Who Controls the Hunt?: First Nations, Treaty Rights, and Wildlife Conservation in Ontario, 1783–1939

222 Pages·2018·1.536 MB·English

by  David Calverley

Who Controls the Hunt?
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Who
Controls the Hunt?
First Nations, Treaty Rights,
and Wildlife Conservation
in Ontario, 1783–1939
David Calverley
Foreword by Graeme Wynn
© UBC Press 2018
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.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Calverley, David, author
Who controls the hunt? : First Nations, treaty rights, and wildlife conservation
in Ontario, 1783-1939 / David Calverley; foreword by Graeme Wynn.
(Nature, history, society)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-0-7748-3133-8 (hardcover). – ISBN 978-0-7748-3135-2 (PDF).
ISBN 978-0-7748-3136-9 (EPUB). – ISBN 978-0-7748-3137-6 (Kindle).
1. Game laws – Ontario – History. 2. Wildlife conservation – Law and legislation
– Ontario – History. 3. Wildlife conservation – Ontario – History. 4. Ojibwa
Indians – Hunting – Ontario – History. 5. Ojibwa Indians – Legal status, laws,
etc. – Ontario – History. 6. Ojibwa Indians – Ontario – Government relations –
History. 7. Hudson’s Bay Company. I. Title. II. Series: Nature, history, society
KEO916.C35 2018 346.71304’69549 C2017-907798-8
KF5640.C35 2018 C2017-907799-6
UBC Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support for our publishing program
of the Government of Canada (through the Canada Book Fund), the Canada
Council for the Arts, and the British Columbia Arts Council.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation
for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications
Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada.
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For Abigail, Eleanor, and Mindi

Contents
Foreword / ix
Graeme Wynn
Acknowledgments / xxv
Introduction / 3
1 First Nations Hunting Activity in Upper Canada and
the Robinson Treaties, 1783–1850 / 13
2 Ontario’s Game Laws and First Nations, 1800–1905 / 28
3 First Nations, the Game Commission, and Indian Affairs,
1892–1909 / 40
4 Traders, Trappers, and Bureaucrats: The Hudson’s Bay Company
and Wildlife Conservation in Ontario, 1892–1916 / 51
5 The Transitional Indian: Duncan Campbell Scott and the
Game Act, 1914–20 / 72
6 R. v. Padjena: Local Pressure and Treaty Hunting Rights in
Ontario, 1925–31 / 88
viii Contents
7 R. v. Commanda, 1937–39 / 109
Epilogue / 122
Appendices
1 Ontario’s Wildlife Legislation, 1877–1937 / 126
2 Chart from the Report of the Vidal-Anderson
Commission, 1849 / 128
Notes / 130
Bibliography / 164
Index / 183
Foreword
Strains of Liberalism
Graeme Wynn
Seemingly simple questions often require complicated answers. Take
Who Controls the Hunt? by way of example. David Calverley’s efforts
to explore and interrogate this apparently straightforward question run to
well over one hundred pages, but even he acknowledges that “the question
of who controls the hunt has not been entirely answered” (125). This is
not to diminish what this book achieves: some questions defy answers,
easy or otherwise, and there is much to be learned through engagement
with important issues in a long-form argument, even if that argument ends
by revealing ambiguity or uncertainty. Calverley’s careful examination of
interactions between First Nations and the state over Aboriginal hunting
and trapping in Upper Canada/Ontario between 1800 and 1940 focuses
on a specific series of events and conflicts to show, in telling detail, how
the Ontario government and the Department of Indian Affairs undercut
Indigenous peoples’ treaty rights. In sum, these pages reveal how federal-
provincial rivalries, differing government agendas, and various popular
and official conceptions of the “Indian problem” affected hunting and
trapping rights in northern Ontario. Yet their implications spin outwards
and backwards to raise broader questions about legal and constitutional
concerns, humanitarian convictions, conservation theories, political ideolo-
gies, concepts of liberty, property, and equality, and the ambiguities and
tensions (strains) inherent in different strains (forms) of liberalism. These
are all issues of fundamental significance to understanding the develop-
ment of Canada, and of equally vital importance to shaping the country’s
future.