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The British Columbia Court of Appeal: The first hundred years
2010 
by Christopher Moore, Independent Historian. Published with the University of British Columbia Press, 2010.
The Court of Appeal of British Columbia began sitting in 1910, and this volume thus coincides with the court’s centenary. Renowned historian Christopher Moore has produced a masterful account of the court, one that combines narrative, biographical and analytical histories of a major provincial judicial institution over one hundred years. Anchored by rich detailed studies of the court’s judges, it provides also extensive data on court organisation, administration, and caseload. Each chapter also includes vignettes of famous and unusual cases dealt with by the court, as well as commentary on the ways in which the court’s work both reflected and influenced the province’s history. This book is the Osgoode Society’s fifth court history, and we hope that it will serve as both inspiration and model for many other histories of our country’s courts.
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Contents
CONTENTS
Foreword / VII
Preface and Acknowledgments / IX
1 The Origins of the Court / 1
2 The Founders’ Court, 1910-40:
The Macdonald-Martin Courts / 21
One Case from the 1910s: In Re Munshi Singh / 52
One Case from the 1920s: Attorney General of Canada v. Gonzalves / 57
One Case from the 1930s: R. v. Richards and Woolridge / 61
3 Transition and Growth, 1940-57:
The Macdonald-McDonald-Sloan Courts / 67
One Case from the 1940s: Ronan v. Hortin / 91
One Case from the 1950s: Guay v. Sun Publishing Company / 95
4 A Growing Court in a Growing Province, 1958-78:
The DesBrisay-Lett-Bird-Davey-Farris Courts / 101
One Case from the 1960s: R. v. White and Bob / 136
One Case from the 1970s: R. Miller and Cockriell / 141
5 Justice on a New Scale, 1979-2001:
The Nemetz-McEachern Courts / 147
One Case from the 1980s: Rutherford v. Rutherford / 202
One Case from the 1990s: Atley v. Popkum Water Slides Ltd. / 205
6 Toward a Second Century, 2001-10: The Finch Court / 213
One Case from the 2000s: Barbeau v. British Columbia / 231
APPENDIX A: Judges of the British Columbia Court of Appeal, 1909-2009 / 241
APPENDIX B: Note on Methods / 245
Notes / 249
Index / 271
Reviews
For scholars, judges, lawyers, and general readers, Moore, a writer of Canadian history and author of books on legal history, provides a history of the British Columbia Court of Appeal from 1910 to 2010. He presents an institutional, jurisprudential, and biographical account of the court and its role in the province, including how it evolved, how it has operated, its judges, and how it has shaped and has been shaped by the social, political, and legal development of the province. He includes biographical sketches and b&w photos of judges, exploration of significant cases, administrative and procedural history, the issues facing judges, and the evolution of legal thinking Book News, Inc., Reference and Research Book News, May 2010.
DeLloyd J. Guth, BC Studies, no 175, 2012, p. 136.