In Johnny Bluenose at the Polls, first published in 1994, historian Brian Cuthbertson describes some of Nova Scotia's grittiest and hardest-fought election campaigns.
He describes an era when there were no secret ballots and voting was a spectator sport. Property owners voted by declaring their choice on a hastily erected platform before a sheriff and assembled crowd. Political supporters were often bribed with rum to intimidate those voting for other candidates. Merchants jostled for power by forcing their debtors to vote for them. Lawyers fiercely competed wih other lawyers to get elected, often carying their rivalries into the courtroom.
Johnny Bluenose at the Polls revives the furious election battles of yesteryear, showing the issues at stake to be more familiar than we might like to think.

BRIAN CUTHBERTSON is a leading historian of Nova Scotia. He has worked as an archivist for the Public Archives of Nova Scotia, is the former published and editor of the Nova Scotia Historical Review and is the former Head of Heritage for Nova Scotia. He has been writing on Nova Scotia history since he first published a biography in 1978 of Richard John Uniacke, entitled The Old Attorney General. Since his retirement in 1995 he has devoted much of his time to research and writing, and is the author of several books on Nova Scotia history, including illustrated histories of the towns of Lunenburg and Wolfville, John Cabot and the Voyage of the Matthew, Johnny Bluenose at the Polls: Epic Nova Scotian Election Battles 1758-1848, and The Halifax Citadel: Portrait of a Military Fortress.

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