Concubinage in Canada

Largely unrecognised by modern courts, concubinage – the formal position of a mistress maintaining a religiously-sanctioned partnership with a man to whom she is not wed – has a varied history when it has appeared in Canada.

The term "concubine" has many definitions, referring to any illicit lasting relationship with an unmarried woman, or an "unmarried wife", or an extra-marital partner to a married man. Much of the political debate has tried to first define the term being used, followed by the legal arguments setting out its place in society.

Often the issue of concubinage has appeared in insurance law, when the mistress of an apparent extramarital affair has laid claim, typically as a commonlaw spouse, to the estate of a man who has a legally-wedded wife, or no wife at all.

They were not trammelled by the queer pride which makes a man of English stock unwilling to make a red-skinned woman his wife, though anxious enough to make her his concubine.

Concubines in Canada were traditionally native women who were not believed suitable to become full wives to the European settlers. Elizabeth "Molly" Brant, the sister of the famed native chief Joseph Brant is believed to have served as the concubine to Sir William Johnson; although his sexual promiscuity was widely known.

At such a place, surrounded by such influences and such unfavorable circumstances, if Mr. Connolly...desired...to take this Indian maiden to his home, he had one of three courses to pursue; that was, to marry her according to the customs and usages of the Cree Indians - to travel with her between three and four thousand miles, in canoes and on foot, to have his marriage solemnized by a priest or magistrate - or to make her his concubine. I think the evidence...will clearly show which of these three courses he did adopt, and which of them...he honorably and religiously followed.

In July 1867, controversy broke out over the case of Connolly v. Woolrych, wherein a Canadian working for the North West Company had taken a 15-year-old native wife and lived with her for 28 years, before leaving her to partake in a traditional Christian marriage ceremony with his cousin, Miss Woolrich, with whom he lived another 17 years. After the death of Connolly and his "concubine" Suzanne, one her many children sued for the right to his estate claiming that the second marriage was invalid and seeking to "vindicate his mother's name from the stain of concubinage", while his proper wife argued that he had never been married to Suzanne.

...
Wikipedia