vespers, soon follows. Then the people
separate. Before the priest leaves he says the office of the dead over a
grave made, it may be, many weeks ago, he baptizes children born since
his last visit, and perhaps marries one or more bashful couples. "How
beautiful upon the mountains," says a Canadian historian of the work of
these devoted men, "are the feet of those who bring the gospel of
peace."[29] Such a scene we may be sure was enacted many a time for the
benefit of the scattered sheep at Malbaie before and after the arrival
of Colonel Nairne.
It was not until 1797 that these occasional services ceased and Murray
Bay secured a resident priest. Then was fully established in the parish
the imposing church system that to-day probably retains its original
vigour more completely in the Province of Quebec than in any other
country in the world. At its head is the diocesan bishop. Subject only
to the distant authority of the Pope he reigns supreme. With one or two
exceptions, such as that of the curé of Quebec, he appoints and he can
remove any and every priest in his diocese, a right, it is said, almost
never exercised arbitrarily. He fixes the tariff to be paid for masses.
It is he who determines whether such a practise as, for instance,
dancing shall be permitted in the diocese. He watches over the Church's
rights and gives the alarm when a political leader proposes anything
that seems to menace them. If a newspaper adopts a course dangerous to
the Church it has often happened that the bishop gives it one or two
warnings; in case of continued obstinacy his last act is to forbid the
faithful to read the paper; and since most of them will obey, this
involves ruin for the recalcitrant journal.
The bishop visits each parish at least every third year and sometimes
even annually. A mounted cavalcade will probably meet him as he crosses
its boundary. A procession is formed. The roads have been cleared and
decorated with boughs of ever-green trees stuck in the ground. The
people watch the cavalcade from their doors and all kneel as the
procession passes. The bishop goes at once to the church where he gives
his benediction and holds confirmation. He remains for some days. There
is daily communion and spiritual instruction. He inspects
everything--the church and its furnishings, the registers, the accounts,
the inventory of effects, the cemetery. He has already given notice that
he is ready to hear any complaints or grievances even against the curé.
We may be sure that when he comes there is a general clearing up of
parochial difficulties. A wise bishop is a great peacemaker; an
arbitrary one commands an authority not lightly to be disregarded.
The church that towers over the humble cottages of a French Canadian
village invariably seems huge. But we need to remember how large are the
parishes and how few in number relatively are the churches; it is
probable that in English-speaking Canada there are half a dozen
churches, or more, to every one in the Province of Quebec. In all
Canada, rural and urban, there is probably not a Protestant parish to
which are attached as many, or perhaps half as many, people as the five
thousand who dwell in the parish of St. Etienne de la Malbaie, one of
secondary importance in the Province of Quebec. In a whole diocese there
are often not more than forty or fifty parishes. In the country the
churches are usually built at intervals of not more than three leagues
(nine miles) so that no one may have to travel more than a league and a
half to mass. The life of the people centres in the Church. In its
registers, kept with great accuracy, is to be found the chief record of
the village drama, the story of its births, marriages and deaths. True
to the tastes of old France the French Canadian has an amazing interest
in family history, and genealogies, based upon these ample records, are
closely studied. In the olden days the habitant brought his savings to
be kept in the Church's strong chest. The church edifice, its pictures
and its other furnishings, are things in which to take pride. Each
village aspires to have its own chime of bells. To chronicle baptisms,
marriages, burials, anniversaries, the chimes are rung for a longer or
shorter time according to the fee paid. Every day one hears them often
and a considerable revenue must come from this source. Whatever the
habitant knows of art, painting, sculpture, music, he learns from the
Church and it is all associated with religious hopes and fears.
"Dwellers in cities," says a French Canadian writer, "have concerts,
theatres, museums; in the rural communities it is the Church that
provides all this. During her services the most fervent among the
faithful taste by anticipation the joys of heaven and murmur, enchanted:
'Since here all is so beautiful in the house of the Lord how much more
so will it be in his paradise!'"[30]
Thus it happens that here the parish and its church have a significance
not felt where, as now in practically all English speaking countries,
each community represents a variety of religious beliefs. At Malbaie, as
in dozens of other parishes, there is not, except in summer, a single
Protestant. So strong is the pressure of religious and social opinion,
that even persons with no belief in Christianity are constrained to join
outwardly at least in the church services. In the villages, at least,
nearly every one confesses and partakes of the communion many times in
the year; at Easter there are practically no abstentions from the
sacrament. With this unanimity it has been possible to establish by
legislation a most elaborate system providing for the support of the
priests, for keeping up cemeteries and other parish needs. Elsewhere
left largely to voluntary action, in Quebec such duties become a tax on
the community as a whole. Whether a parishioner likes it or not, he
must, if the taxpayers so determine, pay his share for building a church
or for other similar expenditure decided upon.
We will suppose that a new residence for the priest is desired. A
majority of ratepayers must address to the bishop of the diocese a
petition with a plan of what is proposed. The commission of five
members which exists in every diocese then gives ten days' public notice
in order that objectors may have every opportunity to express their
views. When, in the end, a decision to build is reached, the
commissioners announce this by public proclamation. The next step is for
the ratepayers of the parish to meet and vote the necessary money.
