Historically, Canadians have been more or less free from racial prejudice. Although this concept has been questioned in recent years, it has not been completely dispersed. In Colour-Coded, Constance Backhouse illustrates the stubborn influence that white supremacy had on our legal system in the first half of this century, highlighting the damaging legacy of inequality that continues to this day. White supremacy had a stubborn grip on the historical roots of the Canadian legal system. Backhouse presents compelling case studies to illustrate how early 20th century law played a dominant role in creating and maintaining racial inequality. The cases focus on Indigenous, Inuit, Chinese Canadians and African Canadians and take us from the pursuit of traditional Indigenous dance to the trial of Members of Canada`s Ku Klux Klan! Book reviews 385 Anglo-Saxon Protestant worldview. But even in these letters, it is clear that she did not cross the gender lines and that her main concerns were her extended family and the well-being of her soul. This volume is greatly enriched by a pleasant combination of comments, illustrations and bibliographic information. Whiteley showed a careful restraint in his remarks. However, the introduction would have been reinforced by a more detailed discussion of the ongoing theoretical debate on the decoding of life`s writings and the differences between letters, diaries, memoirs and autobiographies. It`s also surprising that Whiteley didn`t explore the potential of Tuttle`s album.
Certainly, this document represented another aspect of their efforts to organize the parts of their lives into a mosaic of meaning and order. Annie Tuttle`s letters and autobiography shed useful light on the history of home economics, rural childhood, educational reform, and women`s religious activities. Marked by constraints and opportunities, her career embodies phenomena such as the feminization of teaching, emigration, the advancement of women in missionary work and the pervasive demands of “family time”. In this way, Tuttle`s life reached many corners of the female experience and adapted to the patterns of her time. LAURIE STANLEY-BLACKWELL St Francis Xavier University Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900-1950. KONSTANZ BACKHOUSE. Toronto: The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History / University of Toronto Press 1999· pp. xiii, 485, fig. $60.00 material, $27.50 paper In a spring 1992 review article in Acadiensis, Greg Marquis, one of the many historians cited anonymously in the introduction to this book; noted with regret that “the author of a recent significant contribution to Canadian legal history holds a Bachelor of Laws and an LLM, without a Master`s degree or Doctorate in History.” He was referring, of course, to Constance Backhouse, a law professor at the University of Ottawa and author of Petticoats and Prejudice: Women and Law in Nineteenth-Century Canada (Toronto 1991), a classic of feminist legal history. In recent years, Backhouse has focused its attention on the interpenetration of gender, class and race, and has now produced a volume of six historical case studies on “race”, rights and law before Canadian courts. I am referring to the title of James Walker`s 1997 book (also from the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History) because Backhouse`s volume of essays on the history of Canadian racism is actually Volume 2 of Walker`s Volume I.
“Racism” is as striking by its presence in the title of Backhouse`s book as it is by its absence of 386 The Canadian Historical Review in walker`s title. Each work consists of a series of autonomous historical case studies – four by Walker, six by Backhouse. All of Walker`s cases were brought before the Supreme Court of Canada, compared to only one from Backhouse. Two of walker`s cases devoted a chapter each (Quang Wing v. R. and Christie v. York Corporation) were managed by Backhouse on two sides. These twin books, which deal with an identical subject and in the same format, accompany the pieces and must be read in tandem.
Although her approach is methodologically similar, Backhouse is much more stubborn and polemical, and she has harsh words for traditional historians. Walker`s book, which is not mentioned in the introduction to Backhouse, is a better story; Backhouse, best historical law. The fundamental difference lies between the lawyer/law professor`s approach to the history of social law and that of the historian. On a case-by-case basis, Backhouse`s studies are captivating; They run from 1902 to 1947 and geographically from Saskatchewan to Nova Scotia. Ontario receives two, while British Columbia, Alberta, Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland are not represented. Backhouse`s deconstruction of Saskatchewan`s infamous White Women`s Labour Act of 1912, which prohibited the employment of white women by Chinese businessmen, is particularly noteworthy. W.F.A. Turgeon`s sponsorship of this discriminatory law is a little-known episode in the early career of a white Acadian Catholic New Brunswicker who later became Saskatchewan`s chief justice and prominent diplomat and chair of royal commissions. The annotations and bibliography that occupy more than a third of the book are really a book.
The extensive and detailed literature presented here leaves no doubt that the Canadian legal system played a leading role in the creation and preservation of racial discrimination. A central message of this book is that, despite Canada`s reputation as a raceless society, racism is deeply rooted in Canadian history. Backhouse presents detailed accounts of six trials, each providing evidence of blatant racism created and enforced by law. The cases involve Aboriginal, Inuit, Chinese Canadians and African Canadians, which has taken us from the pursuit of traditional Aboriginal dance to the trial of members of Canada`s Ku Klux Klan. From thousands of possibilities, Backhouse has selected studies that represent pivotal moments in the legal history of race in Canada.