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The African Canadian Legal Odyssey: Historical Essays
2012 
edited by Barrington Walker, Professor, Department of History, Queens University. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 2012.
One of the central themes of the new legal history of the past two decades has been exploration of the law’s role in shaping the lives and experiences of historically marginalised groups in our society. The Osgoode Society has made a number of contributions to that enterprise, and we are pleased to do so again with this collection, which Professor Walker has compiled. It consists of both new essays and a few ‘classic’ articles in the field, and is anchored by a sweeping introduction summarising the state of the field and suggesting new lines of research for the future. The various essays examine both civil and criminal cases, as well as looking at black legal pioneers and Canadian slave law. A theme which comes through consistently is that of the contrast between formal legal equality and the ways in which the law, particularly private law, failed to ensure substantive social and economic equality.
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Contents
CONTENTS
Foreword ix
Acknowledgments xi
1 Introduction: From A Property Right to Citizenship Rights – The African Canadian Legal Odyssey 3
BARRINGTON WALKER
Part One: Legal Pioneers
2 Ethelbert Lionel Cross, Toronto’s First Black Lawyer 49
SUSAN LEWTHWAITE
3 Constructing an “Imperial Pan-Africanist”: Henry Sylvester Williams as a University Law Student in Canada 84
J. BARRY CAHILL
Part Two: Formal Legal Equality and Anti-Black Discrimination: Case Studies
4 “Bitterly Disappointed” at the Spread of “Colour-Bar Tactics”: Viola Desmond’s Challenge to Racial Segregation, Nova Scotia, 1946 101
CONSTANCE BACKHOUSE
5 Creating the Myth of “Raceless” Justice in the Murder Trial of R. v. Richardson, Sandwich, 1903 167
SUSAN MCKELVEY
6 Maniacal Murderer or Death Dealing Car: The Case of Daniel Perry Sampson, 1933-1935 201
DAVID STEEVES
7 The Law’s Confirmation of Racial Inferiority: Christie v York 243
JAMES W. ST. G. WALKER
8 Errors of Fact and Law: Race, Space and Hockey in Christie v. York 324
ERIC ADAMS
Part Three: Slavery, Race and the Burden of History
9 Slavery and Slave Law in the Maritimes 363
D. G. BELL, J. BARRY CAHILL, AND HARVEY AMANI WHITFIELD
10 The Burden of History: Race, Culture, African Canadian Subjectivity and Canadian Law in R v. Hamilton 421
DAVID SEALEY
11 A Black Day in Court: “Race” and Judging in R. v. RDS 437
JAMES W. ST. G. WALKER
Contributors 481
Reviews
[T] recent publication of this superb book will be of considerable assistance to those judges desirous of not repeating the mistakes of others, ... in the distant past, as it touches upon interpreting the common law and statutory provisions in the light of ... discriminatory views.... [T]he contributors offer a thorough, nuanced and highly readable account of the development (and, at times, arrest) of justice before the Courts. Gilles Renaud, Commonwealth Judicial Journal, vol 40, 2013, pp. 41-42.