Trustees are then appointed to carry out the work with power to collect
the required funds from the Catholic ratepayers. This assessment is a
first charge on the land; it must be divided into at least twelve equal
instalments and the payments are spread over not less than three, or
more than eight, years. To be quite safe the trustees levy fifteen per
cent. more than the estimated cost. If ready money is not on hand for
the work the church property may be mortgaged. When the building is
completed the trustees render their accounts with vouchers and take oath
that they are correct. All is precise, clearly defined, business-like.
No expenditure of money can be made for building without the consent of
the people. Always in French Canada a trace of old Gallican liberties
has remained, in the power over Church finances left in the hands of
churchwardens (_marguillers_) elected by the people. But in the old days
when the habitant was more ignorant and less alert than now he is, no
doubt the voice in this respect might be the voice of the churchwarden,
but the hand was the hand of the curé. No doubt, also, it is still true
that any project upon which the curé sets his heart he will in the end
probably get a majority of the parishioners to adopt. But he must
persuade the people. Sometimes they oppose his plan strenuously and
feeling runs high. Then when a churchwarden is elected, as one is
annually, the curé may have his candidate, the opposing party theirs. At
Malbaie recently there was a sharp difference of opinion between the
curé and the people on a question relating to the cemetery. The parties
divided on the choice of a churchwarden and the curé's candidate was
defeated.
Yet the curé's position is one of great strength and authority. He has
his own income uncontrolled by the _fabrique_, which is master of the
rest of the church finances. The curé's tithe consists of one
twenty-sixth of the cereals produced by the parishioners. A further
tithe he has: the twenty-sixth child born to any pair of his
parishioners is by custom brought to the priest and he rears it;
sometimes, strange to say, this tithe is offered! From his tithe on
cereals the income is not large; at Malbaie it is probably never more
than from $1000 to $1200 a year; sometimes much less. The average income
of a curé is not more than $600. It is the custom for the parishioner to
deliver duly at the priest's house one twenty-sixth of his grain and in
the autumn a great array of vehicles may be seen making their way
thither. Usually there is considerable variety in the grain thus brought
but sometimes the curé is almost overwhelmed by a single product such as
peas; one of their number, thus paid, the neighbouring clergy christened
the "_curé des pois_." The French Canadian farmer is often narrowly
penurious and if he will not pay, as sometimes happens, the curé rarely
presses him or takes steps to recover what the law would allow. In any
case a bad harvest is likely to leave the curé poor. Changes in the type
of farming may also curtail his income. Of the products of dairy farming
he gets no share, yet it is a creditable fact that many priests have
urged their people to adopt this kind of farming. Fees for weddings
which, in Protestant Churches, go usually to the minister, are in the
Province of Quebec handed over to the general church fund. Of course the
priest has sources of income other than the tithe. He receives fees for
masses but the sums chargeable for these ceremonies are determined by
the bishop; the priest himself has no power of undue exaction. There is
indeed no evidence of a desire for such exaction. Whatever personal
differences may arise, the French Canadian curé is usually one in
thought and aim with his people. Wherever he goes he is always
respectfully saluted. To him the needy turn and there are heavy calls
upon his charity. Few curés have any surplus income. They keep up a
large house and have constant need of one or more horses. Most curés, it
is said, die poor.
It is the complaint in Great Britain and the United States that, rather
than enter the Christian ministry, the best intellects are seeking
secular pursuits. This is not the case in the Province of Quebec. The
curés watch the promising boys in the schools. The Church has many
boarding schools where boys are led on step by step to the final one of
entering the priesthood. A promising boy, if he needs it, is given a
scholarship. When the time comes he is sent to complete his education at
Rome or elsewhere. The Church has selected him, trained him in her
service, and, for the rest of his life, his best powers are at her call.
Every family is ambitious to have a representative in the priesthood and
this becomes the most notable thing not merely in the family but also in
the parish. The Province of Quebec has many parish histories. These
volumes are rather dreary reading, it must be admitted, consisting
chiefly of the record of the building or improvement of the church and
of the coming and the going of the curés. But one chief record is always
found--that of the sons of the parish who have entered the priesthood.
They are its glory. Not merely pride in the success of their offspring
leads parents to wish for a son in the priesthood. He may bring to them
more substantial benefits. He is the interpreter of sacred mysteries,
the intercessor in some respects between God and man, and he will plead
for them in the court of Heaven.
This ambition to get sons into the priesthood has made it possible now
for the Church to rely wholly upon priests Canadian in origin. Not
always was this the case. After the British conquest it was not easy to
get priests. The British government frowned upon the introduction of
priests from France, still Britain's arch-enemy. Irish priests were
thought of, but they could not speak French and, besides, the Bishop of
Quebec did not find in them the submissive obedience of the Canadian
priest. For a time it was seriously proposed to supply Canada with
priests from Savoy, since of them Britain could have no political fears.
But for the time the French Revolution solved the question. Emigré
priests, driven from France, could be in Canada no political danger to
Great Britain since, like her, they desired the overthrow of the
existing French government. So a good many emigré priests were brought
out, among them Mr. Le Courtois, so long the curé of Malbaie. This
movement soon spent itself. In time the Church in Canada had a number of
seminaries for training priests and it now levies a heavy tithe upon the
best intellects of the country. Recently a new emigration of French
priests to Canada has taken place. But they have not been wholly
welcome; their tone is not quite that of the Canadian priesthood;
sometimes they assume patronizing airs and they are felt to be
foreigners. I have even heard a French Canadian priest say in broken
English to a Protestant from the Province of Ontario: "I feel that I
have more in common with you than I have with the French priests who are
flocking into this country."
