National Network for Equitable Library Service

Did you know that Canada's Criminal Code still has provisions outlawing the practice of witchcraft and "crafty sciences"? Did you know that blasphemy is a crime in Canada? And did you know that putting a picture of a red poppy on your website could get you in trouble with the Royal Canadian Legion? Lawyer and author Bob Tarantino takes readers on an entertaining and informative romp through Canada's legal labyrinths in a book that spotlights the country's past and present strange-but-true laws and legal history.

In 1754 Eleanor Powers was hung for a murder committed during a botched robbery. She was the first woman condemned to die in Canada, but would not be the last.In Uncertain Justice, Beverley Boissery and Murray Greenwood portray a cast of women characters almost as often wronged by the law as they have wronged society.

Each murder trial brings its own tangle of evidence, legal parameters, medical factors, social circumstances, and personalities.

How do governments design their strategy for heritage property? What do they try to accomplish in their laws and their tax systems to favour the re-use of older buildings, districts, and cities? What institutional framework can assist the restoration of tourist designations and the conservation of neighbourhoods? In this international study, eighteen experts from ten countries describe the legal challenges and solutions relating to such property.

John J. Robinette, Canada's greatest trial lawyer, was admired and respected by the bench and his fellow lawyers alike. A quiet, unassuming man outside the courtroom, he was a consummate performer when appearing before a judge and jury. Robinette became a household name as the defender of Evelyn Dick, who was charged with killing her husband and infant son in Hamilton in 1946, and of Steven Suchan, a member of the infamous Boyd Gang.

Soldier, university professor, lawyer, political candidate, and judge; David Vanek's compelling life story has seen him in many roles, all of which are played out in these memoirs. The child of Jewish-Russian immigrants, Vanek encountered anti-semitism while growing up, but was able to overcome prejudice and rise to prominence. He was educated at the University of Toronto and Osgoode Hall Law School (where he was in a Jewish fraternity with Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster) before serving in the Second World War.

In 1839 fifty-eight men left Montreal for the penal colony of New South Wales. They were ordinary people who had been caught up in the political whirlwind of the 1838 rebellion. Even though they were all civilians, they had been tried by court martial. Convicted of treason, their properties forfeited to the crown, they paid a heavy price for rebellion. And as convicts in Australia, they were considered the lowest of a bad lot. During their years there, however, they earned the respect of Sydney’s citizens.

The insular character of Britain delayed the creation of professional police until the 19th century.

A report in 1833 by a committee of three respected Kingston colonials called for the construction of a limestone penitentiary on Hatter’s Bay to the west of the town.

Former bank manager Ronald Dalton never got to watch his three young children grow up. In 1989 he was convicted for a crime that never happened. His wife, Brenda, was later ruled to have choked to death on breakfast cereal not strangled as a pathologist had initially claimed. Dalton’s daughter, Alison, was in kindergarten when he was charged with second-degree murder in 1988.