Honsberger - Osgoode Hall: An Illustrated History

OSGOODE HALL

AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY

JOHN HONSBERGER

WITH SPECIAL PHOTOGRAPHY BY KENNETH JARVIS, RCA

Copyright The Osgoode Society for Legal History, 2004

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

Copy Editor: Lloyd Davis

Design: Jennifer Scott

Printer: Transcontinental

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Honsberger, John D. (John David)

Osgoode Hall : an illustrated history / John Honsberger.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-55002-513-9

1. Osgoode Hall Law School Buildings History. 2. Architecture Ontario Toronto. 3. Toronto (Ont.) Buildings, structures, etc. 4. Osgoode Hall Law School Buildings History Pictorial works. 5. Architecture Ontario Toronto Pictorial works. 6. Toronto (Ont.) Buildings, structures, etc. Pictorial works. I. Title.

1 2 3 4 5 08 07 06 05 04

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporations Ontario Book Initiative.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credit in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard, President

Printed and bound in Canada.

Printed on recycled paper.

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For David, Janet and Joan

We long for the day when some competent brother will appear to do for Osgoode Hall what Dr. Scadding has done for Toronto of Old some one who has battled through the storms of his professional career and found safe anchorage in an honest competence and snug library, whose memory is good and whose pencil has been active in keeping notes. What a field there is certainly to recall.

14 Canada Law Journal 317 (1878),
reviewing Scaddings Toronto of Old

On the occasion of our twenty-fifth anniversary, The Osgoode Society is delighted to offer its members John Honsbergers illustrated history of Osgoode Hall.

Our selection of Mr. Honsbergers book as our membership volume for 2004 seems to be particularly appropriate as the Society enters its twenty-sixth year. Osgoode Hall has been the seat of the Law Society of Upper Canada since 1832, and of several of the superior courts of the province for almost as long. It is a national monument and one of the architectural treasures of Canada. There is no building that better incorporates the many stylistic forces that helped shape public buildings in pre-Confederation Canada. The Halls park-like setting amid lush lawns and gardens, its grandly Venetian rotunda with striking Victorian tessellated tile, its stained glass, and its numerous portraits, give Osgoode Hall a venerable eminence and stateliness that few other buildings in Canada enjoy. The Hall has shaped generations of those who have known it and continues to do so. For the legal profession in Ontario it is the fons et origo and has become a symbol of the legal tradition not only in Ontario but throughout Canada and beyond.

Equally significant, however, is the longstanding personal involvement of John Honsberger with the Hall. Mr. Honsberger, the longtime senior partner of the Toronto law firm Raymond & Honsberger, has been in and out of the Hall almost every day during his long and distinguished legal career. In addition to a busy Toronto practice, John Honsberger has been a law teacher, lecturing at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University and elsewhere. He also served for many years as the editor of the Law Society of Upper Canada Gazette, and has written numerous books and articles on Canadian law and legal history. In 1998 he was awarded the Mundel Medal by the attorney general of Ontario in recognition of his contribution to legal literature over the past fifty years. In 1999 the Law Society of Upper Canada honoured him by naming its archives reading room the John Honsberger Reading Room.

Mr. Honsbergers knowledge of and affection for Osgoode Hall resonates on every page of this attractively illustrated volume. The Society thanks Mr. Honsberger for sharing his memories and providing us with this beautiful and informative book.

The purpose of The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History is to encourage research and writing in the history of Canadian law. The Society, which was incorporated in 1979 and is registered as a charity, was founded at the initiative of the Honourable R. Roy McMurtry a former attorney general for Ontario, now chief justice of Ontario and officials of the Law Society of Upper Canada. Its efforts to stimulate the study of legal history in Canada include a research-support program, a graduate student research-assistance program and work in the fields of oral history and legal archives. The Society publishes volumes of interest to the Societys members that contribute to legal-historical scholarship in Canada, including studies of the courts, the judiciary and the legal profession; biographies; collections of documents; studies in criminology and penology; accounts of significant trials; and work in the social and economic history of the law.

Current directors of The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History are Robert Armstrong, Kenneth Binks, Patrick Brode, Michael Bryant, Brian Bucknall, Archie Campbell, David Chernos, Kirby Chown, J. Douglas Ewart, Martin Friedland, Elizabeth Goldberg, John Honsberger, Horace Krever, Virginia MacLean, Frank Marrocco, Roy McMurtry, Brendan OBrien, Peter Oliver, Paul Reinhardt, Joel Richler, William Ross, James Spence and Richard Tinsley.