The Canadian curé is the priest always. Unlike the clergy in other parts
of Canada he wears his cassock even when he goes abroad; one sees dozens
of these black robes in the streets, on the steamers and trains. He does
not share in the amusement of other people. In Quebec Anglican clergymen
play golf and tennis; probably if a curé did so he might be called to
account by the bishop. Occasionally priests ride bicycles, but even this
is looked upon with some suspicion. Into general society the priests go
but little. They come together in each other's presbyteries for mutual
counsel and to celebrate anniversaries, such as the 25th year of the
ordination of one of their number. The large presbyteries, which one
sees even in remote parishes, are necessary to house the visiting clergy
on such occasions. They assist each other when their parishes have
special fêtes. But their social intercourse is chiefly with each other.
The courtly abbé of old France, a universal guest in salons and at
dinner tables, is hardly found at all in the Province of Quebec. Nor is
the scholar usual. Even in small parishes there are rarely less than 500
or 600 communicants and the calls upon the curé's time are heavy. There
are, of course, priests of literary tastes; as there are those with a
taste for art, to whom are due the occasional good pictures found in the
parish churches. Some priests interest themselves in agriculture and
give wise guidance to their people. But behind everything is the solemn,
severe, exacting, conception of the priest's high function as the medium
of God's speech to man. He is almost sexless--a being apart consecrated
to an awe-inspiring office. A mother will sometimes quiet an unruly
child by threatening the portentous intervention of the curé.
Yet he is the universal friend. His relation to his people is not merely
official; it is affectionate, personal. The confessional makes him
familiar with the intimate details of nearly every one's life. On all
the joyous and sad crises, at births, marriages, and deaths, he is at
hand with sympathy, comfort and support. When he goes on a journey he
looks up not merely his own but his parishioners' friends and is welcome
everywhere. He is the general counsellor, the reconciler of family
quarrels, the arbitrator in differences, the guardian of morals. The
seigneur at Malbaie found the priest enquiring as to the manner in which
the male and female servants of the Manor were lodged.
Colonel Nairne thought that the Church was too willing to see the people
remain ignorant; with her the primary virtue is obedience. But it is
not less true that on moral questions, such as sobriety and purity, the
Church has always shown great vigilance and zeal. In the old days there
was a mighty struggle between the Bishop of Quebec and the governor
Frontenac as to the sale of intoxicating liquors, and the Church is
still keen for temperance. It is due to her that public drinking places
are unknown in most Canadian villages. At Murray Bay it happened
recently that, by some lapse in vigilance, the party favourable to the
granting of licenses got the upper hand. The results were immediate and
deplorable. Summer visitors frequently found their drivers under the
influence of liquor and the habitant, usually courteous and respectful,
was now often rude and quarrelsome. The sudden fall made one realize how
slight might be the strength of virtue due merely to the absence of
temptation. The Church saw the danger. In the following winter she began
a systematic temperance campaign. For some ten days daily services were
held at which eloquent denunciations of intemperance roused the people.
Every effort was made to ensure attendance at these services and the
parish church, a great structure, was well filled daily. Hundreds signed
the pledge and by the next summer all was changed. No one was licensed
to sell liquor and the community was sober. If the relapse had been
rapid it must be admitted that the recovery was not less so.
The curé and his assistants do their work with the precision and
regularity of a business man in his office. They watch education, and
have their own educational ideals. In the public schools of the
English-speaking world in America, manners and religion receive, alas,
but slight attention. But in Quebec one need only pass along a country
road to see that the children are taught respect and courtesy. The chief
subject of instruction is religion and to prepare the children for the
first communion seems to be the main aim of education. In the parish the
priest is never far away. Nearly always one or other of the clergy is at
the presbytery to answer calls of urgency, and their duties begin at an
early hour. "I am very busy until nine o'clock in the morning," a curé
once said to me. My comment was that most of us are only beginning the
serious duties of the day at that hour. "But I am tired by that time,"
he said, rather sadly, "for already, so early in the day, I have heard
much of human sin." The people come early in the morning to confess and
by nine o'clock the curé was weary of the tale of man's frailty.
Thursday is his day of recreation. Only on that day usually does he
leave his parish and then he always arranges that a neighbouring priest
shall be within call. This oversight is not spasmodic; it is persistent,
alert, universal, and hardly varies with the individual curé. In human
society there is no institution more perfectly organized than the Roman
Catholic Church and in Quebec her traditions have a vitality and vigour
lost perhaps in communities more initiated. Of course not every one
accepts or heeds the curé's ministry. Many a _mauvais sujet_ is careless
or even defiant but, when his last moments come, at his bedside stands
the priest to show to the repentant sinner the path of blessedness, and,
when he is gone, his wayward course will give ground to call the living
to earlier obedience.
