Membership
Join the Osgoode Society
Established in 1979, the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History publishes books on Canadian legal history, creates and preserves an oral history archive, and puts on legal history lectures and similar events.
Since 1981 the Society has published 125 books, including our 2024 books, on a remarkably diverse range of topics in Canadian legal history, and has recorded more than 640 oral histories from various members of the legal profession.
We have five categories of membership. With a regular membership, at $75, you receive the annual members’ book. The members’ book is also included with student memberships, which are $25. If you wish to not only join the Society but also contribute a donation to support its work, you can take out an Individual Sustaining Membership for $175. This brings you the members’ book and all the other benefits of membership, and a charitable tax donation for $100.
We also have a category of membership called the McMurtry Circle, at $500. Members of the McMurtry Circle receive the members’ book, a certificate of appreciation signed by our founder, the Hon. R. Roy McMurtry, and a charitable donation receipt for $425. Editor-in-Chief Professor Jim Phillips is a member of the McMurtry Circle, and encourages others to join. Society President Robert Sharpe used to be a member but has now become a patron. Finally, to respond to some of our members who tell us that they want to support the Osgoode Society but do not want our membership book, we have a ‘Membership – No Book’ category at $60.
The benefits of membership other than the members’ book and being able to support the most successful legal-historical organization in the common law world, include a regular newsletter giving notice of our events (five between January and April 2023 and more in the fall) and other news, the ability to buy our optional extra books at a discount price compared to that charged by the publisher, and participation in our book sale specials – a bulk discount at any time and special sales at year’s end.
MEMBERS’ BOOKS 2024
Our members’ book for 2024 is Adam Dodek, Heenan Blaikie: The Making and Unmaking of a Great Canadian Law Firm, published by the University of British Columbia Press. Adam Dodek, L.S.M., is a Professor in the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law and a former Dean of the faculty. The book chronicles the rise and fall of Heenan Blaikie. Heenan Blaikie was founded in Montreal in 1973 by Peter Blaikie, Roy Heenan, and Donald Johnston. Johnston left in 1978 to serve as an MP and the firm became Heenan Blaikie. A full-service law firm, it experienced rapid and exponential growth, establishing offices in Toronto as well as western Canada, Ottawa and Quebec. It was one of the first Canadian firms to become a genuinely national law firm. It also had satellite offices in Paris, Los Angeles and Singapore. At its height the firm had over 500 lawyers and was the sixth biggest in Canada. It stood out in an era of the tremendous growth of interprovincial and transnational law firms in Canada in the 1980s, 1990s and early twenty-first century, in part because of its unique culture which encouraged individualism among the partners. Yet the flip-side of this unique culture were deficiencies in management and governance which led to serious financial problems in 2013, numerous high-profile defections, and the firm’s dissolution in early 2014. The book is deeply researched, and largely based on interviews with over 200 lawyers who worked at Heenan Blaikie at some time, and another 50 lawyers and other people form outside the firm. This book is full of large and colourful personalities, pithy quotations, and dramatic incidents. But it does not just tell a fascinating and somewhat tragic story, it is also full of analysis, especially of the deficiencies of governance and management that led to the firm’s ultimate downfall.
Optional Extras
In 2024 we are also publishing three ‘optional extras.’ One 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 woods a dozen miles west of Woodstock, Ontario, in February 1890. From there the author takes us back to the history of how Benwell, John Reginald Birchall, and Douglas Raymond Pelly, well-connected young Englishmen from wealthy families, emigrated to Canada in search of fortune. Benwell and Pelly were lured overseas by Birchall, who dangled the prospect of investing in a horse farm. The horse farm did not exist, Birchall was a swindler, and the resulting disputes ended with him killing Benwell. Birchall was convicted and executed, with Pelly the chief witness for the prosecution. The book provides a detailed, vivid and learned analysis of the operation of the criminal justice system in this period. There is also a parallel theme, that of how one localised story was taken up by the press and made into a provincial, then national, then international story. In part the widespread interest in the case was the result of Birchall’s fascinating personality – attractive, charming, charismatic and self-confident. He had many admirers despite the fact that he was also a cold-blooded murderer. Deadly Swindle is a wonderful illustration of ‘legal archeology,’ using a close study of a particular case to show not just the operation of the criminal justice system but also how the intricacies of many other aspects of law, society and politics affected how the law operated.
Our second optional extra is Colin Campbell and Robert Raizenne, A History of Canadian Income Tax Volume II, 1948-71, published by the Canadian Tax Foundation. Colin Campbell is a Professor of Law at Western University and Robert Raizenne is a partner at Osler’s. This book follows up on the same authors’ Volume I, published by the Osgoode Society in 2021. This is a very thoroughly researched study of the drafting and implementation of the 1948 Act and its amendments, viewed through the lens of the top bureaucrats and various ministers of finance who played the biggest role in shaping the Act. The book also chronicles the policy debates on various discrete issues in the tax system, making comprehensive use of the parliamentary debates, government records and materials generated by the Canadian Tax Foundation. Tax law, although obviously important in itself, is not treated as a hermetically sealed field, but is grounded in the general history of the period, especially the economic history but also the politics, including leading figures Wilbur Jackett and Douglas Abbott.
Our third optional extra is 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 was not reported, its very ordinariness makes it a fascinating and instructive study of the criminal justice process in Canadian history. His trial and conviction happened very quickly by current day standards, and his appeal for executive clemency was fairly cursorily rejected. Sumner takes us carefully through the crime, the police investigation, arrest and trial, and then poses intriguing questions about whether, and why, we might label the case one of wrongful conviction.
Please note that these titles have not yet been published. We expect a publication date in the fall but will send an update when we have more information. The book(s) you order below will be automatically sent to you.
Your membership in the Society helps us continue to promote and to preserve Canadian Legal History. Join us!
Renew or Join as an Individual Member with book for 2024 – $75
Includes the 2024 member’s book – Heenan Blaikie: The Making and Unmaking of a Great Canadian Law Firm
Optional Extras: You can choose to include the optional extras after clicking the join now link. There is an option to buy both optional extras and save $10.
Renew or Join as an Student Member for 2024 – $25
Includes the 2023 member’s book – Heenan Blaikie: The Making and Unmaking of a Great Canadian Law Firm
Optional Extras: You can choose to include the optional extras after clicking the join now link. There is an option to buy both optional extras and save $10.
Renew or Join as an Individual Sustaining Member for 2024 – $175
Includes the 2023 member’s book – Heenan Blaikie: The Making and Unmaking of a Great Canadian Law Firm
Optional Extras: You can choose to include the optional extras after clicking the join now link. There is an option to buy both optional extras and save $10.
Renew or Join as an McMurtry Circle Member for 2024 – $500
Includes the 2023 member’s book – Heenan Blaikie: The Making and Unmaking of a Great Canadian Law Firm
Optional Extras: You can choose to include the optional extras after clicking the join now link. There is an option to buy both optional extras and save $10.
Renew or Join as an Individual Member no book for 2024 – $60
Members’ book is not included.
Gift Membership for 2024 – $75
All Gift Memberships include the 2023 member’s book – Heenan Blaikie: The Making and Unmaking of a Great Canadian Law Firm
Optional Extras: You can choose to include the optional extras after clicking the buy now link. There is an option to buy both optional extras and save $10.
A portion of the individual sustaining and McMurtry Circle memberships entitle the member to a charitable receipt.