Raw Life

Submitted by dmacdonell on Fri, 2011-09-09 16:46

Raw Life

Cameos of 1890s Justice from a Magistrate's Bench Book

By J. Patrick Boyer; Foreword by Edward L. Greenspan and Roy McMurtry

978-0-97816-004-3
June 2012
496pp, Paperback
$39.99 CAD

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Rare views of human lives in turmoil are spotlighted in newly recovered records of the trials conducted in the 1890s by Magistrate James Boyer in Bracebridge, Ontario, and central Muskoka. The charges, and evidence, show just how raw life really was beneath the surface glitter of the so-called "Gay Nineties." While dispensing speedy justice, Boyer, who was the editor of The Northern Advocate, the first newspaper in Ontario's northern districts, also kept a careful record in his handwritten "bench book" of all these cases. That bench book, recently found by his great-grandson, lawyer J. Patrick Boyer, forms the basis of Raw Life.

The first-time publication of the human stories behind these cases teams up the two Boyers across the generations and demonstrates how, in Canadian society, some things haven't changed much over the years — from early road rage to the plight of abused women, from environmental contamination to punitive treatment of the poor.