In the Canadian parishes faith is simple, with a pronounced taste for
the supernatural. In the year 1907 a Jesuit priest, M. Hudon, published
at Montreal the life of Marie Catherine de Saint Augustin, 1632-1668, a
Quebec nun. This devout lady lived in an atmosphere charged always with
the supernatural. She knew of events before they happened; with demons
who tempted her she had terrific combats; she read the thoughts of
others with divine insight. Perhaps the climax of her experiences is
found when she has regularly, as confessor and mentor, the Jesuit father
and martyr Bréboeuf, dead for some years. M. Hudon declared that he
had submitted the evidence for these wonders to all the tests that
modern scientific canons could require and that they were undoubtedly
true. The Archbishop of Quebec, Mgr. Begin, wrote a prefatory note
approving of the teaching of the book, and adding that Mother Marie
Catherine's life could not fail to be an inspiration to young girls to
live nobly. This simple belief in the constant occurrence of the
supernatural is not found only in the remoter parishes of the Province
of Quebec as a French Canadian writer seems to indicate;[31] it appears
everywhere. All Christians believe in a God who shapes human events and
hears and answers prayer. But many, Catholic and Protestant alike,
believe that the energy of God, in response to man's appeal, is applied
through the ordinary machinery of nature's laws. Modern thought is
pervaded with the conception of nature's rigour. I have seen good
Catholics shrug their shoulders at the wonders narrated by Marie
Catherine de Saint Augustin. But others, and these not only the
ignorant, think that this attitude shows the lack of a deeper faith.
Must God and his saints, they ask, be confined within the narrow
framework of nature's laws? Cannot He do all things?
So it is not strange that the Canadian peasant dwells in a world charged
with the supernatural. Night furnishes the opportunity for goblins to be
abroad; the flickering lights on the marshes are goblin fires. Then,
too, the vagrant dead wander about restlessly, sinful souls refused
entrance to Heaven until they have sought and secured adequate prayers
for their pardon and relief. To cross a cemetery at night might attract
the fatal vengeance of the dead thus disturbed. The grumbling mendicant
at the door may really be an evil spirit bent on mischief. With a few,
magic and the gift of the evil eye are still dreaded forces and it is
well to know some charm by which evil may be averted. Since night is the
time of danger, if abroad then be watchful; if at home close doors and
windows, ere you go to sleep. I was once on a fishing expedition with
habitant guides when we had to share the same _cabane_. The air becoming
insufferable, I got up quietly, opened the door and went back to bed.
Presently I heard one of the guides steal softly to the door and close
it. When I thought he was asleep I opened it again. But in vain; once
more it was closed. In the morning nothing was said about it. Certainly
not cold was what he feared, for the weather was hot. I do not think it
was the mosquitoes. Was it the goblins?
A simpler and touching faith is common. Every one has noticed in the
Province of Quebec the numerous crosses by the way side. These Calvaires
are of rough wood, usually eight or ten feet high; sometimes with the
cross are the dread implements of Christ's pain--the crown of thorns,
the hammer and nails, the executioner's ladder, the Roman soldier's
spear. Often at the foot is a box for alms to help the forgotten dead
who are in purgatory. As the habitant passes them he usually lifts his
hat. The Calvaires are a kind of domestic altar to which the people
come. In the summer evenings one may see a family grouped about them in
prayer. When there is need for special prayers, several families will
come across the fields to meet at the Calvaire. Dr. Henry, of whom more
later, tells how at Malbaie some eighty years ago he found in the
cottages social family worship night and morning. It is to be feared
that the present generation at Malbaie is less devout, corrupted it may
be by the heretic visitors' bad influence and example. But still the
guide with whom one goes camping rarely neglects his evening devotions.
In some families prayer sanctifies all the actions of the day. There is
prayer at rising, prayer at going to bed. Though here, as in France,
women are spoken of as only _créatures_, the mother is usually better
educated than the father and often leads these devotions, the others
joining in the responses. Before meals is recited a prayer, usually the
_Benedicite_. There is often a family oratory and here at the
appropriate seasons, in the month consecrated to the special family
saint and guardian, in May, the Virgin's month, in June, that of the
Sacred Heart, in November, "the month of the dead," special prayers are
said. On Sunday evenings the family chant the Canticles. The Church's
feasts are marked by festal signs such as the laying of the best rugs
on the floor. If there is drought groups gather frequently at the
Calvaires to pray for rain. Occasionally such supplications have a
curiously commercial basis in frugal minds. A habitant's wife, learning
that a near neighbour had made an offering to the curé for prayers for
rain, declared that she would give nothing, since if rain fell on the
neighbour's farm it would not stop there: "_S'il mouille chez les
Pierrot Benjamin, il mouillera ben icitte_."[32]
In each year, if he chooses, the habitant has a good many chances to
cast his vote. The Church, the greatest institution of the village has
its annual election--that for a churchwarden; of the three churchwardens
one retires every year. An annual election there is also for the
municipal council, two or three of whose members retire each year. This
body looks after the highways, the granting of licenses to sell
spirituous liquors and so on. Annually also are elected school
commissioners, who have charge of education. The municipal council and
the school commission are comparatively new institutions in the Province
of Quebec. They have been borrowed from the Anglo-Saxon world, but the
habitant takes kindly to the elector's privileges and struggles are
sometimes keen. The innovation of the ballot not having been adopted, as
yet, in municipal elections, the voting is open. Every voter must thus
show his preferences and when a moral question, such as the licensing of
drinking places, is before the electors this open voting aids the
Church's influence. Usually the curé is an ardent temperance man and to
vote for a license against his wishes, made known perhaps from the
pulpit, needs great strength of conviction. It thus happens that a very
large number of parishes in the Province of Quebec have no licensed
drinking places.
