Lawyers, law librarians, law students, clerks — Oh, help me, Rhonda!
I’m trying to verify the details and figure out the correct format to cite an old decrepit statute from the Colony of Vancouver Island. The title of the act is “An Act to declare the Law relating to Bankruptcy and Insolvency in Vancouver Island & its Dependencies”, and it’s an 1862 statute.
Despite rummaging through a law library, I can’t seem to find the correct 1862 statute book, but I did manage to find R. v. Hall, [1940] B.C.J. No. 92, [1941] 1 W.W.R. 618 (B.C. Police Ct.), which says:
“[18] It is to be noted that they link bankruptcy with the poor laws. The English Bankruptcy Act passed on August 1, 1849, is contained in British Columbia’s Volume of Miscellaneous Acts, 1913, p. 121, and on February 1, 1862, a statute was passed by the Legislature of Vancouver Island, which is ch. 6 of that year, and is contained in this volume of Miscellaneous Acts at p. 319. This is, ‘An Act to declare the Law relating to Bankruptcy and Insolvency in Vancouver Island and its Dependencies.’”
I believe that would make this statute 25 Vic. c. 6, s. 9. Or is that an “S.B.C.” or an “R.S.B.C.”?
Is there anyone here that might be able to help me?
-Portwest
I honestly don’t know. I tried looking, but the only references I could find online were to old text sources where the legislation was either referred to by its full name or simply as the Bankruptcy Act 1862, without cites.
I did find a Supreme Court of Canada case (Hanson v. Bondholders’ Re-Organization Committee, [1951] S.C.R. 366) that told me that the Bankruptcy Act 1862 had been referred to earlier, in *Ex parte Cowen; In re Cowen *(1867) L.R. 2 Ch. App. 563. Maybe if you can dig up Cowen, you can find the correct cite.
Or, you could try the Great Library at Osgoode Hall in Toronto. As I understand things, their librarians will sometimes take phone enquiries and get back to you.
I don’t know anything about Canadian legal citations, and very little about legal citations otherwise. But this says the Revised Statutes number is 6, if that helps at all. It comes right after “An act to prohibit Swine and Goats from running at large in the Town of Victoria.”
And as long as I’m here … Since this is a factual question and not really a matter of opinion, I’ll move this thread to the General Questions forum.
Tom, I too, had found the *Hanson *case and the reference to Cowen. I can’t locate any full text of Cowen, either on Quicklaw, BestCase or the web. And the Osgoode Law Library only takes phone inquires from students or faculty. (I am neither)
Bibliophage, I’d found the same Google book reference you did, but couldn’t figure out what “consecutive number” (46) would mean, and couldn’t get any further info with “R.S.B.C. 1862, c. 6”.
That’s when I found the quote from R.v. Hall above — which appeared to be “more possibly correct”.
I have access to a small law library, which includes English statute books dating back to the 1200s and Canadian books dating quite far back, but no B.C. books from 1862.
I knew it was a long shot, but I was hoping some doper in a west coast law library might find an 1862 B.C. statute book and would let me know the correct citation.
I sure do appreciate that y’all would take a shot at it, though.
No, not the Osgoode Hall Law School library–the Great Library, that belongs to the Law Society of Upper Canada and that happens to be located in the Osgoode Hall building on Queen Street in downtown Toronto. Its web site looks like they’re open to enquiries from the general public. Follow the “Ask a Law Librarian” link for phone numbers and e-mail addresses.
It’s important to remember that this is pre-Confederation legislation from a British colony in what is now BC. The McGill Guide discusses what to do about such legislation, but fails to give any abbreviation for the Statutes of the Colony of Vancouver Island. According to this page from Courthouse Libraries BC, this 1866 collection of statutes is likely the source you’re looking for. Other sources indicate that the Bankruptcy Act is indeed chapter 6 of the 1862 statutes in this collection.
Anyway, using this information and the McGill Guide pre-Confederation model, we get the following:
An Act to declare the Law relating to Bankruptcy and Insolvency in Vancouver Island & its Dependencies, Statutes of the Colony of Vancouver Island 1862 (25 Vict.), c.6.
Note that as I said above, I’m unsure how “Statutes of the Colony of Vancouver Island” would be abbreviated. Apparently, the pre-Confederation Statutes of the Province of Canada are abbreviated “S. Prov. C.” so “S. Col. V.I.” would be a good guess. But only a guess, and I imagine that you wouldn’t be wrong if you left the full “Statutes of the Colony of Vancouver Island” in the citation.
The Bankruptcy Act 1862 also appears in RSBC 1871, but given the multi-volume setup of RSBC 1871 and the complications of citing pre-Confederation colonial legislation that is in post-Confederation revised statutes, it may be easier to go with the citation given above.
Spoons, that B.C. Courthouse library website was the key — I e-mailed the law librarian who e-mailed me back to say that s. 172 of the Act says the short title is “Bankruptcy Act, 1862”, so s/he said that the correct citation would be “Bankruptcy Act, 1862, Statutes of the Colony of Vancouver Island, 1862, c. 6.”
Again, thank you! (I just love it when a puzzle is solved)
Ahh, Grasshopper, when you can take this statute citation from my hand…
I agree with Spoons - with one comment, I’m not sure that you need to include the C. in the citation. I would suggest S.V.I. would be a sufficient citation.
I think that the reason for the “Prov.” in citing the pre-Confederation statutes of the old Province of Canada is that while that province shared the same name as the new Dominion, they were legally separate entities, so “S.Prov.C.” avoids any confusion. I don’t think I’ve seen the use of “C.” in referring to the pre-Confederation statutes of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, or Newfoundland.
