Product Description
Ian Kyer’s The Ontario Bond Scandal of 1924 Re-examined investigates a famous case from the 1920s. Peter Smith, the former treasurer of the Province of Ontario, and Aemilius Jarvis, one of Canada’s most prominent businessmen, were found guilty of criminal conspiracy to defraud the Ontario government in connection with the repurchase of three series of succession duty-free bonds. At the time (and since), people have disagreed about whether they were guilty or whether they acted honestly and legitimately but were caught up in the tangled party politics of the period. Kyer, a historian and a lawyer with extensive experience with corporate finance and government-business relations, has extensively researched the case to provide a very well-written and well-informed analysis of the bond transactions, the police investigation, the trial, and the appeal decision. He argues cogently that Smith and Irving were wrongly convicted and explains why. This is a first-rate example of the genre of legal history usually known as “legal archeology,” an excavation of a case fully informed by the law, politics, and personalities involved that serves to illuminate not just the case, but the tenor of the times.
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part One | The Bond Purchases
one | Background to the Transaction
two | Authorizing and Completing the Purchases
Part Two | The Investigation and Trials
three | In Search of a Crime
four | The Smith/Jarvis Trial
five | Sentence and Appeal
six | A.H. Pepall’s Extradition and Trial
Part Three | A Twelve-Year Campaign for Exoneration
seven | Unremitting Efforts
eight | A Belated Second Look
conclusion | What Went Wrong
postscript | The Legal Battle over the Jarvis Fine
Timeline
appendix 1 | McRuer’s Authorship of an Anonymous Memoir of Tilley
appendix 2 | Selected Letters of A.H. Pepall
Notes
Index
Publications of the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History
About the Author
“This is a very interesting, first class book of interest to legal historians in the corporate-commercial context. It is very thoroughly researched and well and clearly written. Although the subject matter is somewhat technical, the author makes everything clear to the general reader.”
Professor Jim Phillips, University of Toronto Law School and Editor-in-Chief of the Osgoode Society
“The author has done an absolutely extraordinary job of tracing the threads of a complex financial, political, and legal “scandal” from its earliest inspiration to its final — perhaps! — implications in the creation of the Serious Fraud Office in Ontario in 2018. At its simplest, the Ontario Bond Scandal is a convoluted affair, and here Ian Kyer does herculean work to untie the knots and lay it all out for his readers to understand.”
Professor Penny Bryden, University of Victoria history department
“The cast of interesting and important legal characters is unmatched in any other Canadian case, as are the twists and turns in the case. I am proud to have this book dedicated to me.”
Martin L. Friedland, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto and former Dean, University of Toronto Law School
