Nairne thought the Canadians not too prone to industry and he deplored the multitude of religious holidays that gave an excuse for idleness.  In a year there were not less than forty, in addition to Sundays, and on some of the holidays, such as that of the patron saint of the parish, there were scenes of great disorder.  Nairne wrote on the subject to the Roman Catholic Bishop of Quebec asking him to take steps to ensure that the people might come to think it not sinful but virtuous to work for six days in the week.  The Bishop promised consideration of the matter.  Already it had been under debate and in the end the Bishop gave orders that labour might continue on most of the Church’s festivals; that of the patron saint of the parish was in time abolished.  Nairne thus helped to bring about a considerable industrial reform.  But beyond this he achieved little.

The French Canadians, who occupied his vacant acres, have shown both a marvellous tenacity for their own customs and also a fecundity that has enabled people, numbering 60,000 at the time of the British conquest, to multiply now to some 2,500,000, scattered over the United States and Canada.  To govern them has never been an easy problem.  Nairne says that the French officer, Bougainville, who had known the Canadians in many campaigns, called them at Murray’s table a brave and submissive people; he thought they needed the strong hand of authority and added that he was sure the British method of government would soon spoil them.  Under the French regime they had had no gleam of political liberty.  For twenty years before the conquest France had exacted from them the fullest possible measure of military service.  The British ended this and brought liberty.  Its growth is sometimes so rapid as to be noxious, and, no doubt, some of those who came to Nairne’s domain gave him much trouble.  “No people,” Nairne said of them, “stand more in awe of punishment when convinced that there is power to inflict it, as none are so easily spoiled as to be mutinous by indulgences.”  Some of them showed striking intelligence:  in 1784 we find Nairne recommending for appointment as Notary one Malteste (no doubt the well-known name Maltais is a later form) as a “remarkable honest, well-behaved countryman with more education than is commonly to be found with one in his station.”  The dwellers at Malbaie were for the most part a quiet people entirely untouched by the movements of the outside world.  “Nothing here,” wrote Nairne in 1798, “is considered of importance but producing food to satisfy craving Stomachs, which the people of this cold and healthy country remarkably possess, and to feed numbers of children....  They have no other ambition or consideration whatever but simply to procure food and raiment for themselves and their numerous families.”