| Reviews / Comptes Rendus | Labour/Le Travail, 54

Reviews / Comptes Rendus

Jonathan Swainger and Constance Backhouse, eds., People and Place: Historical Influences on Legal Culture (Vancouver: UBC Press 2003)

ACCORDING TO THE UBC Press Marketing Department promotion for People and Place: Historical Influences on Legal Culture, this collection contains "path-breaking," "fascinating," "innovative," and "interesting" essays linking people, place, and the law in Canada's past. Thus it was with great anticipation that this rather expensive ($85.00 hardcover; $29.95 paperback) and blandly covered book was opened. After reading slightly over two hundred pages with a prologue, an introduction, and nine articles, the question is: do Swainger and Backhouse deliver? The answer is: somewhat.

The editors have tried to do too much. On one level, according to Swainger in the prologue, the anthology is in honor of Louis Knafla's contribution to English and Canadian legal history plus Knafla's mentorship of graduate students in these respective fields of study. On another level, the introduction by Swainger and Backhouse tries to place Knafla's 30 years of scholarship and the essays in his honour within two themes in legal culture: people and place. Thus each paper must, at some stage, show the relationship between people and location in the formation of law within a historical setting. And while the editors' task is a daunting one, it is unfortunate the People and Place emerge unevenly.

Of the nine articles, the best are by the established and semi-established scholars in the field, namely John McLaren, Constance Backhouse, and Jonathan Swainger. In "The King, the People, the Law ... and the Constitution: Justice Robert Thorpe and the Roots of Irish Whig Ideology in Early Upper Canada," McLaren successfully illustrates how Thorpe's short-lived, two-year career (1805–1807) as a judge of Upper Canada's Court of King's Bench was shaped by the confluence of timing, people, and place. More specifically, McLaren has shown the value of comparative legal history by examining the influence of the immigration of an individual, an Irish lawyer, to a British colony on the legal culture of a community.

The Backhouse article, "'Don't You Bully Me ... Justice I Want If There is Justice to Be Had': The Rape of Mary Ann Burton, London, Ontario, 1907" is a welcome and refreshing change. Instead of discussing yet another landmark and precedent-setting case in the annals of Canadian legal history, Backhouse, through the use of long buried criminal files in the Ontario Archives, shows how a case study of the "ordinary" reveals much about the relationship between people, place, and the law. And although the Burton rape trial is "not the stuff" of published law reports or criminal law classes, it is noteworthy. According to Backhouse, the case "reveals that there were multiple understandings of justice in early-twentieth Canada." (89)

Jonathan Swainger presents an interesting discussion of how time and place impact the police. In "Police Culture in British Columbia and 'Ordinary Duty' in the Peace River Country, 1910–39," Swainger suggests that due to locale, the British Columbia Provincial Police (BCPP) during this time operated in the midst of a time warp. While police on the Prairies and even within British Columbia itself were changing to meet the times (i.e. urbanization), the BCPP in the Peace River Country continued to operate within the mythology of the "law marches west" syndrome. In fact, Swainger stipulates that the police in Northern British Columbia saw their role as maintaining law and order in a rugged, isolated frontier environment long after other police agencies had redefined their function in Canadian society.

Of the remaining six articles, two came close to the standard set by McLaren, Backhouse, and Swainger. Lesley Erickson's essay, "Murdered Women and Mythic Villains: The Criminal Case and Imaginary Criminal in the Canadian West, 1886–1930," explores how the creation of the mythic villain influenced the police and the legal process in the "creation of race, class, and gender inequalities in the larger cultural community." (97) Through the use of three criminal cases, the Rosalie Murder Trials of 1889 in Calgary, the 1907 Gowland Trial of Morden (Manitoba) and the "Dark Strangler" case of 1927 in Winnipeg, Erickson shows how race and class influenced decision making and legal culture in Western Canada. In addition, these cases illustrate the patriarchy of a Prairie society where every race, class, and gender was to limit their interactions and relationships to their own group. Otherwise, Erickson asserts, unpleasant consequences would result.

Complementing Erickson's essay is "'Imagine that! A Lady Going to an Office!': Janet Kathleen Gilley" by Joan Brockman and Dorothy E. Chunn. Janet Gilley is important for a number of reasons. First, she was the fifteenth woman to be called to the bar in British Columbia in 1924. Second, she was one of only 7 women from a group of 23 who entered the legal profession in the province from 1912 to 1930 who practiced law for a long period of time (1924–1972). And third, the Gilley story is part of a much larger oral history project which focuses on the life and times of the 23 female pioneer lawyers. Thanks to Brockman and Chunn, this case study reveals much about the relationship between a person, a place, and legal culture. One can only hope that the other twenty-two case studies are of similar quality.

Unfortunately, Roderick G. Martin's essay "Macleod at Law: A Judicial Biography of James Farquharson Macleod, 1874–94" is a bit of a disappointment. Instead of placing Macleod's tenure on the bench in the North West Territories within the context of the two themes for the collection, Martin lambastes historians for ignoring Macleod's contribution to Western legal history. Hoping to rectify this injustice, the author provides an overview of Macleod's involvement in the North West Mounted Police courts system. From this Martin attempts to draw two rather weighty conclusions. Not only can Macleod be credited with the foundation of the criminal justice system in the North West Territories, but his unique life and times were crucial "to the evolution, life, and growth of law and order in the prairie west." (54) Though such statements may prove to be correct, Martin's judicial biography, as it stands, does not prove them sufficiently.

One paper that is both uneven and misleading is "Boomtown Brothels in the Kootenays, 1895–1905" by Charleen P. Smith. Ostensibly studying the complex relationship between prostitutes, their clients, and the police in the southern interior of British Columbia during a limited ten-year time period, Smith repeatedly goes beyond the time line set for analysis. Part of the problem stems from Smith's admission that much of the source material in the article is from her Masters thesis, "Regulating Prostitution in British Columbia, 1895–1930." Overall, her study of boomtown brothels in the Kootenay Region does not fit adequately in the agenda set for People and Place.

Two papers, one by David Philips entitled "William Augustus Miles (1796–1851): Crime, Policing and Moral Entrepreneurship in England and Australia," and "Incarcerating Holiness: Religious Enthusiasm and the Law in Oregon, 1904" by Jim Phillips, Rosemary Gartner, and Kelly De Luca, serve as examples of round pegs in square holes. For example, Philips acknowledges that his essay is merely a summary of a book by the same name published a few years earlier. Thus, little to no attempt is made to place the work within the framework established by Swainger and Backhouse. And the second, rather long paper is well beyond the scope of the collection as the three authors proudly announce that their purpose is to "assess the role of the asylum ... as a tool of social control in early twentieth-century Oregon." Both papers seem to be included as an afterthought. This is not to say they are poor; they are not. But they would be better served in a volume more conducive to the strengths of their respective arguments.

Overall, despite some drawbacks and a lack of conclusion to the collection, Swainger and Backhouse have produced a welcome addition to legal historiography. And while it might not always be "path-breaking," "fascinating," "innovative," and "interesting," it should be read by historians and lawyers alike.


Terry L. Chapman Medicine Hat College

Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.