Welcome

Established in 1979, the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History publishes books on Canadian legal history, and creates and preserves an oral history archive. Since 1981 the Society has published more than 100 books, on a diverse range of topics in Canadian legal history and has recorded more than 600 oral histories from various members of the legal profession.

This year we are adding a new category of membership, responding to some of our members who tell us that they want to support the Osgoode Society but do not want our membership book. Members opting for this category will receive a charitable donation receipt for part of their subscription.

Your membership in the Society helps us continue to promote and to preserve Canadian Legal History. Join us!

IN MEMORIAM – G. BLAINE BAKER

The Osgoode Society regrets to announce the passing of G. Blaine Baker, long one of Canada’s leading legal historians, who died recently in Toronto. Blaine was one of the pioneers in the field, a contributor Volume II of the Essays in the History of Canadian Law, published in 1983, and to many other volumes. He was also co-editor with Jim Phillips of Essays in the History of Canadian Law Volume VIII: In Honour of R.C.B. Risk (1999), and of A History of Canadian Legal Thought: Collected Essays of R.C.B. Risk (2006), and co-editor, with Donald Fyson, of Essays in the History of Canadian Law Volume XI: Quebec and the Canadas (2013). He was a Professor of Law at McGill University for some thirty years, and also taught at the University of Toronto and Osgoode Hall Law School. Blaine wrote many leading  and highly influential articles and book chapters on Canadian legal history, and know more about the subject than anybody else. He was also remarkably widely read in the legal histories of the US and the UK. Blaine was unfailingly interested in, and helpful towards, everybody else working in the field. A true scholar and gentleman, he was revered by his students at McGill for his sincerity, his ability to synthesize and inspire, and his unfailing conscientiousness.