The Royal Coat of Arms, a symbol of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, has graced a succession
of Halifax courthouses since colonial times. Now displayed above the bench in the Court of
Appeal’s fifth-floor courtroom at the Halifax Law Courts, it was almost lost forever during the
court’s latest move.
The coat of arms depicts a crowned lion and a unicorn on either side of a shield, which is topped
with the royal crown and bears the emblems of the components of the United Kingdom – three
lions of England, the harp of Ireland and the Scottish lion. The shield is trimmed with the motto
Honi soit qui mal y pense, which means Evil to him who evil thinks. Below the figures and
shield is the motto of the sovereign, Dieu et mon droit – God and my right.
When the Supreme Court moved from the Spring Garden Road courthouse – its home since 1860
– to the Law Courts building on the waterfront in 1971, the arms apparently did not follow, at
least for a few years. The old courthouse was renovated to house a provincial library and, in the
process, the historic coat of arms was relegated to a storage room. Chief Justice Ian MacKeigan
and a fellow judge of the court’s Appeal Division, Justice Gordon Cooper, reputedly rescued and
refurbished the tattered emblem in the late 1970s or early 1980s, and restored it to its rightful
place.
Source: Reminiscences set out in a memo of Justice Ted Flinn, dated April 8, 2001.