Of offices in the gift of the village voter those in the Church are the
most highly esteemed. To be a municipal councillor or a school
commissioner is indeed all very well. But the village council is not
really very important. It spends only a few hundred dollars a year and
to keep up the roads is not an exciting task. The village council rarely
has even the "town hall" usual in other communities; it meets in the
"salle publique," or the vestry, of the Church, or in the school house.
The school commissioners too have no very dazzling work to do. The curé
is sometimes their chairman and thus in some degree they come under the
control of the Church. The commissioners appoint the teachers in the
schools and keep up the school buildings, but their outlay is also very
small, for the salaries of teachers, usually women, are appallingly low.
The really important elective office in the parish is that of
churchwarden (_marguiller_). In the church the churchwardens have a
special seat of honour assigned to them. They control the temporalities
and may beard even the curé himself. Large sums of money pass through
their hands. They receive the pew rents,--and every habitant has a pew;
they receive the voluntary offerings. It often happens that the Church
accumulates large sums of money and that, if the building of a
_presbytère_ or parish church is decided upon, there is enough on hand
to pay for it outright. The municipal council and the schoolboard, on
the other hand, are always poor. The habitant watches their taxation
with a parsimonious scrutiny and it is a thankless task to carry on
their work.
Municipal interests represent of course only a part of the village's
political thought. In provincial politics, federal politics, there is
often in Quebec an interest keener even than in other parts of Canada.
It would be too much to say that the habitant has a wide outlook on
public questions; but the village notary and the village doctor are
likely to have political ambitions and rivalry becomes acute; often
indeed the curse of the village is the professional politician. At times
in Quebec politics have been closely associated with religion and always
the bishops are persons to be reckoned with. Their attitude has ever
been that, if the policy of one or the other party seems to be inimical
to the Church, they have the right to direct Catholic electors to vote
against such a party. From the point of view of British supremacy in
French Canada it would be a mistake to say that the bishops in a
political rôle have always been mischievous. After the conquest they
soon became the most staunch supporters of the authority of George III
and through the Church the British conqueror was able to reach the
people. When the American Revolution began, the bishops were strenuous
for British connection and from the pulpits came solemn warnings against
the Americans. Again in Britain's war on Revolutionary France the
Canadian bishops were with her, heart and soul. They ordered _Te Deums_
when Nelson destroyed the French fleet at the battle of the Nile, and
over Trafalgar there were great rejoicings. 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. Later, in the days
of Papineau, the Church opposed rebellion; she has since opposed
annexation to the United States. She has also helped to preserve order.
If a crime was to be detected, the curé read from the pulpit a demand
that any one, who could give information to further this end, should do
so. Solemn excommunication was pronounced against offenders; to make the
warning impressive the priest would drop to the ground a lighted candle
and put it out with his foot; so would God extinguish the offenders thus
denounced, and those who abetted their crimes.
Since the Church has aided the state, not unnaturally she expected some
special favours in return. She got them in the days of the early British
governors of Canada. Sir Guy Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester,
secured for the Church the legal power to levy the tithe on Catholics
and practically all the other privileges she had enjoyed under the old
régime. The bishops tended to become more and more active in politics
and this reached a climax in 1896. With great heat the bishops threw
themselves into the attack on the Liberal party, because it would not
support the Church's demands for her own separate schools in Manitoba,
supported by taxes levied on Roman Catholics by the state. Some of the
bishops went too far in denunciation; an appeal against their action was
carried by Catholics to the Pope and the offenders were rebuked. The
incident showed that in politics the habitant knows his own mind, for he
gave an overwhelming support to the party on which the bishops were
warring. Since then many a habitant draws a sharp distinction between
the spiritual and the political claims of the bishops. Their full
spiritual authority he does not doubt; in politics he thinks his own
opinion as good as theirs.
If in spiritual matters the Church led it was intended that in temporal
affairs too the habitants should always have guidance. An old world
flavour seems to pervade the relations between seigneur and vassal in a
French Canadian parish. The seigneur was himself the vassal of the
crown, bound to do humble homage at the capital when he received his
grant. We have a detailed account of the ceremony as performed, perhaps
for the first time under British rule. On December 23rd, 1760, in the
morning one Jacques Noël, a seigneur, accompanied by royal notaries,
proceeded to the government house in Quebec. He knocked at the principal
entrance and, when a servant appeared, Noël asked if His Excellency
James Murray, the Governor, was at home. The servant replied that His
Excellency was within and that he would give him notice. On being
admitted to the presence of the Governor, Noël with head uncovered, and,
to symbolize his humble obedience, wearing neither sword nor spur, fell
on his knees before him and declared that he performed faith and homage
for the seigniory to which, on his father's death, he had become the
heir. He then took an oath on the gospels to be faithful to the king and
to be no party to anything against his interests; to hold his own
vassals to the same obedience; and to perform all other duties required
by the terms of his holding.
