3. “A just and obvious distinction”: The Meaning of Imprisonment for Debt and the Criminal Law in Upper Canada’s Age of Reform

McNairn, Jeffrey L.

doi:10.3138/9781442670051-006

Cited by 2 publications

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“…Fortunately for prison researchers, the entire collection of penitentiary reels is now digitized and available online, which should allow for researchers to make both more extensive and more careful examinations of this tremendous resource. 4 The collection contains a fairly complete record of the operation of Kingston Penitentiary between 1835 and 1900. The reels include inmate history description ledgers, wardens' letter books and daily journals, inspectors' minute books and letter books, punishment ledgers, and medical registers.…”

Section: Ted Mccoymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…2 Carolyn Strange made the same argument even earlier about archival court documents, warning legal historians that it was the keepers of court records who decided what each case file 3 would contain. 4 Regardless of the kind of research we do, we have to remind ourselves constantly how we often have access to only some of the information, something easily forgotten when a new piece of the puzzle emerges.…”

Section: Mélanie Méthotmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to him, the jury that freed him thereby brought freedom of the press to Nova Scotia; being a central figure in the history of freedom of the press in your own jurisdiction is not a bad claim for an aspiring politician, and it served Howe well. 4 Pamphlets and newspaper descriptions of trials also reveal women, racialized minorities, servants, and other non-famous people living their lives, criticizing their neighbours, and making their arguments, both in and out of court. For example, Boston police magistrate Benjamin Whitman's ex-daughter-in-law testified that Whitman was frequently drunk and abusive to herself and her children (his grandchildren).…”

Section: Lyndsay Campbellmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Reading archives of various kinds as texts has been the subject of numerous influential studies, and legal archives are no exception. 4 Legal archives, however, present distinct problems and promises due to the nature of the legal process that produced them. As Carolyn Strange has noted about a particular legal archive, the capital case files compiled by the Canadian government in order to determine whether or not to commute a death sentence, the archive and the files that make it up can be analyzed "not only as material artefacts but as a discursive means of organizing knowledge and producing meaning."…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Canada’s Legal Pasts: Looking Forward, Looking Back

Campbell,

McCoy,

Méthot

2020

Canada's Legal Pasts

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This was my first introduction to Canadian legal history, a field that I came to see as central to my own interests, learning, and understanding as a law student. The pieces in this collection are a marker of what students in multiple fields can learn through attention to the legal histories of Canada's past.Both at the conference and in reading the volume, I have been most taken with what one might call the "mythology building." As a young nation, we are still searching for the moments and individuals that define our collective Canadian "mythos." Where will Canadian legal historians find their totemic figures-their heroes and villains? Should we reject the totemic figures of previous generations-the John Beverley Robinsons and William Osgoodes-in favour of unknown figures? Could these be the mounted police recruits brought to life by Shelley Gavigan? The enterprising legal professionals examined by Alexandra Havrylyshyn, who challenges the myth that there were no lawyers in New France? Or perhaps, like me, one may be struck by the detail and charm of "The Last Voyage of the Frederick Gerring, Jr.," by Christopher Shorey, an exploration of a possible Canadian Pierson v. Post analogue with enough narrative finesse to tap into the latent maritime nostalgia that I did not suspect I had. If I were unafraid of writing in hackneyed grade-school clichés, I might say f o r e w o r dNick Austinx research involving the law. In his preface, Knafla described how the papers illustrated the potential for seeing our society through an appreciation of legal problems in their social, cultural, and economic settings. 2 What these first papers indicate is the intertwining of legal and social history as a route forward for understanding not just crime, but all areas of Canadian society.Shortly after the meeting at Laval, the field's momentum increased with the founding of the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History. Two years later, the Osgoode Society published the first volume of its Essays in the History of Canadian Law series, edited by David H. Flaherty. Flaherty proposed a model for legal history in Canada that would explore the relationship between law and society in terms roughly connected to those of the "Wisconsin School," employing the method of Willard Hurst. 3 Knafla noted in a subsequent review that this approach, with its focus on the state's intervention in the industrializing economy, was simultaneously rather too Ontarian and too American to serve as a model for the young field. Furthermore, its instrumentalism largely sidelined important methodologies that might incorporate histories of crime, among other topics, in an understanding of the law, 4 methodologies that were actually anticipated in R.C.B. Risk's prospectus for Canadian legal history, which Flaherty commended as "Hurstian in the best sense of the term." For Risk, legal history could be considered "the study of the history of legal processes in three overlapping elements: the influences of societal values on the law, the effect of law itself on the mi...

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Section: Ted Mccoymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Mélanie Méthotmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Lyndsay Campbellmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Canada’s Legal Pasts: Looking Forward, Looking Back

Campbell,

McCoy,

Méthot

2020

Canada's Legal Pasts

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“…Oliver, ‘Terror to Evil‐Doers’ and McNairn, ‘ “A just and obvious distinction.” ’ For Lower Canada, see Fyson, ‘Between the Ancien Régime and Liberal Modernity.’ On the pre‐union period, see also Di Mascio's Idea of Popular Schooling which ought to be used with caution.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

As the Tsunami of Histories of Atlantic and Liberal Revolutions Wash up in Upper Canada: Worries from a Colonial Shore – Part Two

McNairn

2016

History Compass

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This article (begun in the previously published part) reviews the unusually large number of books about Upper Canada (1791–1841), the British colony that became the province of Ontario, published since 2010. Non‐national approaches, especially Atlantic world but borderlands and British imperial as well, are prevalent. In particular, Atlantic history's interest in the age of revolution has dovetailed with Ian McKay's call to adopt a liberal order framework. Yet many of these works struggle to incorporate Upper Canada in ways that do not cast it as an anomalous or anachronistic space defined by its awkward relationship to a master narrative or that do not re‐inscribe older national narratives by which Upper Canada masquerades as the nascent nation. At the same time, claims to have adopted a novel perspective have tended to divert attention from existing scholarship on closely related themes, especially work on the colony's legal history. Interest in Atlantic and liberal revolutions has brought renewed attention to Upper Canada but not always in helpful ways.

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3. “A just and obvious distinction”: The Meaning of Imprisonment for Debt and the Criminal Law in Upper Canada’s Age of Reform

Cited by 2 publications

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Canada’s Legal Pasts: Looking Forward, Looking Back

Canada’s Legal Pasts: Looking Forward, Looking Back

As the Tsunami of Histories of Atlantic and Liberal Revolutions Wash up in Upper Canada: Worries from a Colonial Shore – Part Two

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