THE ORIGINS OF LA MALBAIE

The 1979 edition of the Répertoire toponymique du Québec indicates that La Malbaie is the official designation of sixteen geographical entities, of which fifteen are within the Charlevoix and Gaspé constituencies. These designations, used either alone or in a combination, refer to a township, three inhabited locations and twelve natural geographical features.

At first, La Malbaie referred to coastal re-entrants in the above mentioned constituencies before being applied to neighbouring natural geographical entities.

Following these preliminary observations, we would like to illustrate briefly the meaning of La Malbaie, the origins of the phrase, the changes it underwent and various attempts at changing the names.

The toponym La Malbaie is a combination of the old French adjective ”mal” (bad) and “baie” (bay). In Les noms de lieux, Albert Dauzat writes that toponyms [translation] “were formed in the language spoken in the region at the time of their creation”. The literature tells us that the toponym La Malbaie characterizes two wide concavities of the coast. The first was documented at the beginning of the XVIIth century in Charlevoix, and at the beginning of the XVIIIth Century for as similar phenomenon in the Gaspé constituency. The archaic word “mal” meant “bad” in older French, hence the meaning of “la mauvaise baie” or “bad bay” for La Malbaie.

Why were these two bays considered “bad”? While Samuel de Champlain named the Malbaie river, as he wrote in 1608 «et l'avons nommée rivière platte, ou malle baye», the founder of Québec does not claim to be the creator of the toponym La Malbaie, which logically identifies the coastal re-entrant. Besides, the name “baie” was used prior to 1608 because the founder of Québec uses it for the first time to designate the river.

It is possible that Champlain used the name to designate this Charlevoix location when he felt in 1626 that from the cape of Male Baye (cap à l'Aigle) up to the Plate River (Malbaie River), a distance of three leagues, the river is located in a cove that dries out a low tide. One would think that the bay provided a poor anchoring ground or shelter for ships.

The name of the other re-entrant located South of the Gaspé Bay was also called La Malbaie in the early eighteenth century, and can be found in the geographical and historical descriptions of 1672. The Acadian pioneer tells us that this bay was bad because it did nothing to protect boats, hence the obviousness in the origin of the name. The original toponyms were eventually changed. The two costal re-entrants in the previously mentioned constituencies were not always named La Malbaie. In Charlevoix, the name Murray Bay was imposed following the Conquest. In the Gaspé constituency, the name change from Baie des Molues or des Morues was made spontaneously.

It is worth recalling that it was at the request of John Nairn, Lieutenant-Colonel of the English Army, that Governor James Murray agreed in 1762 that the granted seigneurie, which extended from Cap-aux-Oies to the South shore of the Malbaie River, be designated as Murray Bay.

The English speaking community was quick to use Murray Bay, which caused the French designation to be dropped entirely for a while in official documents. The community of La Malbaie and the river bearing the same name were also affected, though to a lesser extent. During the nineteenth century, the name of the locality for example can be found in various documents as Murray Bay or Malbaie, also written La Malbaie. Sometimes, maps and texts show only one form, whether the English or the French.

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