The Crown required very little of the seigneur and so, in truth, did the
seigneur of his tenants. Their annual payment of _cens et rentes_ rarely
amounted to more than a very few dollars. When it fell due in the autumn
they were given abundant notice. Still in the Canadian parishes, when
the Sunday morning mass is over, the crier stands on a raised platform
near the church door, the people gather round, and the announcement is
made of tithes and taxes due, of articles lost or found, of anything
indeed of general interest to the community. It was in this way that as
St. Martin's day, November 11th, approached the people were reminded of
the falling due of the _cens et rentes_. The meaning of the two terms is
somewhat obscure. The _cens_ was a trifling payment by the _censitaire_
in recognition of the seigneur's position and rights as landowner; while
the _rentes_ represented a real rental based in some degree on the
supposed value of the land. But the rate was usually conventional and
very small. In early Canada the river was the highway and upon it
therefore every settler desired to have a frontage. There was, also,
greater safety from Indian attacks in having the houses close together
at the front of the farms. So these became long narrow strips, with the
houses built so close together that the country side often seems like a
continuous village. The habitant paid usually in _cens et rentes_ twenty
sols (about twenty cents) for each arpent (192 feet) of frontage;
instead of cash usually he might pay in kind--a live capon or a small
measure (demi-minot) of grain for each arpent. He paid also about one
cent of rent for each superficial acre. Thus for a farm of 100 acres,
with two arpents of frontage, a habitant might pay $1.00 in cash and two
capons. If each of 400 such tenants paid for their frontage in capons,
800 of these fowls would he brought to the seigneur's barn-yard each
autumn!
Though payment was due on November 11th, the habitants usually waited
for the first winter days when the sleighing had become good. In many of
the sleighs, hastening with the merry sound of bells over the wintry
roads to the manor house, there would be one or two captive capons or a
bag or two of grain. M. de Gaspé has described how on such an occasion
the seigneur, or some member of his family for him, would be found by
the tenant "seated majestically in a large arm chair, near a table
covered with green baize cloth." Here he received the payments, or in
many cases only excuses for non-payment. The scene outside was often
animated, for the fowls brought in payment of the rent, with legs tied
but throats free, would not bear their captivity in silence. Rent day
was a festal occasion, but the great day in the year at the manor house
was New Year's Day. Then the people came to offer their respects to the
seigneur and Nairne speaks of the prodigious consumption of whiskey and
cakes at such a time. The seigneur was usually god-father to the
first-born of the children of his tenants. It is a pretty custom among
French Canadians for the children to go on New Year's Day, which is a
great festival, to the chamber of their parents in the early morning and
kneel before the bed for their benediction. To the seigneur as to a
parent came on this day his god-children and we have it from M. de
Gaspé, an eye witness, that on one occasion he saw no less than one
hundred of these come to call upon the seigneur at the manor house! In
the old days the people came also on the first day of May to plant the
May-pole before his door and to dance round it.
Some of the seigneurs were as poor as their own _censitaires_ and, like
them, toiled with their hands. But usually there was a social gulf
between the cottage and the manor house. Even the Church marked this.
The seigneur had the right to a special pew; he was censed first; he
received the wafer first at the communion; he took precedence in
processions, and was specially recommended from the pulpit to the
prayers of the congregation. Caldwell, who was seigneur of Lauzon
opposite Quebec, used to drive through his great seigniory in state,
half reclining on the cushions of his carriage and with a numerous
following. If on a long drive he stopped at a farm house, even for the
light refreshment of a drink of milk, he never paid the habitant with
anything less than a gold coin. I once asked a habitant, who remembered
the old days, whether the seigneur really was such a very great man in
the village. He replied, with something like awe in his voice,
"_Monsieur, il était le roi, l'empereur, du village_."
The ministrations of the manor house were often patriarchical and
beneficent; the seigneur's wife was like the squire's wife in an English
village. In time this relation aroused resentment. Some villager's son
with a taste for business or letters made his way in the world, got into
touch with more advanced thought, and when he came back to the village
was not so willing as formerly to touch his hat to the seigneur and
accept an inferior social status as a matter of course. M. de Gaspé
tells how he often accompanied Madame Taché, in her own right
co-seigneuress of Kamouraska, opposite Malbaie, in her visits to the
people on the seigniory. She took alms to the poor, and wine, cordials,
delicacies to the sick and convalescent. "She reigned as sovereign in
the seigniory," he says, "by the very tender ties of love and of
gratitude." When she left the village church after mass on Sunday the
habitants, most of whom drove to church in their own vehicles, would
wait respectfully for her to start and then follow her in a long
procession, none of them venturing to pass her on the road. At the point
where she turned from the high-way up the avenue leading to the manor
house, each habitant, as he passed, would raise his hat, although only
her back was in view disappearing in the direction of the house.
But early in the 19th century this spirit was changing:
One day I was myself witness, says M. de Gaspé, of a violation of
this universal deference. It was St. Louis's day, the festival of
the parish of Kamouraska. As usual Madame Taché, at the close of
mass, was leading the long escort of her _censitaires_, when a
young man, excited by the frequent libations of which in the
country many are accustomed to partake during the parish fêtes,--a
young man, I say, breaking from the procession passed the carriage
of the seigneuress as fast as his horse would go. Madame Taché
stopped her carriage and turning round towards those who followed
her cried in a loud voice:
"What insolent person is this who has passed before me?"
An old man went up to her, hat in hand, and said with tears in his
voice:
"Madame, it is my son who unfortunately is tipsy, but be sure that
I shall bring him to make his apologies and meanwhile I beg you to
accept mine for his boorishness."
