The Consolidation of the Rule of Law in the "New Dominion"

The Consolidation of the Rule of Law in the "New Dominion" Michael Boudreau (bio) ON 22 JULY 1904 GEORGE GEE WAS EXECUTED in Woodstock, New Brunswick, for the murder of his cousin Millie Gee. The question of Gee's guilt was not necessarily in question since he had confessed to the crime. Nineteen-year-old George Gee and eighteen-year-old Millie Gee had been "keeping company" and George had become "much attached" to Millie, so much so that he believed that they were husband and wife. But when Millie left George to live with her brother-in-law, Benny Gee, George Gee was "much aggrieved" by her desertion. Gee obtained a rifle and two bottles of rum and paid a visit to Benny Gee's home. Over the course of the evening, they drank and played cards. In the early hours of 13 March 1904, in Homesville, Carleton County, shots were heard echoing throughout the Gee residence. It was soon discovered that Millie Gee had been shot in the stomach, and she later died after doctors had operated on her in a desperate attempt to save her life. When George Gee was taken into custody by Deputy-Sheriff Albion Foster, he expressed little remorse for his actions and announced that the only thing he regretted was not shooting Millie Gee through the heart. The jury took 45 minutes to return with a guilty verdict. Upon hearing the jury's decision, George Gee smiled and quipped that it was "all he could expect." In passing sentence on Gee, the presiding judge, Chief Justice Tuck, stated that the jury's finding of guilt for this "fearful crime" was correct in light of the Crown's evidence. If Gee, or his defence counsel, clung to any hope that his death sentence would be commuted, Tuck quickly dashed their aspirations: "I can hold out no hope to you of pardon [for] this foul deed." And the dominion cabinet, in its review of the case, concurred with Tuck's recommendation that Gee's death sentence should be carried out.1 The fact that George Gee was executed should not come as a surprise. As the authors of the impressive A History of Law in Canada, Volume Two: Law for the New Dominion, 1867-1914 note, during this period New Brunswick (along with [End Page 78] British Columbia, the North-West Territories, and the Yukon), recorded more hangings than pardons.2 Gee's execution is a vivid example of the rule of law and "justice" in macabre action in the early decades of the "New Dominion" of Canada. Moreover, executions were a dramatic reminder to Canadians that the law, whether civil or criminal, permeated their lives. Indeed, as Jim Phillips, Philip Girard, and R. Blake Brown perceptively note, the law "was everywhere, as both derivative of political and social change and economic transformation, and as a contributor to them" (4). The law, in other words, became a potent symbol of the state's power and authority. Similarly, during the 1867 to 1914 period, as this book makes abundantly clear, the rule of law and the regulatory state were consolidated as a cornerstone of civil society. Phillips, Girard, and Brown are prodigious scholars in their own right, and their collaboration on this three-volume set of the history of law in Canada will further cement their reputations as being among the leading figures in Canadian legal history. Indeed, when the third volume is published (tentatively scheduled for 2025), all of these books – Volume One: Beginnings to 1866 (which appeared in 2019 and was reviewed in Acadiensis in 2020) and Volume Two: Law for the New Dominion (reviewed here) – will collectively make an indelible mark not only on the field of Canadian legal history but Canadian history generally.3 Relying primarily on secondary literature, legal decisions, federal and provincial statutes, and annual reports from government agencies, Law for the New Dominion explores Canada's three legal traditions (common law, civil law, and Indigenous law) along with the gradual marginalization of Indigenous law as "British justice," and the notion of the rule of law, solidified its prominence by the eve of the First World War. The authors also...

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