Allan Greer From elementary school books to encyclopedia entries to scholarly treatises, no work on New France is complete without a section on the “seigneurial system,” a phenomenon that supposedly shaped the agrarian society of this colony and set it apart from other colonial settlements.[1] Imposed upon Canada by absolutist France, so the story goes,… Continue Reading
Latest in: Legal History
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Peter H. Russell’s Canada’s Odyssey is a sweeping reconsideration of the foundations of Canada’s constitutional order that has garnered considerable attention and praise. This essay is the third in a three-part series assessing the book’s significance. Nicole C. O’Byrne Question: Do you think history is actually too important to be left to the professional historians… Continue Reading
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Bradley Miller The Supreme Court declined this month to radically change the way that Canada works. In R v Comeau, lawyers for a New Brunswick man ticketed for bringing too many bottles of beer into the province from Quebec urged the justices to use the history of the Canadian federation to improve its future, at… Continue Reading
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This essay is the final installment in a three-part series on Confederation that provides critical historical context for Canada’s sesquicentennial anniversary. The first two parts were posted on the 26th and 28th of June. Bradley Miller In 1882, during oral arguments at the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council for one of the first court… Continue Reading
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Aaron Willis The sovereignty of British political institutions and English laws in governing Quebec eroded for a variety of reasons. One source of this erosion was the ability to work outside the strictures of the Common Law granted to officials by the use of European Natural law theory. A second critical cause is the rise… Continue Reading
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Aaron Willis The relationship between Britain and supranational structures has consistently raised questions of authority and sovereignty. While the E.U. has provided the most recent theatre for debates over these political concepts, in the eighteenth century it was the expanding empire that generated political crises and the attendant debates. The concept of sovereignty, often in… Continue Reading
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Elizabeth Mancke From the mid-eighteenth century to the early Confederation era, British North Americans and then Canadians confronted a wide range of phenomena that could engender disorder: imperial wars, rebellions, the arrival of immigrants, epidemics, political unrest, and relations with First Nations. All, directly or indirectly, presented challenges to maintaining social and political order. In… Continue Reading
