Category: Great Library

A New LibGuide: The Charter of Rights and Freedoms

The enactment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not follow the usual path of Canadian legislation.  Tracing its evolution involves research in two jurisdictions – Canada and the UK – since the power to change our Constitution and incorporate new constitutional measures such as the Charter did not lie in our hands but rather with the Crown.  This can cause a lot of confusion when searching for source law on the Charter. 

For this reason, we have created a LibGuide that aims to guide the researcher in their pursuit to locate and identify legislative intent for the Charter as well as to help form a basic understanding of the legislative pathway the Charter underwent to be enacted.  This LibGuide provides the dates and direct links to the British and Canadian Hansards and identifies some helpful secondary and primary source material concerning the Charter.  The territories of this LibGuide include:

  • The Charter:  A Brief Legislative History
  • The Hansards: The Charter in Canada
  • The Hansards: The Charter in the United Kingdom
  • Secondary Resources at the Great Library

And the LibGuide is now live!  Much like the other LibGuides produced by the Great Library, the Charter LibGuide will be periodically updated.  Visit the Great Library Research Guides to find this and other helpful LibGuides produced by the Great Library staff. 

Great Library Holiday Hours

Please take note of our opening hours over the holidays:

December 21, 2019 – 9:00 am to 5:00 pm

December 22, 2019 – 12 noon to 5:00 pm

December 23, 2019 – 9:00 am to 5:00 pm

December 24, 2019 – Closed

December 25, 2019 – Closed

December 26, 2019 – Closed

December 27, 2019 – 9:00 am to 5:00 pm

December 28, 2910 – 9:00 am to 5:00 pm

December 29, 2019 – 12 noon to 5:00 pm

December 30, 2019 – 9:00 am to 5:00 pm

December 31, 2019 – Closed

January 1, 2020 – Closed

Regular hours resume on January 2, 2020.

To all a safe and happy Holiday Season!

> the Staff at the Great Library

The Great Library’s Oddest Law Book Titles

Law books are not generally known for having interesting titles. Most carry functional but yawn-inducing titles such as Business Law in Ontario. Typically, after a respectable number of editions, a legal author’s name is fused to the topic, as in Chitty on Contracts or Orkin on Costs. And sometimes successive authors of a legal treatise share space in the title – Coke on Littleton, Sullivan and Driedger on the Construction of Statutes, etc.

No such staid conventions exist in the world of non-legal book titles. There’s even an annual prize for the oddest non-fiction book title.

The Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year was first awarded in 1978. The prize was the invention of Trevor Bounford and Bruce Robertson, co-founders of the publishing firm, The Diagram Group. The two dreamed up the prize as a way to relieve boredom while working at the annual Frankfurt Book Fair.  The winner of this year’s prize, marking the 41st anniversary, was just announced last week.

The Oddest Book Title contest rules are simple: author and publisher of the winning title receive no tangible prize, only publicity. The nominator of the winning title however receives “a passable bottle of claret”.

To get an idea of what it takes to be a Diagram winner, here are a few recipients from past years:

1992 – How to Avoid Huge Ships (advice to pleasure boat sailors on the dangers of shipping lanes)

1993 – American Bottom Archaeology (an archaeological history of the Mississippi River Valley)

2004 – Bombproof Your Horse (techniques for training horses to be less easily spooked by the unexpected)

2010 – Managing a Dental Practice: The Genghis Khan Way (practice management tips on “how to build an empire in the dentistry field”)

Surprisingly, at least one legal book has won the dubious honour of oddest book title. In 2001, the prize was awarded to Butterworths Corporate Manslaughter Service, a serious guide for lawyers dealing with corporate liability for manslaughter and fatal accidents.

This discovery inspired Great Library staff members to seek out odd legal titles on our shelves.

Here are our staff’s top picks for oddest legal book titles in the Great Library’s print collection, arranged by category:

Best Alliteration or Rhyme

Best Horror

Best Self-Help

and Best Miscellaneous