Guy Laforest Eugenie Brouillet, Alain-G. Gagnon and Yves Tanguay. The Constitutions that Shaped Us: A Historical Anthology of Pre-1867 Canadian Constitutions/Guy Laforest Eugenie Brouillet, Alain-G. Gagnon et Yves Tanguay, Ces constitutions qui nous ont faconnes: anthologie historique des lois constitutionnelles anterieures a 1867.

AuthorRoy, Marc-Andre
PositionBook review

Guy Laforest Eugenie Brouillet, Alain-G. Gagnon et Yves Tanguay, Ces constitutions qui nous ont faconnes : anthologie historique des lois constitutionnelles anterieures a 1867, Presses de l'Universite Laval, Quebec, 2014,372 pp.

Guy Laforest Eugenie Brouillet, Alain-G. Gagnon and Yves Tanguay. The Constitutions that Shaped Us: A Historical Anthology of Pre-1867 Canadian Constitutions, McGill-Queens University Press, Montreal, 2015, 360 pp.

When New France was conquered, did the conquered Canadians truly perceive the British invader in a negative light? Should the concessions that the British Crown made to Canadians in the Quebec Act of 1774 be interpreted as acts of goodwill or rather as self-serving acts? How was the Constitutional Act of 1791 received by the English elite in the St. Lawrence valley? What was the reaction of Canadians? The answers to these questions have long been the subject of animated debates among both Anglophone and Francophone historians and sociologists. These days, and even in hindsight, there is still a big discrepancy between their perceptions of our history, although it is a shared one.

These questions about the origins of Canadian constitutionalism are at the heart of The Constitutions that Shaped Us: A Historical Anthology of Pre-1867 Canadian Constitutions. The authors of this book, Guy Laforest, Eugenie Brouillet, Alain-G. Gagnon and Yves Tanguay, compile the "great successes" of preconfederation constitutions in Canadian history. Their objective? To generate public interest in a context in which, "[Translation] gradually, but systematically, talking about constitutions in this country has almost become a taboo" (p. 3). [All pages numbers correspond to the French edition of this book.]

The texts chosen come from the last century. They include names that any Canadian history buff would know: Sir John George Bourinot, Chanoine Lionel Groulx and Seraphin Marion, to name just a few. The texts are organized in two parts. The first part contains excerpts of Francophone and Anglophone historiographies that help paint a picture of the four main pre-confederation British constitutional systems: the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the Quebec Act of 1774, the Constitutional Act of 1791, and the Act of Union of 1841. In the second part, Francophone and Anglophone authors take turns going into specific detail on each constitutional system.

The book provides a fascinating recap of this eventful century in British North...

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