The British North America Act, 1867.
If this piece of legislation sounds vaguely familiar but seems largely
immaterial to your daily life, I suspect you would be in the majority of
Canadians. And yet, this act — with its seemingly nondescript title —
represents a key moment in our nation’s history. The BNA Act, as we will
refer to it throughout this project, is the document that created the
Dominion of Canada.
Our blog undoubtedly celebrates the BNA Act’s historical significance, but what drew me to this project most is how we can highlight the substantial and nuanced ways that the BNA Act still shapes the country that we live in today. There are sections that clearly impact our society, like those that define whether areas like healthcare and taxation are governed by the federal or provincial governments. A less obvious example of the BNA Act’s continuing impact is related to Canadian identity. Unlike the United States’ revolutionary nationalism that led to a war for independence, Canada’s independence was a peaceful and gradual process that maintained many ties to Great Britain. What interests me is how the formation of Canada affects our nation’s identity and sense of unity in 2016.
In some respects, the BNA Act is an incredibly successful document; it established an enduring federation with relative peace, and found compromise between Great Britain’s centralized state model and the federalized state approach in the United States. And yet, its failure to give Canada legislative control resulted in a prolonged effort to fully achieve independence. This was only accomplished in the last 35 years, and at great cost to our nation’s unity. A product of its time, the act also failed to address indigenous peoples in a meaningful way, entrenching a disregard for aboriginal law that persists today.
My name is Deirdre Fleming. I am a third year student at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law and I am the fifth and final member of the Dominion 2017 team. Critically analyzing text is a passion of mine (I'm super cool, I know). Before my life as a law student, I completed an Undergraduate and a Master’s degree in English Literature and French. My Master’s degree also laid the groundwork for my second source of interest in this project. In my course on Digital Humanities, my colleagues and I explored new ways of pushing the limits of academia, using the Internet, social media, and publishing a digitized text to make the humanities more accessible. I fundamentally believe that the law and our legislative history should be accessible and comprehensible to all Canadians, and this project is a step in that direction.
I hope that you will join us this year as we push academic boundaries and work to make the BNA Act relevant to Canadians in 2016.
Our blog undoubtedly celebrates the BNA Act’s historical significance, but what drew me to this project most is how we can highlight the substantial and nuanced ways that the BNA Act still shapes the country that we live in today. There are sections that clearly impact our society, like those that define whether areas like healthcare and taxation are governed by the federal or provincial governments. A less obvious example of the BNA Act’s continuing impact is related to Canadian identity. Unlike the United States’ revolutionary nationalism that led to a war for independence, Canada’s independence was a peaceful and gradual process that maintained many ties to Great Britain. What interests me is how the formation of Canada affects our nation’s identity and sense of unity in 2016.
In some respects, the BNA Act is an incredibly successful document; it established an enduring federation with relative peace, and found compromise between Great Britain’s centralized state model and the federalized state approach in the United States. And yet, its failure to give Canada legislative control resulted in a prolonged effort to fully achieve independence. This was only accomplished in the last 35 years, and at great cost to our nation’s unity. A product of its time, the act also failed to address indigenous peoples in a meaningful way, entrenching a disregard for aboriginal law that persists today.
My name is Deirdre Fleming. I am a third year student at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law and I am the fifth and final member of the Dominion 2017 team. Critically analyzing text is a passion of mine (I'm super cool, I know). Before my life as a law student, I completed an Undergraduate and a Master’s degree in English Literature and French. My Master’s degree also laid the groundwork for my second source of interest in this project. In my course on Digital Humanities, my colleagues and I explored new ways of pushing the limits of academia, using the Internet, social media, and publishing a digitized text to make the humanities more accessible. I fundamentally believe that the law and our legislative history should be accessible and comprehensible to all Canadians, and this project is a step in that direction.
I hope that you will join us this year as we push academic boundaries and work to make the BNA Act relevant to Canadians in 2016.
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