Osgoode offers a wealth of Canadian legal history
by Jim Phillips
This commentary was first published in the Financial Post on December 20, 2006.
Which Canadian Army General sued a journalist over allegations that he had caused the unnecessary deaths of Canadian soldiers in World War I by launching an attack when he knew the armistice had been signed?
We know that patronage and judicial appointments have often gone together in this country, but which pre-Confederation premier took the practice to new heights by appointing himself Chief Justice?
No section 96 judge has ever been removed by the method necessary to get rid of one - a joint address from the Commons and Senate to the Governor-General - but who came closest, resigning before suffering that ignominious fate?
Could a woman without any legal training take on the Toronto legal establishment of the 1920s over the administration of her estate, fight her case all the way to the Privy Council, and win?
The answers to these questions, and to many others concerning the often fascinating legal history of Canada, can be found in the publications of the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History.
Founded in 1979 on the initiative of then attorney-general of Ontario, Roy McMurtry, who is the current president, the Osgoode Society's mandate is to study and promote among the public and the legal profession the history of law and legal institutions in this country.
It does so in two principal ways. Over the past quarter century it has compiled a large oral history collection, recording the experiences of literally hundreds of lawyers, judges and others involved in the administration of the law. The interviews are transcribed and total more than 65,000 pages of transcription, most of them accessible to researchers through the Archives of Ontario.
The other aspect of the Society's work is its publishing program of (to date) 66 books on Canadian legal history. Some written by academics, some by practitioners and judges, they cover the gamut from studies of famous Supreme Court of Canada cases, to judicial memoirs, biographies, court histories, essays about the profession or women and the law or the history of aboriginal rights. Every region of the country, from
Newfoundland to British Columbia, is represented, as is every period of Canadian history from New France to the 1980s and the Brian Dickson-led Supreme Court of Canada.
The books are intended to be accessible to the non-specialist, but they also conform to the highest standards of scholarship and most are published in partnership with the University of Toronto Press.
They have won a variety of awards, including the MacDonald Prize, given annually for the best book in any field of Canadian history.
The Osgoode Society is funded in part by the Law Foundation of Ontario and in part by its some 900 members across the country. Those interested in joining should consult our website at www.osgoodesociety.ca.
And the answers?
Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Currie, commander of the Canadian Corps, won his suit for libel, but was awarded only $500 of the $50,000 he asked for.
William Young served only a few months as premier of Nova Scotia in 1860; when Chief Justice Brenton Halliburton died Young took the job, one he had always wanted more than that of head of government. Leo Landreville was the youngest judge on the Ontario Supreme Court bench when he was appointed in 1956, but nine years later he resigned rather than be removed following a recommendation to that effect by a joint committee of Parliament. It was not his judicial conduct that got him onto trouble, but share dealings with a municipal franchisee during his tenure as mayor of Sudbury.
And, finally, in 1930 the redoutable Mrs. Elizabeth Bethune Campbell, despite having no formal legal training, successfully won her suit over the handling of her step-mother's estate case by prominent members of the Toronto legal establishment. Read all about it.
