[Honorable Joseph Howe] albumen photo

Spotting on page but not on mounted photo which is in very good condition.

Joseph Howe was a Nova Scotia leading proponent of representative government. He was born at Halifax in 1804 lived long enough to see Nova Scotia enter Confederation, a transition which he bitterly, but futilely, opposed. He was a newspaperman and a politician. Considered by many to be the greatest Nova Scotian. Nova Scotia had become the first colony to achieve responsible government, and Howe boasted it had been done without "a blow struck or a pane of glass broken." 1869 he entered the dominion cabinet as president of the council. He signed this 1873 (the year he died) document as Secretary of State for the Provinces and Superintendent General of Indian Affairs from 1869 to 1873.

William Notman (1826-1891) was a Canadian photographer and businessman. Notman was born in Paisley, Scotland in 1826, the same year in which photography was born in France. William Notman moved to Montreal in 1856. An amateur photographer, he quickly established a flourishing professional photography studio on Bleury Street. Notman's reputation and business grew over the next three decades, the first Canadian photographer with an international reputation.