Note 84 — Chapter VII

The Grand Parade as it is called, like other spaces reserved in 1749 for public purpose, such as the old burial ground, public landing, the common, etc., had been used for the purpose to which it was originally appropriated but the title had been supposed not to have passed out of the Crown. Towards the close of the last century it was thought advisable to vest all the public property in Trustees under several grants from the Crown for that purpose; accordingly a grant was made of the parade ground to certain public officials and their successors in office, to be held by them for the public purposes for which it had been originally reserved. This grant with all the others had been constructed under the supervision of old Attorney General Uniacke and of Chief Justice Blowers, but it having been afterwards discovered that none of the public officials to whom it was granted possessed the corporate powers and therefore had no succession in law, and the original incumbents at the time of the grant being all dead, it was concluded that the title had lapsed to the Crown. Lord Dalhousie, Mr. Wallace and a few others in their exuberant zeal for the erection of a college on the Scotch model, undertook to have another grant from the Crown passed of the whole or part of the parade ground to the Governors of the College, reserving, it is understood, certain privileges over a portion of the ground to the public.

The Governors of Dalhousie College claimed under this grant. The City contends that the old grant was not forfeited and that this space among other public property appertaining to the town was under the Act of Incorporation turned over to the city. That in order to create a legal forfeiture there must be process of Escheat gone through, and further, that though the public functionaries to whom it was granted were not possessed of corporate rights or had any succession of their offices in law, yet the fact of their having been by Royal patent constituted trustees of the property, by inference of law the Crown intended to make them a corporation for that particular purpose, and that their successors in the various offices they held, or the successor of any one of them, would possess the power of supporting the grant. Otherwise the object of the Crown in making the grant would be defeated, and as Crown grants are always constituted in law most favorably for the Crown, it might be inferred that the Crown intended to support its grant by constituting those public officers and their successors in office a corporation with succession for that special purpose. Later the dispute was settled by private arrangement.