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Canadian Divorce before Reform: The Case of Prince Edward Island, 1946–67*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2014

Wendy J. Owen  and
J. M. Bumsted
Wendy J. Owen
Affiliation:
St. John's Ravenscourt School, Winnipeg, Manitoba
J. M. Bumsted
Affiliation:
St. John's College, University of Manitoba
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Abstract

This paper represents the first scholarly effort to explore the meaning and practice of divorce in Canada between the end of World War II and the coming of divorce reform in 1968. It is based on a thorough analysis of the case files of the divorce court of Prince Edward Island, resurrected in 1946 to deal with divorce in that province. The paper attempts to place the law and practice of divorce in Prince Edward Island in a national context. It also discusses social patterns of divorce 1946–67 (based upon data never before collected for the period), generally finding them consistent with other available information for the periods immediately preceding and following the one under discussion. The paper concludes with an examination of patterns of divorce among farm families on the Island, exploring other explanatory variables besides traditional morality to explain their distinctiveness

Résumé

Cet article constitue un premier effort académique visant à explorer le phénomène du divorce au Canada entre la fin de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale et l'avènement de la réforme du divorce en 1968 ainsi que sa pratique au cours de cette période. Il se base sur une analyse approfondie des dossiers de la Cour de divorce de l'êle-du-Prince-Édouard, remise en service en 1946 afin de régler les causes de divorce dans cette province.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , Spring/printemps 1993 , pp. 1 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 1993

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References

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6. See, for example, the table in Pike, ibid. at 128.

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14. The significant clauses were reprinted in Cartwright & Lovekin, supra, note 4 at 450.

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20. King v. King, (1904) 37 N.S.R. 204.

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22. This was a principle the Colonial Office had opposed earlier in Prince Edward Island; see Owen & Bumsted, supra, note 7 at 88.

23. Gemmill, J. A., The Practice of the Parliament of Canada upon Bills of Divorce (Toronto: Carswell, 1889)Google Scholar; Hogg, F. D., Parliamentary Divorce Practice in Canada (Toronto: Carswell, 1925).Google Scholar

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26. Ibid., at 238.

27. Veinott, supra, note 5 at 274.

28. Ibid., at 276.

29. Ibid., at 287.

30. Ibid., at 289.

31. Backhouse, C., “Married Women's Property Law in Nineteenth-Century Canada” (1988) 6 Law and History Rev. 211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32. Snell, In the Shadow of the Law, supra, note 5 at 9.

33. Smith Maynard, supra, note 5 at 243.

34. Snell, In the Shadow of the Law, supra, note 5.

35. The foregoing paragraph based on Snell, In the Shadow of the Law, supra, note 5. For statistics, see ibid., at 10 and Canada Yearbook (Ottawa: Dominion Bureau of Statistics, 1968) at 285.

36. See especially the province-by-province “Practice Remembrancers” (which take up most of the book) in Cartwright & Lovekin, supra, note 4.

37. An Act for Establishing a Court of Divorce, and for Preventing and Punishing Incest, Adultery, and Fornication, S.P.E.I. 1833, c. 10.

38. Owen & Bumsted, supra, note 7 at 89.

39. Prince Edward Island Journal of the Legislative Assembly (1920) at 94. No debate was recorded on this resolution.

40. Prince Edward Island, Legislative Assembly, Royal Gazette, 22 December 1945.Google Scholar

41. PEI Supreme Court RG6, Divorce Files 1946–1968, Public Archives of Prince Edward Island (hereinafter SC), file 1.

42. SC, file 5.

43. SC, file 7.

44. SC, file 17.

45. MacKinnon v. MacKinnon, 44 D.L.R. (2nd) 443.

46. The Divorce Act, S.P.E.I. 1949, c. 10.

47. SC, file 6973. For further discussion see Owen & Bumsted, supra, note 7 at 102.

48. The Divorce Act, S.P.E.I. 1952, c. 15.

49. The following discussion is based on federal census returns for 1941–71, much of the data being summarized by Gasgupta, Sastadal in “The Island in Transition: A Statistical Overview” in Smitheran, V.et al., eds., The Garden Transformed: Prince Edward Island, 1945–1980 (Charlottetown: Ragweed Press, 1982) 243.Google Scholar

