Thomas Chandler Haliburton (17 December 1796 – 27 August 1865) was a Nova Scotia-born judge, author, novelist, and Conservative MP in Britain. He was the first internationally bestselling fiction author from what is now Canada.

He was a cousin of the pre-eminent London property developer James Burton, whose sons James Burton Junior, the Egyptologist, and Decimus Burton, the architect, hosted him in London.

He was the father of the British civil servant Lord Haliburton, who was the first native Canadian to be raised to the Peerage of the United Kingdom, and of the anthropologist Robert Grant Haliburton, who founded the Canada First organization that contended that English Canadians were the "heirs of Aryan northmen" and that French Canadians were a "bar to progress".

Life

Thomas Chandler Haliburton was born on 17 December 1796, in Windsor, Nova Scotia, to William Hersey Otis Haliburton, a judge and politician, and Lucy Chandler Grant. His mother died when he was a small child. When Thomas was seven, his father married Susanna Davis, the daughter of Michael Francklin who had been Nova Scotia's Lieutenant Governor.

He attended University of King's College in Windsor, from which he graduated in 1815 to become a lawyer who practiced at Annapolis Royal. Between 1826 and 1829, Haliburton represented Annapolis County in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly.

Haliburton's fame came from his writings on history, politics, farming, and from his The Clockmaker serialised novel,which first appeared in the Novascotian and was published throughout the British Empire, that described the humorous adventures of Sam Slick.

Relations with English Burton family

Thomas Chandler Haliburton resided in England from 1837, where he was hosted and entertained in London by his cousins Decimus Burton, Jane Burton, James Burton Junior the Egyptologist, Septimus Burton the solicitor, Octavia Burton, and Jessy Burton. Thomas asked James Burton Junior, to check the proofs of his work Letter Bag of the Great Western, with which Burton was unimpressed, in 1839, and those of the third series of The Clockmaker, in 1840. The pair travelled together to Scotland to investigate their in-common ancestry, and intended to tour Canada and the United States of America together. where he is buried in its All Saints' Churchyard.

Family

thumb|Mrs Louisa Haliburton (née Neville) first wife of Thomas Chandler Haliburton

thumb|Daughter Amelia Gilpin by [[William Notman]]

Thomas Chandler Haliburton married Louisa Neville, who was the daughter of Captain Laurence Neville of the Eighth Light Dragoons, with whom he returned to Nova Scotia. Louisa's history before their marriage is related in the "Haliburton Chaplet," which was edited by their son Robert Grant Haliburton and published in Toronto in 1899. The couple had three sons and five daughters:

  • Susannah Lucy Anne (later Weldon) (1817–1899), who was a significant ceramic collector;
  • Augusta F., who married an ironmonger;
  • Emma, who married an Anglican clergyman of the surname Bainbridge Smith;
  • Amelia (25 July 1829 – 14 January 1902), who was a landscape artist who married The Rev. Edwin Gilpin, Dean of Nova Scotia, in 1849, by whom she had four sons and one daughter including the author Edwin Gilpin (1850–1907);
  • Arthur (1832–1907), who was a British civil servant who was the first native Canadian to be raised to the Peerage of the United Kingdom, as 1st Baron Haliburton GCB.

Legacy

Haliburton promoted immigration to the colonies of British North America, and one of his first written works was an emigrant's guide to Nova Scotia that was published in 1823 that was entitled A General Description of Nova Scotia; Illustrated by a New and Correct Map The community of Haliburton, Nova Scotia was named after him. In 1902, a memorial to Haliburton and his first wife was erected in Christ Church, Windsor, Nova Scotia, by their children.

In Ontario, Haliburton County is named after him because of his work as the first chairman of the Canadian Land and Emigration Company.

In 1884, faculty and students at his alma mater founded and named a literary society in his honour. The Haliburton Society remains active at the University of King's College, Halifax and is the longest-standing collegiate literary society in the Commonwealth of Nations and North America.

His mention of "hurly on the long pond on the ice", which appears in the second volume of The Attaché, or Sam Slick in England, a work of fiction published in 1844, has been interpreted by some as a reference to an ice-hockey-like game he may have played during his years at King's College. It is the basis of Windsor's disputed claim of being the town that fathered ice hockey.

Nova Scotian artist William Valentine painted Haliburton's portrait. His former home in Windsor is preserved as a museum.

Works

  • A General Description of Nova Scotia - 1823
  • An Historical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia - 1829
  • The Clockmaker - 1836
  • The Clockmaker (2nd Series) - 1838
  • The Bubbles of Canada - 1839
  • A Reply to the Report of the Earl of Durham - 1839
  • The Letter-Bag of the Great Western - 1840
  • The Clockmaker (3rd Series) - 1840
  • The Attaché; or Sam Slick in England - 1843
  • The Attaché; or Sam Slick in England (2nd Series) - 1844
  • The Old Judge, Or Life in a Colony - 1849
  • The English in America - 1851
  • Rule and Misrule in English America - 1851 vol 1 vol 2
  • Sam Slick's Wise Saws and Modern Instances - 1853
  • The Americans at Home; or, Byways, Backwoods, and Prairies - 1855
  • Nature and Human Nature - 1855
  • The Season-Ticket* - 1860
  • Maxims of an Old Stager (Using a pseudonym)

References

Further reading

  • The Haliburton Club (archived 27 September 2007)
  • Photos of 1937 plaque by Historic Sites and Monuments Board (archived 24 April 2011)
  • Haliburton House Museum (archived 19 November 2011)

Electronic editions