"The Canoe Cove Church" Traditional Cache

Reverend Donald McDonald was sent from the Free Church of Scotland, as a missionary to Canada. Probably he was sent not so much that they wanted to give this country a missionary as a desire to get rid of him for he was an embarrassment to the Church of Scotland for his apparent intemperance. He went first to Cape Breton but apparently his behavior there was much the same as in Scotland. Two years later when he was forty two, he came to the Island and started an itinerant ministry among the scattered members of the Scottish Kirk. He was a deeply troubled man as no doubt his addiction was in severe conflict with his religious convictions. His anxiety was so great that he gave up preaching for a time in early 1828. He spent much time in prayer and reading his Bible and while he was at the home of one of his parishioners on the Malpeque Road he was released from his spiritual despondency. After that he was a new creature in Christ preaching powerfully from Murray River to Wilmot and from Canoe Cove to Rustico. When he died he had 5000 adherents, or better than 10% of the population, who were called 'McDonaldites', a term still in use today. He died in the home of William McLeod of Southport in 1867 after having served the people of the Cove as well as his other followers for over forty years. There was a log church handy at the site of the present church that was used for about twenty years for worship. Our splendid old building had its beginnings in St Catherines near the Pioneer Cemetery. After a change in plans, the lumber was rafted around to its present site in Canoe Cove. The church was completed in 1872, by Alexander MacFarlane.

PS: flipp the Hint around :D