UBC Library Acquires Keenlyside Legal Research Collection

A riveting collection that highlights the effects of B.C.’s colonial justice system on Chinese and Aboriginal populations is now available at UBC Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC).

The John Keenlyside Legal Research Collection features court cases involving Chinese and Aboriginal people as both witnesses and defendants. The documents reveal how the 19th-century justice system and colonial society in British Columbia related to people of Aboriginal and Chinese descent. The collection comprises 82 files, totalling 340 documents.

John S. Keenlyside was born and raised in Vancouver and graduated from UBC with a degree in economics and political science. In 1973 he founded John S. Keenlyside & Co., an investment-counseling firm that he manages with his two sons.

Keenlyside acquired the legal collection in 1991. The documents date from 1862 to 1891 and are available to the public in the form of coloured photocopies, which are stored at Rare Books and Special Collections on the first level of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. A finding aid is available at: www.library.ubc.ca/spcoll/AZ/PDF/KL/Keenlyside_John.pdf
For more information, please contact Ralph Stanton, Head of Rare Books and Special Collections, at 604-822-4879 or ralph.stanton@ubc.ca.

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