Law, Rhetoric, and Irony in the Formation of Canadian Civil Culture

by Dorland, Michael; Charland, Maurice

• ISBN13: 9780802042835
• ISBN10: 080204283X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-10-01
• Publisher: Univ of Toronto Pr

Summary

The phrase 'Peace, Order, and Good Government' is to Canada what 'Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness' is to the United States, a project of the authority of governance. But more than that, the phrase speaks to the arts and manners of governance; the styles or mentalites that both inform and perform how governance gets acted out ... Both phrases reflect a common historical discourse that permeated such discussions in the early modern period. The difference between the two is that the Canadian one derives from an earlier period in the discussion; the American phrase appears at its end, an end that will be forever ruptured by political revolution and revolutionary war ... In the Canadian case, while there will be breaks and ruptures in the modes of governance, these will not be clothed in the language of revolutionary discourse. On the contrary, and this is vital to this study, Canada stumbles into the modern age without having recourse to the facilities revolutionary language provides ... The resulting inarticulateness has been one of the principle problems that Canadian political and civil culture has faced. Book jacket.

Author Biography

MICHAEL DORLAND is Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University. MAURICE CHARLAND is Professor of Communication Studies at Concordia University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Envoi	3	(11)
Situating Canada's Civil Culture	14	(27)
`Who Killed Canadian History?' The Uses and Abuses of Canadian Historiography	41	(36)
The Legitimacy of Conquest: Issues in the Transition of Legal Regimes, 1760s--1840s	77	(41)
Constituting Constitutions under the British Regime, 1763--1867	118	(35)
The Limits of Law: The North-West, Riel, and the Expansion of Anglo-Canadian Institutions, 1869--1885	153	(38)
`Impious Civility': Woman's Suffrage and the Refiguration of Civil Culture, 1885--1929	191	(32)
The Dialectic of Language, Law, and Translation: Manitoba and Quebec Revisited, 1969--1999	223	(35)
Civility, Its Discontents, and the Performance of Social Appearance	258	(32)
The Figures of Authority in Canadian Civil Culture	290	(27)
Notes	317	(8)
Bibliography	325	(28)
Index	353