Joseph Howe | Biography

Joseph Howe was a man of many talents, most of which he pursued with considerable distinction and success. He is most widely remembered as the leading politician of nineteenth-century Nova Scotia: he won responsible government for the province; served in its legislature through three decades (ultimately as premier); fought Confederation, but subsequently represented Nova Scotia in the federal parliament and became a minister of the federal government; in the end, he died at Government House, while serving as lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia. Moreover, his political life did not simply amount to struggles for power and authority; he was also a driving force behind Nova Scotia's economic development, contributing significantly to the building of railroads and the management of Atlantic fisheries. At the same time, particularly in the earlier part of his life, he was deeply concerned with the social and cultural character of the province. He was trained as a newspaperman, and under his editorship the Novascotian became a major instrument in articulating the social and cultural values of his society as it emerged from protective colonialism to responsible self-government. Howe contributed to that process directly through his own poetry and prose and indirectly through the encouragement he gave others and through his efforts as publisher to give local literary talent access to Nova Scotia readers.

Howe was born in Halifax on 13 December 1804, the son of John Howe and his second wife, Mary Edes Howe. He came from a family of printers and newspapermen, so not unexpectedly his father and older brother took him into the family business as an apprentice at the age of thirteen. By the time he was sixteen he was writing reasonably competent verse and publishing it anonymously in various Halifax newspapers. From 1820 to 1825 he seriously considered becoming a poet. Looking back in later life he wrote, in a 26 May 1845 Novascotian editorial, "Politics was the termagant matron to whom we were married--Poetry was our first love, for whom we have ever since kept a corner of our heart; and, faith, we are not sure that it was not that small corner that preserved all the rest green and vigorous."

It was the newspaper business, not politics, that first displaced poetry as his prime interest. In January 1827 he and his cousin James Spike purchased the Weekly Chronicle (owned by an uncle, William Minns) and renamed it the Acadian. Within a year, however, a larger prize came on the market. In December 1827 Howe bought the Novascotian from George Renny Young and soon turned it into the leading newspaper in the province. During this time he continued to write occasional lyrics for newspaper publication but made no pretentions to becoming a serious poet. His role lay in encouraging others, as he made clear in the 26 May 1845 editorial: "Though God has not vouchsafed to us the power 'to build the lofty rhyme,' nor the leisure to linger long upon even the lower slopes of Parnassus, he has given us ... an abiding faith in the high vocation to which others have been called...." In Howe's view literature was an integral part of developing a truly civilized society in colonial Nova Scotia, "blending the memories of the past with the prophetic anticipations of the future." Literature was a vehicle of vision and a means of nurturing man's best sentiments: "But for the poetic spirit, pervading and permeating through our very existence, by this time we should have been a savage--or a dead, dull clod of the political valley, without as much vitality as a turnip." Through his newspaper and press, he actively promoted the work of Griselda Tonge, Alexander McDougall, Henry Clinch, Mary Jane Katzmann, Thomas Haliburton, John McPherson, and many others, in an effort to develop a tradition of local literature.

In spite of his preference for things cultural, Howe himself was drawn into the political arena as a result of a libel suit brought against him in 1835 by the government over a politically sensitive letter he published in the Novascotian. At his trial, he personally argued for freedom of the press, won his acquittal, and created a political base in the process. He was elected to the provincial assembly the following year and through the 1840s fought for responsible government for Nova Scotia. By 1848 that fight was won and Howe turned his attention to railway building. Through the 1850s he was involved in bitter partisan politics and in railway development; he reached the height of his provincial political career serving as premier from 1860 to 1863.

The issue of the mid 1860s was Confederation, and Howe led opposition forces in Nova Scotia. As a "repeal" candidate, Howe ran and won election to the federal parliament in 1867. But by 1869 Howe recognized that Confederation would remain and accepted a position in the federal cabinet as secretary of state for the provinces. He served as a federal minister until his appointment to the lieutenant governorship of Nova Scotia in April 1873, two months before his death.

Howe's poetic output consisted for the most part of occasional lyrics and songs, with some didactic and descriptive verse. The two poems Howe considered his most serious works were "Melville Island" and "Acadia." The first, published in the Weekly Chronicle, 6 January 1826 (collected in Poems and Essays , 1874), is a reflective, philosophical poem dealing with the human condition in the historical and topographical context of a former prison site near Halifax. It demonstrates how things familiar to Nova Scotians may be viewed as part of universal human experience, and by implication argues that the experiences of life in Nova Scotia are not isolated and remote from the main stream of reality. "Acadia" (first published in Poems and Essays but probably written in the early 1830s) is also dominated by historical and topographical concerns but ultimately projects a vision of a brighter future in patriotic, sociopolitical terms. There is more of Howe the politician and less of Howe the philosopher in this poem. Unfortunately the social and political vision vested in the poem seems blurred and inconclusive, probably because the poem was left incomplete.

Howe's prose works, while competently written, are limited in their interests. His political works deal with issues that are now only of historical concern; his one known work of fiction, "The Locksmith of Philadelphia" (Bentley's Miscellany , 1839), is weak and flat. He appears at his best in the informal essay style of Western and Eastern Rambles (1973), which describe his travels through different parts of Nova Scotia. These pieces ran serially in the Novascotian from 1828 to 1831 and were partially patterned on William Cobbett's Rural Rides (1830). They describe the terrain, the people, and the way of life in rural Nova Scotia.

Howe's literary career, while limited and overshadowed by his political career, was nonetheless a significant part of the cultural growth of Nova Scotia in the 1830s and 1840s. But as a stimulus to literary activity, as a kind of cultural broker, he played an even more vital role in developing a sense of cultural cohesiveness and self-awareness in the society of early-nineteenth-century Nova Scotia. In Howe's eyes cultural and political growth moved together in a healthy society. "Responsibility" was not simply a matter of acquiring power; it was a question of social maturity that manifested itself as much in cultural activity as in political activity.