Wednesday, March 19th, 2025, 7:00 pm (Atlantic), in-person at the Lindsay Children’s Room on the 2nd floor at the Halifax Central Library, 5440 Spring Garden Road, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Click here for the Zoom link to attend the talk virtually.

Christopher McCreery has served as an advisor to the Canadian and British governments on honours policy. Author of eighteen books, his works, The Canadian Honours System and The Order of Canada are the principal works on the history of honours in Canada. McCreery has served in various positions in the Senate of Canada and Privy Council Office and is one of the Commonwealth’s foremost scholars on the symbolic and constitutional position of the Crown. Since 2008 he has served as Private Secretary to the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia. From 2012-18 he served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Canadian Museum of History. Along with Professor Michael Bliss and Richard Gwyn, he was part of the triumvirate of historians who diversified and made more accessible the museum’s Canada History Hall which was opened in 2017.

Abstract: 
The arrival of the first Governor of Acadia accompanied by his secretary, Jean Ralluau in 1604, signalled the haphazard beginnings of an administrative structure that would eventually develop into a formal public service. This lecture will examine the development of the position of the governor’s secretary and its transition from transient patronage post, sometimes secure, and topic of vociferous legislative debate, into a statutory office that would come to be replicated across Canada.