Drawing on engaging case studies, Essays in the History of Canadian Law brings the law to life. The contributors to this collection provide rich historical and social context for each case, unravelling the process of legal decision-making and explaining the impact of the law on the people involved in legal disputes. Examining the law not simply as legislation and institutions, but as discourse, practice, symbols, rhetoric, and language, the book’s chapters show the law as both oppressive and constraining and as a point of contention and means of resistance. This collection presents new approaches and concerns, as well as re-examinations of existing themes with new evidence and modes of storytelling. Contributors cover many legal thematic areas, from criminal to labour, civil, administrative, and human rights law, spanning English and French Canada, and ranging from the mid-eighteenth century to the late twentieth century. The legal cases vary from precedent-setting cases to lesser-known ones, from those driven by one woman’s quest for personal justice to others in which state actors dominate. Bringing to light how the people embroiled in these cases interacted with the legal system, the book reveals the ramifications of a legal system characterized by multiple layers of inequality.

This fifth volume in the distinguished series on the history of Canadian law turns to the important issues of crime and criminal justice. In examining crime and criminal law specifically, the volume contributes to the long-standing concern of Canadian historians with law, order, and authority. The volume covers criminal justice history at various times in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes. It is a study which opens up greater vistas of understanding to all those interested in the interstices of law, crime, and punishment.

These essays look at key social, economic, and political issues of the times and show how they influenced the developing legal system.

In May 1928, the body of George Edey was discovered on his Saskatchewan farm, leading to the swift arrest of a deaf and mentally disabled farmhand named Mike Hack. Following a three-day murder trial, Hack was quickly convicted and sentenced to death. Denied clemency, in January 1929 he was hanged in the courtyard of the Regina Jail at twenty-seven years of age and buried in an unmarked grave. Prairie Justice dissects this case, revealing its implications for important themes in the history of the Canadian criminal justice system. Wayne Sumner meticulously traces the narrative of the case, analysing each step from the initial murder investigation to the subsequent arrest, trial, conviction, denial of clemency, and execution of the man accused. Drawing on a personal connection to the case rooted in his family history – his father’s hometown was the village where the crime occurred, and both his grandfather and great-grandfather were involved in the investigation – Sumner uncovers deeper and more universal reasons to share the story. The book punctuates the narrative with insightful analysis on key criminal justice themes illustrated by the case: unfitness to stand trial, the defence of insanity, ineffective assistance of counsel, wrongful conviction, and miscarriage of justice. Ultimately, Prairie Justice exposes how access to justice can be merely illusory for the poor and marginalized.

Boozy and boisterous. The Georges – the communities of South Fort George and Fort George that ultimately became Prince George – acquired a seedy reputation for a century, at times branded the dubious title of Canada’s “most dangerous city.” Is Prince George really such a bad lad? The Notorious Georges explores how the pursuit of respectability collided with caricatures of a riotous settlement frontier in its early years. Anxious about being marginalized by the provincial government and venture capitalists, municipal leaders blamed Indigenous and mixed-heritage people, non-preferred immigrants, and transient labourers for local crime. Jonathan Swainger combs through police and legal records, government publications, and media commentary to demonstrate that the disorder was not so different from the rest of the province – and “respectable” white residents were often to blame. This lively account tells us about more than a particular community’s identity. It also sheds light on small-town disaffection in modern Canada.

This is the second of three volumes in an important collection that recounts the sweeping history of law in Canada. The period covered in this volume witnessed both continuity and change in the relationships among law, society, Indigenous peoples, and white settlers. The authors explore how law was as important to the building of a new urban industrial nation as it had been to the establishment of colonies of agricultural settlement and resource exploitation. The book addresses the most important developments in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, including legal pluralism and the co-existence of European and Indigenous law. It pays particular attention to the Métis and the Red River Resistance, the Indian Act, and the origins and expansion of residential schools in Canada. The book is divided into four parts: the law and legal institutions; Indigenous peoples and Dominion law; capital, labour, and criminal justice; and those less favoured by the law. A History of Law in Canada examines law as a dynamic process, shaped by and affecting other histories over the long term.

Covering a broad range of topics, this volume examines developments over the last two hundred years in the legal profession and the judiciary, nineteenth-century prison history, as well as the impact of the 1815 Treaty of Paris.