Hiram Blanchard (January 17, 1820 – December 17, 1874) was a Nova Scotia lawyer, politician, and the first premier of Nova Scotia. Blanchard won election to the Nova Scotia legislative assembly in Inverness in 1859 as a Liberal.
Early life
Hiram Blanchard was born in West River, Nova Scotia, on January 17, 1820, to father Jonathan Blanchard and mother Sarah Goggins. Hiram attended the same school as his brother, Jotham Blanchard, Pictou Academy. After graduating, Blanchard began studying law at Guysborough, Nova Scotia, with future Nova Scotia House of Assembly member William Frederick DesBarres and was admitted to the bar as an attorney at age 21 in November 1841. Marrying Eliza Cantrell in 1842, he was admitted to the bar as a barrister in April 1843. Shortly after his admission to the bar, Blanchard opened up a law office in the small seaside village of Port Hood, Nova Scotia, practising in the law courts of Antigonish and Guysborough. In a short time, Blanchard gained a reputation amongst those in the legal profession for his skill in examining witnesses and clear presentation of facts.
In 1860, Blanchard moved to Halifax and became engaged in a partnership with Jonathan McCully, then Solicitor General and railway commissioner in the government of Joseph Howe. There, he argued against characters such as James MacDonald, the future federal Minister of Justice and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia. Charles James Townshend, a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, observed the courtroom encounters of McCully and Blanchard, commenting "... it was delightful and instructive to listen to [their] forensic battle. Both were men of high and honourable character, incapable of any unworthy schemes to win their cases."
Political career
In 1860, William Young left politics to become chief justice of Nova Scotia. Blanchard had been very reluctant to become involved in politics until up to just before this time. The 1859 Nova Scotia election was largely influenced between the ongoing squabbles between Roman Catholic and Protestant populations, but Hiram Blanchard's election win for the Liberals in his constituency of Inverness was based on a platform of "equal rights to all, proscription of none, favouritism to none". Blanchard rose above religious quarrels and managed to win in a Roman Catholic community, even though he was a Presbyterian himself. In the Nova Scotia House of Assembly, Blanchard drew particular attention to the plight of the insane and the deaf, two disadvantaged groups in Nova Scotia at the time. Although he supported the free schooling initiative of Premier Charles Tupper, Blanchard objected to the idea that schools should be governed by a council made up of members of the Executive Council of Nova Scotia.