Province House (Nova Scotia)

's House, built 1749 on the site of Province House , Scotia Square, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Province House was built on the same location as the previous Governor's House, erected by Edward Cornwallis in 1749. (Cornwallis' table remains in the bedroom of Province House.) Province House was opened for the first time on February 11, 1819. One of the smallest functioning legislatures in North America, Province House originally housed the executive, legislative and judicial functions of the colony, all in one building. The Supreme Court of Nova Scotia held its sessions in Province House (in what is today the legislative library). Most notably, Joseph Howe, a journalist and later Premier of Nova Scotia, was put on trial on a charge of criminal libel on March 2, 1835, at Province House. Howe had published an anonymous letter accusing Halifax politicians and police of pocketing £30,000 over a thirty-year period, and outraged civic politicians had subsequently seen to it that Howe was charged with seditious libel. The presiding judge called for Howe's conviction, but Howe's passionate speech in his own defence swayed the jury and the jurors acquitted him in what is considered a landmark case in the struggle for a free press in Canada. On January 20, 1842, English author Charles Dickens attended the opening of the Nova Scotia Legislature. He said that it was like looking at Westminster through the wrong end of a telescope. During 1848, Province House was the site for the first form of responsible government in the British Empire outside the United Kingdom. The building is located in downtown Halifax on a block bordered by Hollis, Granville, George and Prince streets. It is also a Provincially Registered Property under provincial heritage legislation. == Legislative Assembly ==

Province House is the home of the House of Assembly, Nova Scotia's elected legislative assembly.) in 1893, Edith Archibald and others made the first official attempt to have a suffrage bill for women property holders passed in Nova Scotia, which was passed by the legislature but quashed by Attorney General James Wilberforce Longley (who opposed unions and female emancipation for the twenty years he was in office). On April 26, 1918, as a result of the Local Council of Women of Halifax (LCWH), the House of Assembly passed The Nova Scotia Franchise Act, which gave women the right to vote in Nova Scotia's provincial elections, the first province to do so in Atlantic Canada. (A month later Nova Scotian and Prime Minister of Canada Robert Borden – whose wife Laura Bond was former president of the LCWH – used his majority to pass women's suffrage for the whole country.) Almost forty-three years later, on February 1, 1961, Gladys Porter was the first woman elected to the assembly. In 1993, Wayne Adams was elected as the first Black member of the assembly. The Nova Scotia legislature was the third in Canada to pass human rights legislation (1963). File:Nova Scotia House of Assembly Chamber.jpg|House of Assembly, Joseph Howe (left) and James William Johnston (right), both paintings by Henry Sandham File:JosephHoweByHenrySandham.png|Joseph Howe by Henry Sandham File:JohnHoultonMarshall.jpg|Commander John Houlton Marshall by unknown artist == The Library (former Supreme Court) ==

, Supreme Court (base of Joseph Howe Statue, Court Yard) The Legislative Library, located on the second floor between the Red Chamber and Legislative Assembly, was originally the home of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, until the court outgrew the space. The first important trial in the court was against Richard John Uniacke Jr. for killing William Bowie in the last lethal duel in Nova Scotia (1819). The Supreme Court chamber was the site of Joseph Howe's 1835 trial for seditious libel. == The Red Chamber ==

The Red Chamber was formerly the meeting place of the Nova Scotia Council and later the Legislative Council, the upper house of Nova Scotia's legislature. The Legislative Council was appointed by the governor and was abolished in 1928. Now the room is used for receptions and other meetings. File:NS Legislature Red Room.JPG|Table used by Edward Cornwallis on the ship Beaufort to hold his first Nova Scotia Council meeting, The Red Chamber (1749) File:WilliamFenswickWilliamsNSHouseOfAssembleyByWilliam Gush.jpg|Nova Scotian Sir William Williams, 1st Baronet, of Kars with sword from Nova Scotia House of Assembly by William Gush (sword is displayed at University of King's College Library, Halifax) File:JohnInglisByWilliamGushNSProvinceHouse.JPG|Nova Scotian Sir John Eardley Inglis with sword from Nova Scotia House of Assembly by William Gush (sword is displayed at University of King's College Library, Halifax) File:Mik'maq at Province House, Halifax,NS 1879.png|Grand Chief Jacques-Pierre Peminuit Paul (3rd from left with beard) meets Governor General of Canada, Marquess of Lorne, Red Chamber, 1879 == Court Yard ==

Province House is flanked with two prominent statues. To the north of Province House is the South African War Memorial by Hamilton MacCarthy to the Second Boer War. (MacCarthy also made the South African War Monument in the Halifax Public Gardens and the statue to Harold Lothrop Borden.) On one of the panels is a sculpture of the Battle of Witpoort, made famous by the death of Nova Scotian Harold Lothrop Borden. To the south of Province House is a statue to the Honourable Joseph Howe, created by famed Quebec sculptor Louis-Philippe Hébert. On the north side of Province House is a cannon from , and on the south side is a cannon of which was captured in the War of 1812, . File:JosephHoweStatue.jpg|Joseph Howe by Louis-Philippe Hébert File:Province House War Memorial.JPG|South African War Memorial by Hamilton MacCarthy File:ChesapeakeCanonProvinceHouseNovaScotia.JPG|Cannon from File:HMSShannonCanonProvinceHouseNovaScotia.JPG|Cannon from == Other art work ==

File:John Merrick by Robert Field.png|John Merrick by Robert Field File:Charles Hastings Doyle Province House Nova Scotia Canada.jpg|Lt Gov of Nova Scotia Charles Hastings Doyle by Adolphus Robert Venables (Rooert) File:Malachy Salter.jpg|Malachy Salter by John Smybert File:MatthiasHoffmanByJohnHoppner.png|Dr. Matthias Hoffman by John Hoppner File:Prince Edward By William J Weaver.png|Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, by William J. Weaver. The Prince is wearing the star voted to him by the Nova Scotia Assembly in 1798. File:GHMurrayByEdmund Wyly Grier.png|Longest serving premier George Henry Murray by Edmund Wyly Grier File:Thomas Andrew Lumisden Strange, Nova Scotia Law Court, Room -5, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.jpg|Thomas Andrew Lumisden Strange by Benjamin West File:Plan of the river of Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia, Library of Congress, c.1757.jpg|The letter "C" at the top right marks the location of Battle of Bloody Creek, Annapolis River map c. 1759. Canadian Prime Ministers from Nova Scotia File:Charles Tupper By John Gardiner.png|Charles Tupper by John H. Gardiner There are also portraits of former prime ministers John Sparrow David Thompson by Thomas Forrestall and Sir Robert Borden by Walter H. Cox. ==See also==

• Thomas Atkins. Papers related to the first establishment of a Representative Assembly in Nova Scotia (1755-1761), Vol. 5 ==Notes==