Commentary
Sir Charles Tupper pulled an all-nighter on the evening of his first political meeting on Oct. 10, 1844, in his hometown of Amherst, Nova Scotia. The occasion was a debate between Joseph Howe, the famous opposition leader, reformer, and “Father of Responsible Government,” and Alexander Stewart, a senior Conservative and legislative councillor who served in the province’s venerable upper house. (Back then most provinces had their own senate.)
Politics was not the reason why Tupper stayed up all night. Rather, it was because he was a doctor—the best in town, in demand across a more than 80-kilometre radius, a distance he covered either on horseback or by horse-and-buggy—and his all-nighter was a typical house call. (A doctor in those days attended patients at their home.)…