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Edmund Leslie Newcombe

justice of the Supreme Court of Canada (1859-1931)

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ5339637
Source-derived summary

Edmund Leslie Newcombe, (February 17, 1859 – December 9, 1931) was a Canadian lawyer, civil servant, and Puisne Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.

Early life

Edmund Leslie Newcombe was born on February 17, 1859, in Cornwallis, Nova Scotia, the son of John Cumming Newcombe and Abigail H. Calkin. His father was a farmer and deacon of the Reformed Presbyterian Church who died in 1866 when Edmund was six years old. His sister, Margaret Florence Newcombe, later became the first woman to graduate from Dalhousie University and served as principal of the Halifax Ladies' College from 1911 to 1918. The Edmund could trace his family from Acadians expelled from Connecticut a century earlier.

Newcombe received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Dalhousie University in 1878 and a Master of Arts in 1881. He also earned a Bachelor of Laws degree from the short-lived University of Halifax in 1881.

Legal career

Newcombe was called to the bar in January 1883. He later joined the Halifax firm of Meagher, Drysdale, and Newcombe. He remained active at Dalhousie, serving on the board of governors of Dalhousie University from 1887 to 1893, and taught a course on marine insurance at the Dalhousie Law School from 1891 to 1893.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Edmund Leslie Newcombe” as justice of the Supreme Court of Canada (1859-1931). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Edmund, Leslie and Newcombe.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1859, 1931, 1866, 1911—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1859-02-17. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Edmund, Leslie and Newcombe providing the first useful test.
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Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Edmund Leslie Newcombe”, the useful work is to connect “justice of the Supreme Court of Canada (1859-1931)” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5339637. VIAF identifies the subject as 308180948. The Library of Congress control number is no2013106728. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1859, 1931, 1866 and 1911.

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The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Edmund Leslie Newcombe” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.