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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Royal Wedding: Who's in, and who's out?
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Augustine the Aleut
Shipmate
# 1472
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Posted
The British, on the conquest of Québec, allowed the civil courts to continue according to the Custom of Paris. This was guaranteed by the 1774 Québec Act, which students of the War of Independence will recall as one of the Intolerable Acts, and which gets a reference in the Declaration of Independence. This continues as part of Canada's constitution and, as John Holding notes, is why 3 of the 9 Supreme Court justices must be qualified in the civil code. *end of boring background*
Québec's peculiarity in this matter stems from several factors coming together: 1) there is a fairly limited number of family names among the roughly 5 million francophone Québécois; 2) after the introduction of divorce and remarriage in the 1960s, remarrying women were adopting the names of spouse no. 2 (or even no. 3) and driving the civil registry folks insane-- one of 13,000 Diane Dubois became one of 7,349 Diane Lefebvres became one of 12,474 Diane Boissoneaults, and then took her maiden name back again. The confusion became so problematic that feminists and law-reform types suggested that no name change following marriage be accommodated, effective in 1976. The Civil Registry breathed a sigh of relief.
If, however, a Québec bride really wants the new spouse's family name, she can go down to the Mairie and do a legal change-of-name application. The Director of Civil Status will authorize it on account of: 1) the continued use of a name not entered on the birth certificate; 2) a name of foreign origin, too difficult to pronounce or write in its original form; 3) serious prejudice or psychological suffering caused by the use of the name; 4) a name that invites ridicule or that is infamous (marked by disgrace, shame or humiliation); or 5) adding to the surname of a child under 18 the surname of the father or mother.
In practice, a woman normally goes by her own name (e.g., Diane Dubois), but the couple will be known as M et Mme Paul Lebrun. On her driver's permit or health card, she will always be Diane Dubois. Everyone seems to take this in stride.
Posts: 6236 | From: Ottawa, Canada | Registered: Oct 2001
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
Being able to explain something doesn't stop it from being a Kinder Egg. Doubtless there was once a reason for that prohibition. Whether it was child safety, protection of the native sweet industry or what, I don't know and don't particularly care.
What makes something a Kinder Egg is the state wading in with criminal penalties or enforceable prohibitions, to an area where citizens should be entitled to decide for themselves, elsewhere normally are, and (this is an important part) in a way which makes the state in question look silly and petty to citizens of anywhere else.
This effect is magnified where the province in question is part of a larger polity and the other provinces impose no such thing.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Pangolin Guerre
Shipmate
# 18686
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Posted
Enoch, you're restricting yourself to a common law mentalit'e (I can't do an aigu).
As well, you wrote:
This effect is magnified where the province in question is part of a larger polity and the other provinces impose no such thing.
Stephane Dion, former leader of the Liberal Party and our current ambassador to Germany and the EU, once said that Canada is a nation that in theory doesn't work. It works only because we accept its illogic. It's sort of a political koan.
Posts: 758 | From: 30 arpents de neige | Registered: Nov 2016
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
Phantom Flan Flinger, a Kinder Egg is exactly what you think it is. It's become evident on these threads over the years that for some mysterious reason, it's quite a serious criminal offence to import one into the USA.
No Pangolin Guerre, I'm not restricting myself by having a common law mentalité. I was already aware that Quebec uses a French derived legal system, although as explained earlier on this thread, it appears to derive from the law of C18 France, not modern post-Napoleonic French law. Yes, I live in a country most of which uses Common Law systems, but a major part uses a partially Civil Law system.
As has already been explained by Augustine the Aleut, this can no more derive from Quebec's French tradition than the US's antipathy to Kinder Eggs derives from Common Law, but is a recent innovation from the 1970s.
Every jurisdiction has its Kinder Eggs. I stand by my view that this is one of Quebecs's.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Augustine the Aleut
Shipmate
# 1472
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Posted
I think in this case the Directeur de l'état civil would register the immigrants Henry de Windsor and Meghan Markle, and their driving permits and health cards would bear these names, but the chef de protocol would refer to Leurs Altesses Royales le prince et la princesse Henry de Windsor (the abbreviation, for those who wish to save pixels, is LL.AA.RR.).
For those interested in the Québec civil code (all three of you), its mediaeval ramshacklery was napoleonized in 1866, with the unfortunate side effect that many of the property and civil rights of women were suppressed, there to lay dormant until the era of charters of rights and another revision in 1994.
Normal people would not know this, or particularly care, but I had the unfortunate experience of doing the paperwork for a grant for a study on this, Brian Young's "The Politics of Codification," which is a readable piece of work, should you find yourself snowed into a cottage somewhere.
There is an interesting discussion to be had on the advantages and disadvantages of the code as opposed to the common law, but that's likely for another thread, should anyone care to pursue it. Its continuance can be blamed on the British colonial authorities, who decided not to impose English law, suppress Catholicism, and replace the use of French with English, all of which options were reviewed in the 1760s.
Posts: 6236 | From: Ottawa, Canada | Registered: Oct 2001
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