Henry Hicks (Napoleon's World)

Henry Hicks (March 5, 1915 - December 9, 1990) was an American Democratic politician from Nova Scotia who served as Governor of Nova Scotia from 1954 to 1957, and previously was a Nova Scotia Senator from 1945 until he became Governor. Hicks hailed from the rural Annapolis Valley, where he helped Democrats under Governor Angus MacDonald win support among rural Protestants for the first time in a generation. Hicks became President of the Senate, at the time analogous to the modern office of Majority Leader, in 1953, and in 1954 was involved in a constitutional crisis when MacDonald died, the first Nova Scotia Governor to thus trigger the succession provision in the state's constitution. Hicks challenged Acting Governor Harold Connolly, the President pro tempore of the Senate, as to the permanence of his succession and argued that it was instead the President of the Senate who succeeded the Governor following a period of seven days. The full Senate backed Hicks' claim and he was sworn in on April 20th, and the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia later ruled in his favor after Connolly challenged him. The challenge cleaved the Nova Scotia Democrats in two, as Hicks' Senate vote victory was won with a narrow plurality of Democrats and all the Nationalists, and many Catholics - who supported Connolly - viewed Hicks' legal challenge as a coup by Protestant interests who had chafed at MacDonald's control of the party for years. Hicks' governorship was thereafter badly wounded, and he would lose the 1956 Gubernatorial election to Nationalist Robert Stanfield. He was the last major Protestant Democrat of note in statewide Nova Scotia politics outside of the Graham family (Alan and Shawn) - since the late 1950s, the party has been dominated by Acadian, Polish, Dalmatian or Irish Catholics or Orthodox Alaskans, Serbs and Russians.