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Fatal Confession: A Girl’s Murder, a Man’s Execution, and the Fitton Case
Carolyn Strange, Fatal Confession: A Girl’s Murder, a Man’s Execution, and the Fitton Case. Published by the University of British Columbia Press. Carolyn Strange is Professor of History at the Australian National University. In the mid-1950s most Canadians still believed that murder merited the death penalty. It was also a time when modern approaches to… Read more »
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Deadly Swindle: An 1890 Murder in Backwoods Ontario That Gripped the World
Our first Optional Extra title for 2024 is Ian Radforth, Deadly Swindle: An 1890 Murder in Backwoods Ontario That Gripped the World, published by the University of Toronto Press. Deadly Swindle is a fascinating journey into life and law in late nineteenth-century Canada. Its jumping off point is the murder of Frederick Cornwallis Benwell, whose body was discovered in the… Read more »
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Prairie Justice: The Hanging of Mike Hack
Wayne Sumner, Prairie Justice: The Hanging of Mike Hack, published by the University of Toronto Press. Wayne Sumner is Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto. This is a deeply-researched case study of a capital murder case from Saskatchewan in the 1920s. Although Mike Hack was deaf, and although his case was not famous, and it… Read more »
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Essays in the History of Canadian Law Volume XII: New Essays in Women’s History
Our members’ book for 2023 is Lori Chambers and Joan Sangster, eds., Essays in the History of Canadian Law Volume XII: New Essays in Women’s History, published by the University of Toronto Press. Lori Chambers is Professor of History and Women’s Studies at Lakehead University, and Joan Sangster is Professor Emerita of History at Trent University. This… Read more »
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Borderline Crime: Fugitive Criminals and the Challenge of the Border, 1819-1914
By Bradley Miller, Professor of History at the University of British Columbia, published by the University of Toronto Press. This is the first comprehensive history of cross-border Canadian-American interactions in relation to fugitive criminals, escaped slaves, and refugees. Miller examines the complexity of those interactions, which involved formal legal regimes governed by treaties as well… Read more »
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White Man’s Law: Native People in Nineteenth-Century Canadian Jurisprudence
by Sidney Harring. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 1998. In recent years numerous important books have appeared which deal with the history of aboriginal populations in early Canada. Although these studies add enormously to our understanding of the role played by native peoples in the British North American and Canadian communities, there has… Read more »
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Westward Bound: Sex, Violence, the Law, and the Making of a Settler Society
by Lesley Erickson, Independent Historian and Researcher, Vancouver. Published with UBC Press, 2011. The history of crime and punishment is one of the principal lenses through which historians of the law investigate the relationship between the law in the books and the ‘law in action,’ and the uses of law to regulate relations among social… Read more »
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Uncertain Justice: Canadian Women and Capital Punishment 1754-1953
by F. Murray Greenwood, Emeritus Professor of History, University of British Columbia and Beverley Boissery, Independant Scholar. Published with Dundurn Press, 2000. In recent years, scholars in all disciplines, feminists and traditionalists, have increasingly recognized how significant issues of gender are in understanding most aspects of the human condition. Indeed gender as a category of analysis… Read more »
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‘Terror to Evil-Doers’: Prisons and Punishments in Nineteenth-Century Ontario
by Peter Oliver, Professor of History, York University. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 1998. We are delighted that Peter Oliver has agreed to include his seminal work on prisons and punishments in nineteenth century Ontario in the Osgoode Society’s Publications Series. Professor Oliver’s book draws on a huge range of previously unexplored primary sources… Read more »
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Searching for Justice: An Autobiography
by Fred Kaufman, Quebec Court of Appeal, retired. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 2005. As one reviewer wrote, this is a ‘a tale well told of a remarkable life well lived.’ Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Vienna in the mid-twenties, Kaufman managed to leave his native city on one of the last… Read more »
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