(continued from 'Ask Martin Stringer')
ALBERTA
1906: Alberta’s first provincial parliament met in the third-floor assembly hall at McKay Avenue School in Edmonton. The rent was $400 per session.
BRITISH COLUMBIA
1856: The Legislative Assembly of Vancouver Island held its inaugural session inside Fort Victoria, then a Hudson’s Bay Company trading post.
MANITOBA
1871: Manitoba’s first provincial legislature convened in four rooms at the Winnipeg home of businessman Andrew Bannatyne.
NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR
1833: When a House of Assembly first gathered in St. John’s, its 15 members conducted public business at a Duckworth Street tavern/inn. No rent money was included in the following year’s budget, so landlady Mary Travers ordered the Assembly to leave and tried to auction off the Speaker’s chair, hat, mace, desks, and papers.
A public notice described the following items as available to the highest bidder:
“1 large desk, containing 8 drawers, filled with a variety of books, papers, and port folio – the speaker’s chair, stuffed and elegantly covered with blue morocco, and with brass – 1 large chair, stuffed, superbly covered, and well and substantially built, used by the usher of the black rod – A cocked hat, of superior quality, but now a little shabby, worn by the sergeant-at-arms – the reporter’s desk – 2 large stoves, with funnelling to suit, and six covered forms – with a variety of articles too tedious to mention – all very valuable.” – Niles’ Register / August 2, 1834
The legislature ordered Travers to return the property. She refused. The items were eventually recovered, though.
NEW BRUNSWICK
1786: The first New Brunswick legislature gathered at the Mallard House hotel in Saint John. That same inn hosted the province's first dramatic theatre production three years later, according to the Historical Guide to New Brunswick. When the capital was moved inland to Fredericton, temporary locations were used until Province Hall was built in 1803.
NOVA SCOTIA
1758: Nova Scotia’s first assembly met at a courthouse and two other Halifax buildings before Province House opened in 1819.
ONTARIO
1792: Upper Canada’s first assembly met at Newark (now Niagara-on-the-Lake), either at Navy Hall or a Freemason’s building. The capital eventually moved to York (now Toronto), where occupying American forces burned the wooden parliamentary buildings in 1813. After the war, the House of Assembly gathered in a hotel ballroom and the home of Chief Justice William Henry Draper before a new structure was completed. Another fire in 1824 forced relocation to the York General Hospital.
PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND
The House of Assembly initially met in taverns and homes until a proper building was completed in 1812. Edward Ryan, the sergeant-at-arms, reputedly called the setup a “damn queer parliament” during the first meetings in 1773 at the Cross Keys Tavern in Charlottetown. The current Province House opened nearby in 1847.
QUEBEC
The Episcopal Palace in Quebec City hosted the Lower Canada Assembly until 1838, when proceedings were shut down in response to the previous year’s rebellion.
SASKATCHEWAN
1905: The two-storey Territorial Administration Building in Regina initially housed the provincial government until the more spacious Legislative Building opened in 1912.
NORTHWEST TERRITORIES
1877: The first Northwest Council assembled inside the police barracks at Fort Livingstone (in modern-day Saskatchewan).
NUNAVUT
1999: Nunavut’s first Legislative Assembly gathered in the gymnasium at Inuksuk High School in Iqaluit while the Legislative Building was being completed.
YUKON
1901: The Yukon Territorial Council met at Dawson City’s Territorial Administration Building until 1953, when the capital relocated to Whitehorse.
CANADA
The Kingston building that housed the Province of Canada’s first Parliament in the 1840s was originally designed as a hospital. When Parliament moved to Montreal the following decade they met at the renovated St. Anne’s Market building, which burned down in 1849 during riots over the Rebellion Losses Bill.
Members were forced to gather at Bonsecours Market Hall and Freemason’s Hall before deciding to rotate the capital between Quebec City and Toronto. Another fire in 1854 left legislators holding their Quebec sessions at the Music Hall and Courthouse.
When fire virtually destroyed the current Parliament Buildings in 1916, politicians in Ottawa moved to the Victoria Memorial Museum Building, now home to the Canadian Museum of Nature. MPs met in the auditorium, with Senators in a first-floor gallery.
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