In this section we include information about forthcoming legal history conferences, seminars, lectures etc, in Canada and around the world.
Call for Papers – Eastern Townships & Legal History- DEADLINE MAY 15, 2025
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Supreme Court of Canada, which will honor both Sherbrooke and Bishop’s Universities with an official visit. To mark this occasion, and in conjunction with this visit, Professors Alexandra Popovici and Maxime St-Hilaire, from the former university’s Faculty of Law, will be hosting a workshop on the regional legal history of the Eastern Townships. This event will explore the role of law in the history of the Eastern Townships and the region’s influence on Quebec and Canadian legal history.
This initiative coincides with the recent special issue of Cap-aux-Diamants dedicated to the history of the Eastern Townships (https://www.capauxdiamants.or
The event will take place on October 10 at the former courthouse in Knowlton (heritage site details: https://www.patrimoine-culture
Professor Emeritus Sylvio Normand from Laval University’s Faculty of Law will deliver the keynote lecture.
The organizers are issuing a call for papers, with a submission deadline of May 15th:
– Presentations will be 20 minutes long;
– Proposals should be a maximum of 500 words and include a short biography;
– Submissions should be sent via email to Professor Maxime St-Hilaire: Maxime.St-Hilaire@USherbrooke.
To illustrate the scope of the event, here are some potential topics related to both the legal history of the Eastern Townships and the region’s role in Quebec and Canadian legal history:
– The legal history of the Abenaki traditional territory;
– The Protestant clergy’s land reserves (as provided in the Constitutional Act of 1791) and the grievances of the Anglican clergy in the Eastern Townships;
– The establishment of the first public registry office by the Special Council of Lower Canada (during the repression of 1838–1841);
– Official (land law) and living (private law) bijuralism in the Eastern Townships, before and after Wilcox v Wilcox
– Charles Dewey Day, codifier, and summer resident of Georgeville (from neo-Gothic aesthetics to the architecture of the Civil Code of Lower Canada);
– Alexander Galt, architect of Canadian federation and his famous “Sherbrooke Speech”;
– Louis Saint-Laurent, his legal and political contributions to nation-building;
– The Magog textile strikes;
– The internment of World War II refugees, mostly Jewish, as “war prisoners”;
– Craig and Gosford roads in the history of Canadian transportation law;
– Legal education and lawyer training in the Eastern Townships, including at Bishop’s University’s short-lived and mysterious law school;
– The Republic of Indian Stream;
– The regional history of legal publishing; and
– The intersection of law and architecture, including courthouses, prisons, and registry offices in the Eastern Townships’ legal history.
Legal Histories of Empire Conference, Toronto, July 2025
Click here for further information and the Call for Papers.