the first the community was prevailingly French and Catholic.  In 1784 when joined with Les Eboulements and Isle aux Coudres under a single priest Malbaie already had 65 communicants.  As likely as not some even of the Highlanders were Catholics.  In any case their children became such and spoke French, the tongue of their mothers; even Nairne’s own children spoke only French until they went to Quebec to school.

When, from time to time, a missionary priest visited the place he baptized children of Catholic and Protestant alike, including even the children of the Protestant family in the manor house.  The only religious services that the people ever shared in were those of the Roman Catholic Church.  Nairne would have wished it otherwise.  He held sturdy Protestant views, and wished to bring in Protestant settlers.  On one or more of his visits to Scotland he made efforts to induce Scots to move to Canada.  But he met with no great success.  A Scottish friend, Gilchrist, who had visited Nairne at Murray Bay, writes, in 1775, to express hope that he will not encourage French settlers who will rob him, who have “disingenuous, lying, cheating, detestable dispositions,” and are the “banes of society.”  He adds, “I am glad you give me reason to believe you are to carry over some industrious honest people from hence with you.  I am convinced ’twere easy by introducing a few such [to bring about that] the dupes to the most foolish and absurd religion now in the world might be warmed out and your quiet as well as interest established from Point au Pique to the Lake."[7] The Roman Catholic faith had more vitality than Nairne’s correspondent supposed.  It was Protestantism that should in time be “warmed out” of Murray Bay.

To prevent this Nairne did what he could; for a long time he entertained hopes not only that the Protestants at Murray Bay might be held to their faith but also that the Roman Catholics would be led into the Protestant fold.  His chief complaint against the Roman Catholic Church was in regard to education.  There was woeful ignorance.  Nairne was in command of the local militia and he found that officers of militia, and even a neighbouring seigneur, could not read.  When Roman Catholic services were held at Murray Bay, as they were regularly before he died, the tongue was one that the people did not understand.  At the services there was nothing “but a few lighted candles, in defyance of the sun, and the priest singing and reading Latin or Greek....  None of us understands a word.”  He complains of “the greatest deficiency in preaching sentiments of morality and virtue.”  Indeed, very few of the priests could preach or say anything in public beyond the Latin mass.  Nairne tried to secure better means of educating his people.  Probably earlier also, but certainly in 1791, he was writing to the Anglican Bishop of Quebec to help him to do something.  He lives, he says, in “the most Northerly and, I believe, the poorest parish on the Continent of America.”