I ought to add that the whole parish spoke with indignation of the
conduct of the young man. The delinquent had committed a double
offence. He had been rude to their benefactress, and besides,
violating a French Canadian custom, he had passed a carriage
without asking permission.[33]
This must have been before 1813 for in that year this good Madame Taché
died: even so early was youth restive under the old traditions of
deference and subordination. Already some even of the seigneurs were
saying that the system retarded settlement. It would have suited the
seigneurs to have their holdings converted into freehold, for then they
could have held the unsettled land as their own property instead of
being under obligation to grant it for a nominal rental to
_censitaires_. But to make this conversion would have been too kind to
the seigneurs; so the matter dragged on for a long time.
The grievances of the habitant against the seigneurs were numerous, some
of them real, some fanciful. It seemed anomalous that, in a British
colony in the nineteenth century, there should be men holding great
tracts of land with rights over their tenants, as some authors have
seriously claimed, extending from the power of trying them for petty
offences to that of inflicting the death penalty. This last right was,
in any case, only nominal and was never exercised by any seigneur in
Canada; but even the claim that it existed shows how high were the
authority and privilege of the seigneur. A right like the _corvée_ had a
sinister meaning. One of the greatest hardships of the old régime, in
France it meant that, on demand, the peasant must drop his own work to
join in making highways, in carrying from one place to another the
effects of a regiment, and other unwelcome tasks, all without pay. In
Canada it was milder. The seigneur levied a _corvée_ of so many days'
labour, which he employed on the useful task of improving the highway.
Some seigneurs required that at the times they chose, the habitants
should work for them a certain number of days, usually six, in each
year. They could even make the habitants work without pay at building a
manor house; a few of the massive stone mansions still fairly numerous
in the Province of Quebec were constructed by such labour. Not
unnaturally the habitant came to feel it odious and humiliating to be
obliged thus to give his labour at another's order.
The seigneuries too were often broken up. In Canada there is no law of
primogeniture and, at a seigneur's death, the land went to daughters as
well as to sons. Few of the old seigniorial families remained on their
original estates. In time those who held the property came to think that
a rental of about a cent an acre was not enough. In the days of French
rule they could not have increased it; but the old custom, they claimed,
did not apply under British sovereignty. So these charges were often
increased; in time instead of a penny the habitant had to pay
three-pence, six-pence, and even eight-pence, an acre; the seigneurs, as
a judge put it, showed an excellent knowledge of arithmetical
progression. Thus the _cens et rentes_ began to bring in a real income.
So did the _lods et ventes_, the tax of one-twelfth of the price of
whatever land the habitant sold. In early days land was rarely sold. But
when towns and villages had grown up on seigniorial estates, a good deal
of buying and selling took place and there stood always the seigneur
demanding in every transaction his share of the selling price. If the
land was sold two or three times in a year, as might well happen, each
time the seigneur got his share of one-twelfth. If the occupier had
built on the land a house at his own cost, none the less did the
seigneur, who had done nothing, get his large percentage on the selling
value of these improvements. This was a real grievance. To avoid paying
the seigneur's claim a price, lower than that really paid, was sometimes
named in the deed, and this led to perjury. To protect themselves the
seigneur used his _droit de retrait_ the right for forty days of himself
taking the property at the price named. This involved vexation and delay
and increased discontent. Moreover the seigneur's right to _lods et
ventes_ stood in the way of a ready transfer of property between members
of the same family.
There were other causes of discontent. The seigneur had the _droit de
banalité_, the banal rights, under which in France the habitant must use
the seigneur's wine-press, his oven and his mill. In Canada no wine was
made, so the seigneur's winepress did not exist. Some attempts were made
to force the habitant to bake his bread in the seigneur's oven but what
would do in a compact French village, where fuel was scarce, became
absurd in Canada; the picture is ludicrous of a habitant carrying a
dozen miles, over rough roads, to the seigneur's oven, unbaked dough
which might be hard frozen _en route_. Moreover new inventions made
ovens common and cheap so that the habitant could afford to have his
own. The seigneur's oven thus caused no grievance. Not so however the
seigneur's mill. In the early days when the seigneur had the sole right
to build a mill this became for him, in truth, a duty sometimes
burdensome; for, whether it would pay or not, the government forced him
to build a mill or else abandon the right. But in time the mill proved
profitable and to it the peasant must bring his wheat. There might be a
good mill near his house, while the seigneur's mill might be a dozen
miles away and even then might give poor service; yet to the seigneur's
mill he must go. If it was a wind-mill, nature, by denying wind, might
cause a long delay before the flour should be ready. As time went on,
some seigneurs claimed or reserved a monopoly in regard to all mills;
grist mills, saw mills, carding mills, factories of every kind. Canada
in time exported flour, but the seigneur's rights stood in the way of
the free grinding of the wheat for this trade. The habitant might have
on his land an excellent mill site with water power convenient, but he
could not use it without the seigneur's consent. More than this the
seigneur often reserved the right to take such a site to the extent of
six arpents for his own use without any compensation to the habitant.
