Review of Laws and Societies in the Canadian Prairie West, 1670-1940 Edited by Louis A. Knafla and Jonathan Swainger

Authors

Thomas M.J. Bateman, Department of Political Science, St. Thomas University, New Brunswick

Date of this Version

Spring 2007

Comments

Published in GREAT PLAINS RESEARCH 17:1 (Spring 2007). Copyright © 2007 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Abstract

For all intents and purposes, the settlement of the Canadian prairie was the founding of a new society using materials brought to the new land along with those close at hand. Of course, preexisting aboriginal society had to be supplanted in the course of this founding. In both the supplanting and the founding, the rule of law as we currently know it was a principal means and end of the settlement process.