Municipal Councillors' Handbook

Agar Adamson is the author of Letters of Agar Adamson, 1914–19 and former chair of the Department of Political Science at Acadia University in Nova Scotia.

As an individual who lectures on local government, and who also spent some time on a municipal council, this reviewer can only say “Hallelujah!” to Ian Rogers and the Carswell Company for writing and publishing the fourth edition of the Municipal Councillors’ Handbook. The only problem, and it is a major one, is that the book relates only to the province of Ontario; consequently, those of us who labour in the field of local government in the other nine provinces cannot benefit from its contents.

Nevertheless, the Ontario municipal councillor, the civic activist, and every citizen who is interested in local government can benefit from the existence of this work. In it the author describes in satisfactory detail the various aspects of municipal government, including annexation and amalgamation, elections, municipal powers, meetings of council, zoning and building construction, and municipal by-laws. Under each of these headings the author has presented sub-headings — for example, a by-law when necessary, notice of intention to pass by-laws, publication of by-laws, etc. In short, the work is, as the title describes it, a short and concise handbook for anyone interested in municipal government. It is written in layman’s language, not in legal language.

Now that Rogers has been successful with this publication in Ontario (and, after all, this is the fourth edition) it can only be hoped that the Carswell Company will see fit to have similar works prepared for those of us who labour in the field, but outside the province of Ontario; or is this just another case of “Toronto first, and to heck with the rest of them”?