Torrie, "Farm Debt Compromises During the Great Depression: An Empirical Study of Applications made under the Farmers’ Creditors Arrangement Act in Morden and Brandon, Manitoba" on SSRN

Virginia Torrie of the University of Manitoba Law School has posted "Farm Debt Compromises During the Great Depression: An Empirical Study of Applications made under the Farmers’ Creditors Arrangement Act in Morden and Brandon, Manitoba" on SSRN. The article also appears in volume 41, issue 1 (2018) of the Manitoba Law Journal. [This journal is open access.]

This article presents the results of an empirical study of the Farmers’ Creditors Arrangement Act (FCAA) in Morden and Brandon, Manitoba. Parliament enacted this federal insolvency statute to address the agricultural crisis of the 1930s colloquially known as the “Dust Bowl”. The express purpose of the Act was to “keep the farmer on the farm” by reducing debts to an amount that the farmer could afford to pay. This is the first article to engage in a substantive analysis of the FCAA, and it employs a novel methodology for studying farm debt compromises under the Act. This study uncovers notable differences in the way that FCAA applications played out in Morden and Brandon. It reveals that much farm credit was obtained locally, with roughly half of all claims being owed to individuals or estates, which in many instances were the mortgage lender. In addition, medical debts listed the FCAA files call attention to the privation of the “Dirty Thirties” and the financial costs born by individuals for medical care in the pre-public health care era. The empirical findings of this study thus add to historical scholarship about the experience of the Great Depression on the Canadian Prairies by shedding light on the social context of debtor-creditor relations in farming communities, and highlighting regional variations in the application of a federal law designed to help address the farm debt crisis.

Call for presenters: Osgoode Society Toronto Legal History workshop Fall term

Jim Phillips advises that he has four sessions lined up with presenters for the fall for the legal history workshop.
We still have some spots open.
If you, or some one you know, is an academic (any department) either a faculty member, independent scholar or grad student, who is studying a legal history topic (also any geographic area and time period) who would be interested in presenting a work-in-progress to the legal history workshop (held at U of T Law School every other Wednesday evening--more or less) please email Jim at j.phillips@utoronto.ca.
And anyone who would like to receive the papers and attend some or any sessions, please also email Jim to be added to the distribution list.

Gordon Bale

Gordon Bale, a longstanding member of the Osgoode Society and contributor to Canadian legal history, has died at the age of 85. After doing graduate work in economics and teaching in that field at RMC, he obtained a law degree from the newly founded Queen’s University Faculty of Law. Gordon returned there as a professor and spent the rest of his academic career at Queen’s, where he specialized in wills and estates and created a seminar in legal history. His biography of Canada’s second chief justice, William Johnstone Ritchie, published by Carleton University Press in 1990, was a precursor of the wave of judicial biographies that would appear in Canada in the 21^st century.  Gordon was a kind and gentle scholar whose presence will be missed.

(Thanks to Philip Girard)

CFP: Does Law's History Matter? The Politics of our Disciplinary Practices

Thanks to Shaunnagh Dorsett for sending this on.

CFP: Annual Conference of the Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society

This year’s conference will be held in Melbourne, Australia, 11-14 December 2019. The theme is ‘Does Law’s History Matter? The Politics of our Disciplinary Practices’

Deadline for abstracts (individual or panel) and on the conference theme or any other topic is 21 July 2019. More information on the theme and submission of abstracts can be found on the conference website: https://www.deakin.edu.au/about-deakin/events/2019-anzlhs-conference.

The keynote speakers are:

• Professor Martha S. Jones, Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and Professor of History, Department of History, Johns Hopkins University: https://history.jhu.edu/directory/martha-jones/
• Professor John Hudson, Professor of History, School of History, St Andrews University: https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/staff/johnhudson.html
• Professor John Maynard, Indigenous Education and Research, University of Newcastle:
• https://www.newcastle.edu.au/profile/john-maynard
• Professor Shaunnagh Dorsett , Faculty of Law, University of Technology Sydney:
• https://www.uts.edu.au/staff/shaunnagh.dorsett

(Canadians, please note that there will be a Wes Pue event on the 13th.)

Congratulations to Osgoode Society Director Mahmud Jamal on his appointment to the Ontario Court of Appeal!

Mahmud Jamal, Partner at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP in Toronto, is appointed a Justice of Appeal of the Court of Appeal for Ontario. Mr. Justice Jamal replaces Madam Justice G. Pardu, who elected to become a supernumerary judge effective January 1, 2019.

Justice Jamal was born in Kenya, raised in England, and completed high school in Edmonton. He received a B.A. from the University of Toronto, LL.B. and B.C.L. degrees from the Faculty of Law, McGill University, and an LL.M. from Yale Law School, which he attended on a Fulbright Scholarship. He served as law clerk to Justice Melvin Rothman of the Quebec Court of Appeal and Justice Charles Gonthier of the Supreme Court of Canada.

Justice Jamal, who is bilingual, practised with Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP in the fields of appellate litigation, constitutional and public law, class actions, and commercial litigation. He appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada in 35 appeals addressing a wide range of civil, constitutional, criminal, and regulatory issues. He also appeared before various provincial courts, the Federal Court, Federal Court of Appeal, and Tax Court of Canada, and federal and provincial administrative tribunals.

Justice Jamal was a director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, The Advocates’ Society, and the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History. He was a member of the Supreme Court Advocacy Institute and a trustee of the Canadian Business Law Journal. He has taught constitutional law at McGill, administrative law at Osgoode Hall, and published widely in his areas of practice. He was also chair of Osler’s pro bono program and a member of its Partnership Board.

He and his wife, Goleta, are the proud parents of two teenagers.

Kelm and Smith, Talking back to the Indian Act: Critical Readings in Settler Colonial Histories

In honour of Indigenous Peoples' Day today (June 21) the U of T press has compiled a list of relevant publications from their catalog.

On the legal history front, they highlight Mary-Ellen Kelm and Keith D. Smith, Talking back to the Indian Act: Critical Readings in Settler Colonial Histories published in 2018, available in paperback and e-book formats. Here's the blurb:

Talking Back to the Indian Act is a comprehensive "how-to" guide for engaging with primary source documents. The intent of the book is to encourage readers to develop the skills necessary to converse with primary sources in more refined and profound ways. As a piece of legislation that is central to Canada’s relationship with Indigenous peoples and communities, and one that has undergone many amendments, the Indian Act is uniquely positioned to act as a vehicle for this kind of focused reading.

Through an analysis of thirty-five sources pertaining to the Indian Act—addressing governance, gender, enfranchisement, and land—the authors provide readers with a much better understanding of this pivotal piece of legislation, as well as insight into the dynamics involved in its creation and maintenance.

Campbell and Exner, "An Elusive Remedy: A Calgary Chiropodist Complains of Libel, 1916" on SSRN

Lyndsay Campbell and Heidi J. T. Exner have posted "An Elusive Remedy: A Calgary Chiropodist Complains of Libel, 1916" on SSRN. The article is forthcoming in the Law & History Review.

The decision of a chiropodist - a man who called himself 'Doctor' and developed and sold foot products - to prosecute a small Calgary newspaper for criminal libel in the summer of 1916 touched off a series of events that ultimately resulted in the chiropodist's convictions for holding himself out as a doctor and practising medicine without a licence. The proceedings against the editor were stayed. These legal proceedings demonstrate the mutually reinforcing commitments of doctors and lawyers to protecting the professionalisation of medicine, and especially orthopaedic surgery, against the threat of interlopers in early twentieth-century Canada.