Hincks, Sir Francis

Sir Francis Hincks, (born December 14, 1807, Cork, County Cork, Ireland—died August 18, 1885, Montreal, Canada), Irish-born Canadian journalist and politician. He served as joint premier of the united province of Canada in 1851–54.

Hincks immigrated to York, Upper Canada (as of 1834, Toronto), in 1832 and by 1835 was manager of the Bank of the People, which rivaled the Bank of Upper Canada. In 1838 he founded the Examiner in Toronto, a moderate liberal newspaper in which he campaigned for responsible (i.e., cabinet) government; the Examiner merged with The Globe (Toronto) in 1855.

After the union of Upper and Lower Canada as Canada West and Canada East (1840), Hincks entered the first united Parliament in 1841 as a Liberal for Oxford, becoming inspector general of accounts and member of the executive council. He resigned his post in 1843 and took up the editorship of the Montreal Times and also founded the Pilot, a leading opposition journal. In 1848 Hincks resumed the inspector generalship under the joint premiership of Robert Baldwin and Louis Hippolyte Lafontaine; in 1851–54 he was joint premier of Canada with Augustin Norbert Morin.

As premier, Hincks encouraged railway development and in 1854 concluded a treaty of reciprocity with the United States. Decimal coinage was introduced during the Hincks–Morin administration. In 1855 Hincks was made governor of Barbados and the Windward Islands and served until 1861, when he went to British Guiana as governor (1861–69).

Back in Canada, he served as minister of finance (1869–73) in Sir John Macdonald’s government. Although reelected to Parliament in 1873, Hincks resigned from the cabinet that year and from active politics the following year, feeling out of touch with Canadian affairs. He was knighted in 1869.