Regulating Lives: Historical Essays on the State, Society, the Individual, and the Law

323 Pages·2002·2.09 MB·English

by  John McLaren, Robert J Menzies, Dorothy E Chunn

Regulating Lives

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Law and Society Series
W. Wesley Pue, General Editor
Gender in the Legal Profession: Fitting or Breaking the Mould
Joan Brockman
Regulating Lives:
Historical Essays on the State, Society, the Individual, and the Law
Edited by John McLaren, Robert Menzies, and Dorothy E. Chunn
Taxing Choices:
The Intersection of Class, Gender, Parenthood, and the Law
Rebecca Johnson
The series will grow to include works in legal culture, critical social theory
and law, law and governance, law and economics, law and the environ-
ment, First Nations legal issues, feminist legal studies, legality in plural soci-
eties, political science and law, postcolonialism, critical race theory, the
consequences of globalization for legal order, and critical legal history.

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Edited by John McLaren, Robert Menzies,
and Dorothy E. Chunn
Regulating Lives:
Historical Essays on the State,
Society, the Individual, and the Law

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© UBC Press 2002
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior
written permission of the publisher, or, in Canada, in the case of photocopying
or other reprographic copying, a licence from CANCOPY (www.cancopy.com).
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Regulating lives
(Law and society series, ISSN 1496-4953)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7748-0886-1 (bound); ISBN 0-7748-0887-X (pbk.)
1. Social control – British Columbia – History. 2. British Columbia – Social policy.
3. Law – Social aspects – British Columbia. I. McLaren, John, 1940- II. Menzies, Robert
J., 1951- III. Chunn, Dorothy E. (Dorothy Ellen), 1943- IV. Series: Law and society
series (Vancouver, B.C.)
HN110.B8R43 2002 303.3’3’09711 C2002-910556-0
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and
Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
UBC Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada
through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our
publishing activities.
We also gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for
our publishing program, as well as the support of the British Columbia Arts Council.
UBC Press
The University of British Columbia
2029 West Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2
Ph: [phone] Fax: [phone]
E-mail:
Contents
Acknowledgments / vii
Introduction / 3
John McLaren, Robert Menzies, and Dorothy E. Chunn
1 ‘A Strange Revolution in the Manners of the Country’: Aboriginal-Settler
Intermarriage in Nineteenth-Century British Columbia / 23
Jay Nelson
2 Control of the Insane in British Columbia, 1849-78:
Care, Cure, or Confinement? / 63
Gerry Ferguson
3 Racializing Prohibitions: Alcohol Laws and Racial/
Ethnic Minorities in British Columbia, 1871-1927 / 97
Mimi Ajzenstadt
4 Secrets and Lies: The Criminalization of Incest and the (Re)Formation
of the ‘Private’ in British Columbia, 1890-1940 / 120
Dorothy E. Chunn
5 ‘Charity Is One Thing and the Administration of Justice Is Another’:
Law and the Politics of Familial Regulation in Early Twentieth-Century
British Columbia / 145
Robert Adamoski
6 Regulating the ‘Respectable’ Classes: Venereal Disease, Gender,
and Public Health Initiatives in Canada, 1914-35 / 170
Renisa Mawani

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vi Contents
7 Race, Reason, and Regulation: British Columbia’s Mass Exile of Chinese
‘Lunatics’ aboard the Empress of Russia, 9 February 1935 / 196
Robert Menzies
8 The Politics of Naming: Constructing Prostitutes and Regulating Women
in Vancouver, 1939-45 / 231
Michaela Freund
9 The State, Child Snatching, and the Law: The Seizure and Indoctrination
of Sons of Freedom Children in British Columbia, 1950-60 / 259
John McLaren
Postlude / 294
John McLaren, Robert Menzies, and Dorothy E. Chunn
Contributors / 309
Index / 311

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Acknowledgments
As noted on the copyright page, this book has been published with the help
of a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada.
We further benefited from the generous assistance of the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC) through two grants
awarded in 1991 and 1993 to our collaborative project ‘The History of the
Use of Law as an Instrument of Social Control and Engineering.’ We are
grateful to the council for both its patience and support. A grant from the
Simon Fraser University Publications Fund also funded the preparation of
the index.
Jean Wilson, Associate Director, Editorial, of UBC Press, never wavered in
her conviction that this volume would see the light of day. For their sundry
contributions to the project, we also thank UBC Press managing editor Holly
Keller-Brohman, assistant editor Darcy Cullen, copy editor Carol Berger,
proofreader Brian Lynch, indexer Dolores Signori, typesetter Irma Rodriguez,
cover designer Sigrid Albert, and all those involved in the production and
marketing process. We are delighted that the book will be part of the new
Law and Society Series edited by Wes Pue, Nemetz Chair in Legal History in
the UBC Faculty of Law; his perceptive comments on the manuscript were
much appreciated. The anonymous reviewers of UBC Press and the Aid to
Scholarly Publications Programme supplied insights and direction that
modified our thinking in important ways. This is a far better book for their
involvement.
In addition to thanking the many colleagues, students, and friends who
are credited in individual chapters, our appreciation is due to the research
assistants who have helped us with the background work for this series of
essays, often labouring for long hours in archives. That doughty group in-
cludes Joel Freedman, Phyllis Liew, Monica Perry, Nicole Rhodes, Jeffie
Roberts, Tiffany Tsang, Tamara Vrooman, and Kevin Wishlow.

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Regulating Lives

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