William Alexander Henry

  William Alexander Henry was a lifelong Haligonian. He was born in Halifax December 30, 1816; received his education locally; studied law and started his law practice in 1840, and died there May 3, 1888.

  At twenty-five years of age, with the support of the great Joseph Howe, he was elected as liberal member for Antigonish, a largely Roman Catholic constituency, though he was a Protestant. But in 1857, Howe, commissioner in charge of railway construction, denounced the violence of Roman Catholic workers on the right of way and thereby alienated Catholic support for the party. Henry resigned his position as provincial secretary and went over to the conservative party.

   In the Tupper administration of 1863, Henry became attorney general and an obvious choice as one of the delegates to the conferences. He was not particularly active at Quebec, but in London he registered his fear that the appointed senate might thwart the will of the elected commons and suggested that the government of the day should be given authority to create new senators to override determined opposition. A clause was inserted in the British North America Act permitting the appointment of three or six (now four or eight) additional senators on the recommendation of the governor general. This measure of course lessens in some degree that independence for which the senate was created.

  Defeated in the election of 1867, Henry returned to his law practice in Halifax. In 1875 he was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada where he served till his death.