Morgan and Jacobson v Attorney General for Prince Edward Island

• Author: Margaret McCallum
• Pages: 193-221

ﾅﾍﾇ

MorganandJacobsonvAttorneyGeneral

forPrinceEdwardIsland

MargaretMcCallum

I F    couple from FloridaMelvi n and SylviaGri n were

orderedtopaynesofclosetoforpurchasingthroughanintermedi

aryacres seventysi xhect aresofla ndonPr inceEdwa rdIslandAsnon

residents the Grins needed Cabinet approval to acquire more than ve

acresofla ndormoret hanfeetofs horefront age The LandsProtectionAct

LPA which theGri nsv iolatedhadsur viveda Charter challenge int he

Islandcourt sin the s In two earlier cases, almost a century apart, the

Supreme Court of Canada had rejected landowners’ challenges to Island

legislation limiting the exte ntof i ndividualla nd holdingsI n the rst of

thesei nthe newlyestablished SupremeCourt upheldIsland legisla

tioncompellingresidentandnonresidentownersofmoretha nacresto

sell their estates to the government.

In MorganandJacobsonvAorneyGeneralforPrinceEdwardIslandthe

Supreme Court again upheld the right of the provincial legislature to rest rict

therightof nonresidentindividualstoholdIsla ndland This chapter tell s

the story of the Morgan case.

Histor ical Context

A   major component ofwhat ni neteenthcentury

Islandersreferredto asthelandquest ionAftertheTreatyofParis

when France transferred sovereignty over what became Prince Edward Island

MargaretMcCallum

toGreatBritaintheimperialgovernmentdividedtheIslandintosixtyseven

lotsor townships ofabout ac reseach and allocated all butoneof

theseinasingledaytoaboutindividualsThegranteeswererequiredto

assumetherisks andbenetsofpopulatingtheirlotsw ithimmigrantsand

manychoseto rentlandstose lersratherthan grantingfr eeholdsForthe

next century, Islanders tried various means to persuade proprietors to con

vert leasehold grants to freeholds. Restrictions on the r ights of aliens to hold

land were part of the received law in the British North America n colonies,

but these did not apply to proprietors who remained in the United Kingdom,

asmanydidInPrinceEdwardIslandmodiedtheserestrictionsset

tinga acrelimiton alienland holdingsTheca mpaignagainstt hepro

prietorialsystemcontinueduntilwhentheIslandbythenaCanadian

province, enacted legislation to expropriate large private land holdings. Al

thoughbytheproprietorwitht helargestholdingslivedont heIsland

those who opposed monopoly control of land often strengthened their a rgu

ments by invoking the image of absentee owners living o the labour of

Islanders .

That image continues to resonate with Islanders, and is invoked in con

temporary policy debates over how Islanders should protect their land base.

TheSpeechf romtheTh roneattheopen ingoftheLegislaturein forex

ample, referred to the “long, tempestuous and sometimes, passionate history

connected with our land a nd our people’s relationship to the land . . . the cit

izens ofPrince EdwardIsland individuallya ndthrough their Government

areprepare dto utilize the lessons ofhi storyand deal witht heproblems of

land use and land ownership in a resolute and vigorous fashion.” For Isla nd

politicians, one lesson of this h istory was that voters, who would resist restric

tions on what they considered to be their rights as la ndowners, would support

dierentrules fornonresidentsRichardAlanMorganand AlanMax Jacob

sonAmericancitizenswholivedinRochesterNewYorklearnedthatlesson

inwhentheyaemptedtopurchaset hirtysixacre sfourteenandahalf 

hectares) of wooded land on an unpaved road in Prince County, about three

miles from Cedar Dunes Provi ncial Park. Sol Mednick, the registered owner,

had purchased the land t he previous year from Eleanor MacWilliams.

NonResidentLandOwnershipinthes

M   Marvi n Taylor, owned Canadian Estate Land Cor

poration, which marketed vacant rural land in Canada as r ecreational lots.