Photographic Highlights of Southern Alberta

This past weekend, I visited Calgary and some of its surrounding areas. Calgary is the largest city in the Canadian province of Alberta and third or fourth in Canada depending on how this is measured. It proudly bills itself as the 'Heart of the New West' and is an oil town with a significant mergers and acquisitions presence and the second most corporate head offices in Canada. It's also a political heavyweight, being home of the current Prime Minister of Canada and three ministers of the crown. My brother and me also visited Drumheller, centre of the ‘Canadian Badlands’ and home to the Royal Tyrrell Museum, which houses one of the world’s largest collection of prehistoric animal remains. It was a great trip and we hope you enjoy this small sampling of my photographs.

(The Bow Tower is the tallest building in Calgary and is now nearing completion)

(Old and new in Calgary!)

(Alberta became a province in 1905. Prior to this it was part of the Northwest Territiories)

(Stephen Avenue in the Calgary city centre is a large pedestrian street)

(The Calgary Tower and Fairmont Palliser Hotel)

(The Palliser is located beside a Canadian Pacific railyard and one of its features is a bay for 1920s era trains that can be rented and taken through the mountains)

(Artwork in the Hotel)

(Southern Alberta is quite flat)

(The Red Deer River in the Badlands.)

(Dinosaurs at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller)

(Horseshoe Canyon in the Badlands)

(Your humble blogger/photographer and the Calgary skyline)

Avenue and Ridley reviews The Last Act

The Last Act: Pierre Trudeau, the Gang of Eight and the Fight for Canada by Ron Graham, Alan Lane Canada, 323 pages, $34.00 (2011)

While 1867 is considered Canada's birth year, there is no doubt that 1982 is another watershed twelvemonth in the history of Canada. With the stroke of a pen, our country went from being a Dominion with a supreme parliament to a quasi-republic with a constitutionally entrenched Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Ron Graham’s The Last Act: Pierre Trudeau, the Gang of Eight and the Fight for Canada is a good place to start for anyone looking for a history of the genesis of Canada’s post-1982 constitution and is an interesting read for anyone with even a passing interest in Canadian public affairs.

Prior to 1982, Canada's principal constitutional statute was an act of Westminster, the British North America Act, 1867 (henceforth BNA Act) and contained everything from defence to hospitals to weights and measurements. Over time the BNA Act itself was amended and by 1949 it could be changed by the Canadian parliament, while still being rooted in London. This was problematic, of course, because between 1867 and 1982 Canada and the United Kingdom drifted apart. World Wars or legislation such as the Statute of Westminster, 1931, helped precipitate this, and Canada was still heir to important legal milestones such as the Quebec Act, 1774 or Magna Carta. Indeed, Canadian courts even weighed English common law judgments such as Davis Contractors v Fareham UDC [1956] or Hedley Byrne v Heller [1964] carefully too; but complete constitutional seperation was only a question of time.

Which is where Pierre Trudeau stepped in. Trudeau, an intellectual and university instructor before entering politics, not only wanted constitutional seperation from the United Kingdom, he wanted entrenched rights as well. Affected by the wave of human rights agreements sweeping the western world after 1945 and the heavy handed approach of Maurice Duplessis’ Union Nationale government in Quebec, Trudeau saw entrenched rights as an improvement upon Canada's pre-existing supreme parliament. In 1971 and 1978 efforts towards entrenchment were made, but it was only in the early 1980s after the Quebec Referendum that Trudeau turned his formidable acumen towards the effort. Prepared to move unilaterally, the Supreme Court of Canada’s Reference re a Resolution to amend the Constitution, [1981] reigned in the prime minister and it is subsequent negotiations with the provincial leaders that compose the bulk of this book.

Which itself is a positive contribution to the story and a welcome read for anyone wanting to brush up on the politics and laws of Canada. With Trudeau being such a prominent player, it is hard not to see him as the star, but other key actors: Peter Lougheed, Bill Davis, Roy Romano, Jean Chretien and Rene Leveque’s are given fair treatment as well. Unabashedly pro-Trudeau, it is not a scholarly work but nor does it try to be. Rather, it is a good presentation of this interesting episode of Canadian history in a welcoming and accessible way.

The London Riots

As many of you know, I count London as a city where I live. Because of this, it has been a horrible experience watching these past four days as one of our favourite places on Earth is burnt and looted at the hands of criminals.

