Canadian Law and Society Association – Association canadienne droit et société
Conférence annuelle 2010 Annual Meeting
MERCREDI 2 JUIN 14H-15h30
DROIT, ENVIRONNEMENT ET HISTOIRE
LAW, ENVIRONMENT AND HISTORY
CHAIR: Philip Girard (Dalhousie University)
Chair: P. Girard
David Gilles (Université de Sherbrooke)
Statut de l’eau et genèse de la gouvernance environnementale : de l’intendant à la loi sur l’hygiène publique de 1901
Depuis les débuts de la colonisation les administrateurs de la Nouvelle-France puis de la province de Québec ont gérer la première richesse du territoire à développer: l’eau. Principal moyen de déplacement, cadre permettant l’esquisse d’un découpage territorial et d’une propriété foncière, l’eau bénéficie d’un statut juridique très marqué par la tradition juridique civiliste. Toutefois, dans les mains de l’intendant puis des administrateurs britanniques, un statut spécifique au territoire québécois émerge petit à petit, alliant progressivement tradition civiliste, aménagements nés de la common law et adaptations aux nécessités locales.
Les contingences économiques, le développement de la foresterie ont permis de passer d’un statut patrimonial de l’eau à l’esquisse d’une gouvernance, sans toutefois que les objectifs d’une telle gouvernance apparaissent clairement sous la plume du législateur. Cette communication cherchera à faire apparaître les points d’ancrage d’une éventuelle gouvernance de l’eau affirmée à l’orée du XXe siècle et les résonances actuelles qu’elle peut avoir sur les enjeux juridiques contemporains.
Sarah Hamill (University of Alberta)
Creation and Control: The Battle to Control Liquor and Natural
Resources in Alberta 1905-1940
This paper is part of a larger project examining the history and development of two administrative bodies in Alberta: the Energy Resources Control Board (ERCB), and the Alberta Liquor Control Board (ALCB). The paper sets the creation of these two boards in the context of the development of the province of Alberta. The paper argues that the creation of the ALCB and the subsequent liquor control was part of a larger project to “Canadianize” new immigrants.
The population of the west was crucial in Canada’s claim to the land between Ontario and the Rockies, but it was important that it was populated by the “right” kind of people. By examining the creation of the ALCB, this paper investigates the way the law was used to shape new Canadians in the Anglo-Canadian image. The ERCB was created after the Albertan government had fought to gain control of Alberta’s natural resources. This paper examines the battle that the provincial government fought to win control of Alberta’ natural resources, and argues that for the first twenty-five years of Alberta’s existence, federal control of natural resources was part of a quasi-colonial project to ensure Alberta was fashioned in the image of Anglo- Canada. This paper also examines the intellectual development of administrative law in Canada up until 1940. It will argue that legal academics, by focusing on judicial review, failed to notice the ways that administrative law, as used by the Boards to regulate aspects of life and business, was a form of cultural imperialism directed towards non-white, non-Protestant Canadians.
Eric H. Reiter (Concordia University) Environments Physical, Human, and Legal: Unpacking Nuisance in Late Nineteenth Century Montreal
The law of nuisance has always been a point of conflict – between different theories of liability, between fact and principle, between the law of property and the law of obligations, and of course between neighbours. In Quebec, further layers of conflict are added – between common law and civil law principles and precedents, and between French and English parties and judges. This paper is part of a social history of Canada’s first major nuisance case – the Quebec case Drysdale v. Dugas (Supreme Court of Canada, 1896). By unpacking the layers of conflict – the different environments of a nuisance case –
I am interested in how the human story and the legal conflict
intersect to influence the physical layout of space, the social relationships within that space, and ways in which space is understood in economic and class terms. Mapping the legal conflict onto the history of the litigation as revealed by extra-judicial sources reveals some of the ways in which legal principle and social fact intersect and interact.
