One of the most frequently told stories around the Legislative Assembly is the one about the photograph of Speaker Higgins in the Speaker’s Corridor. It is said that Speaker Higgins was dead at the time the photo was taken because he refused to be photographed during his lifetime. As much as we would love for great stories like this to be true, this one, sadly, is not.
David W. Higgins was born in Nova Scotia in 1834. As a teenager he moved to California in search of gold and followed the successive gold rushes up to British Columbia. After settling in Victoria, he started a newspaper called the Victoria Daily Chronicle and later bought the British Colonist, founded by Amor De Cosmos.
Higgins continued to run the British Colonist and sat on Victoria’s City Council for many years before making the jump to provincial politics in 1886. He served as Speaker from 1890 to 1898 and retired from politics after being defeated in the Provincial General Election of 1900. Speaker Higgins wrote several books and continued to write for different newspapers until his death in 1917.
So, how do we know the story is not true? In 1904, Higgins published a book called “The Mystic Spring.” The book features the same photograph that hangs in the Speaker’s Corridor on its inside cover. The Legislative Library even has an original copy of the book that was personally autographed by Speaker Higgins directly beneath the famous photo.
As for the part of the story about him not wanting to have his photo taken, a quick search online reveals that there were many photos of Speaker Higgins taken during his lifetime.
The impressive residence of Speaker Higgins, known as Regent’s Park, still stands at the corner of Fort and St. Charles streets, Victoria, and is run as a bed and breakfast.
