The Conventional Man: The Diaries of Ontario Chief Justice Robert A Harrison, 1856–1878

H. Graham Rawlinson is a corporate lawyer with the international law
firm Torys in Toronto. He is co-author of The Canadian 100: The 100 Most
Influential Canadians of the 20th Century.

Just about any diary makes for compelling reading, and this one is no
exception. Robert Harrison was a prominent lawyer and judge in Upper
Canada (after 1867, Ontario) who, chiefly because he was convinced that
he was “destined for great things,” kept a detailed diary of his
professional and personal life. Editor Peter Oliver has pared
Harrison’s massive output to about 30 percent of the extant diary,
publishing it in this still-sprawling 648-page book. Oliver also
contributes a substantial introduction, both sketching Harrison’s
background and lending useful context to the events and personalities of
his times.

Each reader will focus on different aspects of the diary. For social
historians, the diary is a rich trove of primary-source material about
how people lived and what they thought in mid-Victorian Toronto.
Harrison’s generally paternalistic, unsympathetic attitude toward the
working classes and poor, who came before his court and worked for him
at his grand Toronto residence, are instructive. His genteel
anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic private comments are similarly revealing.
Criminal law scholars will especially appreciate the rare glimpse into
both the mind of a 19th-century Canadian judge and the cases that came
before him. General readers and specialists should be grateful to
Professor Oliver and the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History for
making Harrison’s diary widely available.