Local and Regional, I

466 LETTERS IN CANADA: 1963 for right-thinking people the essential worth of the minimum standards that society expects from them: "the criminal law ___ can only be understood and explained in terms of a generally directed conditioning process which also has significant particular secondary functions" (p. 36). In the course of expounding this Thurman Arnold-ish theory, however, he discusses in a down-to-earth, if rather hard-boiled, way many pressing contemporary issues: among them are the relation of law to morality, the problem of the mentally subnormal, and the deficiencies of the sentencing process. To Professor JafFary of the School of Social Work at the University of Toronto, a social worker concerned about the wrecking of human lives, the deficiencies of the sentencing process in Canada constitute the number one problem of our criminal law today. In Sentencing of Adults in Canada ( University of Toronto Press, pp. xii, 122, $4.95) he too is asking disturbing questions and directing them speCifically at Canadians. Among those questions are the following: why does the Canadian law give nO real guide to the magistrate about the sentence he should impose in any particular case; why does Canada lag so far behind England and the United States in correctional ideas; why does Canada in 1963 still lean toward the nineteenth-century "classics" rationale in sentencing ("deterrence") and away from the twentieth-century "social" rationale ("reformation"). Because Professor JafFary has a strong sense of the realities, it is the magistrate-and not that drama-symbol, the Supreme Court Judge-who is the central figure and so Part IV describes the magistrate 's courts at work and their place in the correctional system. This scholarly and detailed study is the careful work of a reformer and will often be referred to in the discussions on sentencing which are going to take place in Canada during the next few years. (JOHN W,LLIS) LOCAL AND REGIONAL, I Morris Zaslow Judging from the array of books received, 1963 was a highly productive and successful year in the field of local and regional history, impressive both by virtue of number and a generally high standard of quality. Especially noteworthy in their Own right and for what they foreshadow are the first volumes of two important new series-the Canadian Centenary Series, a history of Canada planned in seventeen volumes under the general editorship of Professors W. 1. Morton and D. G. Creighton, SOCIAL STUDIES 467 and the Carleton Library, paperback reprints of important Canadian books and documents. Both are the product of the publishing house of McClelland and Stewart, Toronto. Besides these, this year's group includes several good to excellent biographies, a number of useful social and business histories, and the usual miscellany of accounts of travel, community histories, a folk history, and a book of aviation lore. Particularly useful to students of western Canada's history are several biographical writings collectively spanning a period of 175 years. First in point of time stands David Thompson's Narrative, 1784--1812 (The Champlain Society, pp. cii, 410, xv, available to members only), a celebrated work originally published by the Champlain Society in 1916 in an edition by Dr. J. B. Tyrrell. The present edition, by the same Society, supplements Dr. Tyrrell's Introduction with another by Professor Richard Glover and also includes a missing chapter of the Narrative that has recently come to light. By checking Thompson's statements against COntemporary records and investigating the process of composing his work, the new Introduction adds a historical dimension lacking in the earlier edition. As Dr. Tyrrell demonstrated, the Narrative is an extremely accurate and valuable study of the geography, wildlife, inhabitants, and fur trade of northwest America. But Professor Glover's study questions some of Thompson's autobiographical statements and charges him with lapses of memory, omissions, and evasions, particularly when his own conduct is open to question. These criticisms may be accepted as true, but it can still be objected that the new Introduction is unnecessarily and excessively hostile to Thompson and makes too much of these failings . The Narrative, after all, was not simply, or even primarily, an autobiography, and Thompson's references to some...