In many cases the seigneur might freely cut timber on the habitant's
land to erect buildings for public use,--church, presbytery, mill, and
even a manor house. The rights to base metals on the property he also
retained. The eleventh fish caught in the rivers was his. He might
change the course of streams or rivers for manufacturing purposes; he
alone could establish a ferry; his will determined where roads should be
opened. Some seigneurs were even able to force villages and towns to pay
a bonus for the right to carry on the ordinary business of buying and
selling. So it turned out that if the habitant's crop failed he had
little chance to do anything else without the seigneur's consent; he is,
says the report of a Commission of Enquiry in 1843, "kept in a perpetual
state of feebleness and dependence. He can never escape from the tie
that forever binds to the soil him and his progeny; a cultivator he is
born, a mere cultivator he is doomed to die." No doubt this plaint is
pitched in a rather high key. But in time the burden of grievances was
generally felt and then the seigniorial system was doomed.
In the days of the last John Nairne political agitation became an old
story at Malbaie. We get echoes of meetings held in the village to
support the cause of the idol of habitant radicalism, Louis Joseph
Papineau; in 1836 ninety-two resolutions drawn up by him and attacking
the whole system of government in Canada appear to have met with
clamorous approval from the assembled villagers. Papineau was himself a
seigneur and did not assail the system. But after his unsuccessful
rebellion in 1837-38 the attack on the seigneurs intensified. We know
little of what happened at Malbaie but the end came suddenly. In 1854,
after an election fought largely on this issue, the Parliament of Canada
swept away the seigniorial system. The habitants then became tenants
paying as rent the old _cens et rentes_. They could not be disturbed as
long as this trifling rent was paid. Moreover at any time they might
become simple freeholders by paying to the seigneur a sum of money
representing their annual rent capitalized on a six per cent, basis. The
term seigneur is still used but is now a mere honorary title. No longer
does his position give him the authority of a magistrate; no longer must
the habitants grind their corn at his mill; no longer can he claim _lods
et ventes_ when land is sold. For the loss of these rights he was paid
compensation out of the public treasury.[34]
With the abolition of the seigniorial system ends too the story of the
Nairne family. In 1861, exactly one hundred years after Colonel Nairne
first visited Malbaie, died his grandson and the last of his
descendants, John McNicol Nairne, son of Colonel Nairne's eldest
daughter Magdalen. This last Nairne left the property absolutely to his
widow, tied only by the condition that it was to go to her male issue if
she had such, even by a second marriage. In 1884, she too died
childless, and bequeathed the property to an old friend, both of herself
and of her husband, Mr. W.E. Duggan. Had Mr. Duggan not survived Mrs.
Nairne the property was to go to St. Matthew's Church, Quebec. Mr.
Duggan occupied it, until his death in 1898, when it passed by will to
his half-brother, Mr. E.J. Duggan, the present seigneur.[35]
It is a sad story this of the extinction of a family. Both Thomas Nairne
and his father were buried at first in the Protestant cemetery at
Quebec. But not there permanently were they to lie, and many years ago
they found a resting-place in a new tomb in Mount Hermon Cemetery. On a
lovely autumn day in 1907 I made my way in Quebec to the spot where the
Nairnes are interred. In the fresh cool air it was a pleasure to walk
briskly the three miles of the St. Louis road to the cemetery. One
crossed the battle field of the Plains of Abraham where, within a few
months, a century and a half ago, Britain and France grappled in deadly
strife. The elder Nairne saw that field with its harvest of dead on
September 13th, 1759, and, in the following April, he saw its snow
stained with the blood of brave men who fell in Murray's battle with
Lévis. In May, 1776, he marched across it in victorious pursuit of the
fleeing American army. At Mount Hermon I readily found the Nairne tomb.
It lies on the slope of the hill towards the river. Through the noble
trees gleamed the mighty tide of the St. Lawrence. A great pine tree
stands near the block of granite that marks the Nairne graves and a
gentle breeze through its countless needles caused that mysterious
sighing which is perhaps nature's softest and saddest note. One's
thoughts went back to the brave old Colonel who wrought so well and had
such high hopes for his posterity to the soldier son, remembered here,
who died in far distant India; and to the other soldier son who fell in
Canada upon the field of battle. He was the last male heir of his line.
The name and the family are now well-nigh forgotten. The inscriptions on
the tomb, reared by a friend, connected with the Nairnes by ties of
friendship only, not of blood, are themselves the memorial of the rise
and extinction of a Canadian family.[36]
[Footnote 25: He must have been a Roman Catholic for he was buried in
the churchyard at Murray Bay.]
[Footnote 26: We have seen (_ante_ p. 49) how at Malbaie Colonel Nairne
expected that a Protestant missionary would soon make the community
Protestant.]
[Footnote 27: Professor Barrett Wendell, France of To-day, New York,
1907.]
[Footnote 28: Roy, Histoire de la Seigneurie de Lauzon, IV: 169, 170.]
[Footnote 29: The Abbé H.R. Casgrain: _Une Paroisse Canadienne au XVII.
Siècle_. _Oeuvres_, Vol. I, pp. 483 _sqq._]
[Footnote 30: Roy, La Seigneurie de Lauzon, IV: 247.]
[Footnote 31: M. Léon Gérin in "L'Habitant de Saint-Justin", p. 202.]
[Footnote 32: Roy, La Seigneurie de Lauzon IV: 245.]
[Footnote 33: De Gaspé, _Mémoires_, p. 533, 4.]
[Footnote 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_.]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 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.]