The Office of Lieutenant-Governor: A Study in Canadian Government and Politics

Many people with orderly minds tend to see in the office and functions of the Lieutenant-Governor simply a copy in essentials of what they profess to find at Westminster and Ottawa. The truth is that no very exact parallel between the two major governments can be drawn, and when the Lieutenant-Governor is brought into the comparison, the points in which he resembles the sovereign and the Governor-General are found to be almost as misleading as they are enlightening. Great developments in all three positions have occurred in the last seventy-five years, and the Lieutenant-Governorship has perhaps altered the least. It is this office and its history which form the subject of this book. The study by its very nature must be one primarily of precedents; and Dr. Saywell has unearthed an impressive number to augment the few which have hitherto been common knowledge. The result throws a great deal of light on a controversial office which in recent years has tended quite wrongly to be regarded as negligible.