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Sir Frederick William Haultain: Politician and Judge

Learn about Sir Frederick William Haultain, the first premier of the Northwest Territories and a long-serving Canadian politician. Presented by Dr. Ken Leyton-Brown from the University of Regina.

Sir Frederick William Alpin Gordon Haultain (November 25, 1857 – January 30, 1942) was a lawyer and a long-serving Canadian politician and judge. His career in provincial and territorial legislatures stretched into four decades. He served as the first premier of the Northwest Territories from 1897 to 1905 as is recognized as having a significant contribution towards the creation of the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. From 1905 on he served as Leader of the Official Opposition in Saskatchewan as well as Leader of the Provincial Rights Party. His legislative career ended when he was appointed to the judiciary in 1912.

Ken Leyton-Brown is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Regina.  He came to Regina from Queen’s University, in Kingston, where he completed a Law degree and a doctorate in History.  He specializes in Canadian legal history and also teaches courses in the history of the ancient and classical worlds.  He has a particular interest in social institutions, which are both a product of people’s lives and a powerful force in shaping those lives.

Current research is centred on the legal history of the Chinese in early Saskatchewan.  Legal historical work is focussed, at its most basic, on law: its origins, which may be found in places ranging from legislatures and courts to custom and behaviour; its precise intention and meaning; its application, through courts, for example; and its enforcement, through bodies such as prisons and police.  However, beyond this comparatively technical focus – what has sometimes been termed “internal” legal history – there is the much broader and, it may be argued, richer scope of “external” legal historical studies.  Here, law is seen as intimately related to culture: an expression of culture and expressed by culture.  A tool of the powerful, used in an attempt to give the world a shape they find pleasing, law becomes inextricably a part of the lives of everyone in society, but not always in the ways intended by dominant groups: when it attempts to impose order it also provokes resistance, when it attempts to define society it makes social change inevitable.  These ideas inform work on the Chinese in early Saskatchewan, showing how they were targeted by the law and how their lives were affected, but also how the Chinese used the law to define lives for themselves within an evolving prairie society.

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