22 Facts About Charles Cahan

Charles Cahan was educated at Yarmouth Seminary and Dalhousie University.

Charles Cahan married Mary J Hetherington of Halifax, Nova Scotia in March 1887; she died in July 1914.

Charles Cahan died on August 15,1944, and is buried at Riverside Cemetery, in Hebron, Nova Scotia.

Charles Cahan was chief editorial writer of the Halifax Herald and Mail from 1886 to 1894.

Charles Cahan was called to the bar in Nova Scotia in 1893 and in Quebec Bar in 1907, designated KC in 1907 and 1909.

In private business, Charles Cahan was a lawyer and financier for extensive tramway operations in South America, Trinidad and Mexico.

In 1902, Charles Cahan became the general counsel and on-site manager of the Mexican Light and Power Company Limited.

From 1890 to 1894, Charles Cahan was a leader of the Liberal-Conservative Party in Nova Scotia Legislature and a member of the Nova Scotia Legislature for Shelbourne.

In 1901, Charles Cahan managed the provincial campaign for his business associate, John Fitzwilliam Stairs who was the leader of the Nova Scotia Liberal-Conservative Union and a former Conservative house leader.

Charles Cahan was a candidate for the Conservative Party leadership at the 1927 Conservative leadership convention, finishing in third place.

Charles Cahan acquired a whole new respectability, though it is doubtful that many in the party had ever heard of him.

Charles Cahan concluded that members of the Privy Council were "personally ignorant" of Canada yet arrogated "to themselves a prescience and clairvoyance which entitles them to substitute their judgments and even their personal preferences, for the deliberate legislative enactments of the elected representatives of the people who sit in the parliament of Canada".

Charles Cahan introduced a bill, in 1939, to abolish appeals and, after the bill received considerable support in Parliament, the Minister of Justice, Ernest Lapointe, referred it to the Supreme Court, thus affording the Court an opportunity to adjudicate its own pre-eminence.

In 1929, Charles Cahan moved in the House of Commons that a special committee be formed to reconsider the 1919 Nickle Resolution, which had marked the earliest attempt to establish a Canadian government policy forbidding the British and, later, Canadian Sovereign from granting knighthoods, baronetcies, and peerages to Canadians, and set the precedent for later policies prohibiting Canadians from accepting or holding titles of honour from Commonwealth or foreign countries.

Charles Cahan noted that the Nickle Resolution favoured foreign sovereigns over Canada's own sovereign because, since 1919, some 646 foreign orders had been conferred upon persons living in Canada by foreign, non-British sovereigns.

Relations between Canada's religious communities was an important issue that Charles Cahan had to deal with as Secretary of State.

Charles Cahan had come to the conclusion that domestic peace in Canada was largely dependent upon the happiness of the French Canadian people and clergy.

Charles Cahan had to deal with problems of precedence within the Catholic community.

The incident was covered by the press and Charles Cahan, who was the responsible minister, offered to resign.

Charles Cahan was a guest speaker at the Empire Club of Canada in 1919 on the subject of propaganda, and in 1929 on the subject of constitutional issues.

Charles Cahan was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws from Dalhousie University in 1919.

Charles Cahan is a member of the Nova Scotia Railway Hall of Fame.