50. Nothing substantial has been published on the status of women or on women's issues on Prince Edward Island for the period 1945–68. Among the most useful studies of women in postwar Prince Edward Island are Mclsaac, L., The Role of Women in the Operation of Family Farms in Prince Edward Island (M.Sc. Thesis, Guelph University, 1983)Google Scholar [unpublished] and Prince Edward Island Advisory Council on the Status of Women, Women in the Island Economy: Conference Proceedings October 1982 (Charlottetown: Author, 1982).Google Scholar Perhaps the most substantial statement for the pre-1968 period is contained in “Brief to the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada,” undated but probably compiled in 1969 by a consortium of women's organizations in Charlottetown and preserved at the Public Archives of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, accession number 3027.

51. SC, files 112, 130.

52. SC, file 256.

53. SC, file 240.

54. SC, file 119.

55. SC file 129; for other pre-war examples of similar testimony, see Snell, In the Shadow of the Law, supra, note 5 at 199.

56. SC, file 196.

57. SC, file 60.

58. SC, file 34.

59. SC, files 43, 137, 141, 152, 175, 322. See Snell, In the Shadow of the Law, supra, note 5 at 227 for prewar examples.

60. SC, files 147, 166.

61. SC, file 173.

62. SC, files 217, 235.

63. SC, file 160. Most Canadian legal wisdom of the time would have insisted that rape was not adulterous.

64. Snell, In the Shadow of the Law, supra, note 5 at 154 has higher percentages than these, but he does not distinguish in his table between cases before 1925 (when the double standard applied) and after 1925. On Prince Edward Island there was no double standard and charges of cruelty got the plaintiff nowhere.

65. Divorce Jurisdiction Act, RSC 1952, c. 84.

66. SC, file 324.

67. SC, file 148.

68. SC, file 161.

69. SC, files 239, 269.

70. SC, file 249.

71. Smith Maynard, supra, note 5 at 239.

72. C. Thane Campbell, “Practice Remembrancer, Prince Edward Island” in Cartwright & Lovekin, supra, note 4 at 375.

73. Palmer, E., “Reasons for Marriage Breakdown: A Case Study in Southwestern Ontario” (1971) 2 J. of Comparative Family Studies 251.Google Scholar

74. Snell, In the Shadow of the Law, supra, note 5 does not offer data on age of marriage of divorce participants, but a perusal of tables at 147 and 148 suggests similar results.

75. Ambert, A.-M., Divorce in Canada (Ottawa: 1980) at 33.Google Scholar

76. Snell, In the Shadow of the Law, supra, note 5 at 148.

77. Ibid.

78. Ambert, supra, note 75 at 33.

79. Kephart, W. M., “The Duration of Marriage” (1954) 19 Am. Sociological Rev. 290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

80. Ambert, supra, note 75 at 34.

81. Snell, In the Shadow of the Law, supra, note 5 at 148.

82. Ambert, supra, note 75 at 46; Palmer, supra, note 73 at 255; Snell, In the Shadow of the Law, supra, note 5 at 218.

83. Married Women's Property Act, S.P.E.I. 1896, c. 5.

84. Snell, In the Shadow of the Law, supra, note 5 at 151.

85. Ibid., at 188.

86. MacKinnon v. MacKinnon, 44 D.L.R. (2nd) 443.

87. MacKinnon v. MacKinnon, 54 D.L.R. (2nd) 41.

88. Holman, H. T., “The Early History of the Court of Chancery on PEI” (1981)Google Scholar [unpublished]. Canadian historians have been slow to recognize the ways in which chancery courts in several provinces may have modified common law prescriptions.

89. The last figures come from Snell, In the Shadow of the Law, supra, note 5 at 181.

90. McKie et al., supra, note 2 at 207.

91. SC, files 184, 195, 243.

92. SC, file 243.

93. SC, file 244.

94. Snell agrees; see In the Shadow of the Law, supra, note 5 at 224, where he writes: “Both in the divorce participation rate and in the character and timing of marriage breakdown, farming couples behaved consistently more conservatively than any other occupational group identified.” But Snell devotes only one tantalizing paragraph to the question.

95. SC, files 52, 58, 258.

96. SC, file 298.

97. SC, file 222.

98. Pike, supra, note 5 at 130.