Forging Alberta's Constitutional Framework

by Richard Connors, John M. Law, University of Alberta. Centre for Constitutional Studies

2005 · University of Alberta

Forging Alberta’s Constitutional Framework analyzes the principal events and processes that precipitated the emergence and formation of the law and legal culture of Alberta from the foundation of the Hudson’s Bay in 1670 until the eve of the centenary of the Province in 2005. The formation of Alberta’s constitution and legal institutions was by no means a simple process by which English and Canadian law was imposed upon a receptive and passive population. Challenges to authority, latent lawlessness, interaction between indigenous and settler societies, periods (pre- and post-1905) of jurisdictional confusion, and demands for individual, group, and provincial rights and recognitions are as much part of Alberta’s legal history as the heroic and mythic images of an emergent and orderly Canadian west patrolled from the outset by red coated mounted police and peopled by peaceful and law-abiding subjects of the Crown. Papers focus on the development of criminal law in the Canadian west in the nineteenth century; the Natural Resources Transfer Agreement of 1930; the National Energy Program of the 1980s; Federal-Provincial relations; and the role and responsibilities of the offices of Justices of the Peace and of the Lieutenant-Governor; and the legacies of the Lougheed and Klein governments.

Athabasca Oil Sands

by Barry Glen Ferguson, Alberta. Alberta Culture, University of Regina. Canadian Plains Research Center

1985 · University of Regina Press

Using the available primary sources, mostly previously unpublished government records, Barry Ferguson examines the ways in which individuals have perceived the importance of the oil sands, and surveys their attempts to exploit the resource. A co-publication with Alberta Culture and Multiculturalism, this book was the winner of the Canadian Historical Association Regional Prize in 1987.