(Roofs of Hoxton in Hackney)

On this issue, I stand firmly with the Metropolitan Police. They are by no means perfect, and the events of the past four days have given all Londoners cause for serious reflection -- not only into the death of Mark Duggan and the police response to the riots -- but also to the wider criminal justice system of England. At this time however, instead of laying blame, I would like to offer my support to London’s principal police force and their efforts to quell the riots and re-establish the rule of law in the British capital. I would also like to stand in support with the vast majority of Londoners who are the innocent victims of this ordeal and are now working to get our city back to normal by sweeping the streets and helping those who have had their homes and business destroyed.

Good luck fellow Londoners! I look forward to seeing you soon and will be happy to be back.

(Camden Streets near the edge of Westminster)

(Trafalgar Square looking down White Hall towards the Houses of Parliament)

Legal History in Southwestern Ontario

This past week I took a trip up to Southampton, Ontario on mighty Lake Huron. Up and back, we passed through many small towns – many of which undoubtedly look similar to how they did a century ago, except for the striking cenotaphs raised to memorialize the young men sent abroad during the great wars of the 20^th century. With that in mind, I begin today's blog entry with two such cenotaphs, one in Chesley and the other in Harriston.

(The cenotaphs of Chesley [upper] and Harriston [lower])

The trip had much to see with regard to Canadian legal history as well. My first stop in Chatsworth, now a small bedroom community for Owen Sound, was the birthplace of Nellie McClung, an MLA for Alberta and a famous women’s rights activist. In the late 20s, McClung became part of the ‘Famous Five’ who launched Edwards v Canada (Attorney General) [1928] SCR 276 and [1931] AC 124 better known as the 'Persons Case'.

(Chatsworth, Ontario)

It all started in 1916 when women were asked to leave a prostitution trial. Incensed by this, jurist Emily Murphy asked that the Alberta Attorney-General for a court for women by women and the Attorney-General agreed. This was then challenged by a lawyer who claimed that women were not qualified persons according to the British North America Act, 1867 and the case went to the Alberta Court of Appeal whose judgment held women were indeed qualified persons. Murphy wanted to take this national and submitted her name to be named a Senator in the Parliament of Canada. When this was rejected by Prime Minister Robert Borden, Murphy and her fellow appellants, Henrietta Muir Edwards (Vice-President for the province of Alberta of the National Council of Women for Canada); Nellie L. McClung, Louise C. McKinney and Irene Parlby (all of whom were members of the Alberta Legislative Assembly) petitioned the Governor-General to submit the question to the Supreme Court of Canada. This was done with Edwards v Canada (Attorney-General) [1927] SCR 276 in which the Supreme Court held women were not ‘qualified persons’ for the Senate. This was subsequently appealed to the Privy Council in London (as the Supreme Court of Canada was not yet the court of last resort for Canada) where the judgment was reversed in Edwards v Canada [1931] AC 124. Here the Lords concluded that the word 'persons' in s.24 BNA Act includes both men and women.

Besides the obvious point of holding women as qualified persons, Edwards is also remembered for Lord Sankey’s Living Tree Doctrine which held the constitution was like a 'Living Tree’ and that constitutional interpretation is organic and should be read in a broad and liberal fashion so as to change with the times. This would significantly impact later Canadian constitutional and administrative law.

The second site I stopped was the birthplace of Canada’s 13^th Prime Minister, John George Diefenbaker in Neustadt, Ontario. Diefenbaker, the son of a school teacher and the descendant of German immigrants, moved to the Northwest Territories (Saskatchewan) in 1903 where he was later educated at the University of Saskatchewan. He was called to the bar in 1919 after a short time in Europe, and started work as a small town lawyer. Elected to the Canadian parliament in 1940, Diefenbaker would become leader of the Opposition in 1957 and later that year Prime Minister of a minority government. After three decades of Liberal governance there was little front bench strength for the Tories, but this did not stop a massive Diefenbaker majority in 1958. His government would be moved back to minority status in 1962 and was eventually sent across the aisle in 1963.

(The Diefenbaker home)

In 1960 the Parliament of Canada passed the Canadian Bill of Rights. Bills of rights are a longstanding tradition in the Anglo-American legal world, going back to Magna Carta and Diefenbaker, having been influenced by the Saskatchewan Bill of Rights and numerous cases regarding government power, sought to give Canada one of its own. This Bill of Rights was not entrenched however, and as the product of a supreme parliament could be changed at any time. This is one of the reasons why many in the legal community see it as a failure, while supporters of a supreme (sovereign) parliament see it as a true inheritance of Canada's parliamentary tradition. But that is a subject for another day.

So with that, I concluded my little trip of parts of south western Ontario. It was a great little summer adventure and brought us a little closer to Canada’s rich legal history. We hope you enjoyed the trip!

(Lake Huron)