Robie, Simon Bradstreet

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: J. Murray Beck, “ROBIE, SIMON BRADSTREET,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 8, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/robie_simon_bradstreet_8E.html
  • DCB profile:
    • Lawyer, politician, and judge; b. 1770 in Marblehead, Mass., son of Thomas Robie and Mary Bradstreet; m. 6 Oct. 1806 Elizabeth Creighton in Halifax; d. there 3 Jan. 1858
    • Initially he appeared much more radical than he actually was because his first eight years in the assembly pitted him against Sir John Wentworth, the most authoritarian of Nova Scotia’s lieutenant governors. 
    • Robie’s legal and legislative experience began to secure recognition in 1815 when he became solicitor general. Defeated for the speakership in 1812 by Lewis Morris Wilkins, he secured it in 1817 and was re-elected by the new assembly a year later. As speaker, he incurred the displeasure of Lieutenant Governor Lord Dalhousie, a person of great likes and dislikes, who described him as “an ill-tempered crab, deeply tinctured in Yankee principles,” and a man who “‘neither fears God nor honours the King.’” Because of the assembly’s failure to accept his proposals in 1820, an action which he blamed partly on the speaker, Dalhousie refused as a farewell gift, after initially accepting it, “a Star and a Sword” for which the lower house had voted £1,000. He complained bitterly of the assembly’s “disposition to disregard the Prerogative rights, and the respect due to [the] first branch of the Constitutional Legislature,” singling out its failure to provide money for the inspection of the militia as he had requested and to answer his special messages. Robie sorrowfully accepted responsibility for the second failing and blamed it on special circumstances: the confusion resulting from King George III’s death and the belief that the business of the assembly must come automatically to an end. After consulting other assemblymen, Robie felt better; one of them wondered what “evil genie has been at work” to produce Dalhousie’s “inconsistent and absurd” action. The “evil genie” was the loss of dignity which Dalhousie believed he had suffered and which led him for the moment to abandon reason and accuracy for emotion and petulance. Later, while governor-in-chief, he would have a higher opinion of Robie; indeed, by 1826–27 he was even describing his old antagonist as one of his chief Nova Scotian allies.
    • Competent in the law, possessed of a wide circle of friends, Robie was also widely known for his philanthropy; indeed, one account states that the poor would “lament his loss; for his charities were almost without limit.” His career illustrates how, in altered circumstances, the liberal of one era may become a conservative in the next. Perhaps his speculations on the mysteries of life and the afterworld provided a welcome respite from his experiences in the real world which, after 1830, he had increasingly failed to relish or understand.
  • Son of United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=15631
  • Find a Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/171719757/simon-bradstreet-robie