McLaren v. Caldwell
| McLaren v Caldwell | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Court | Judicial Committee of the Privy Council |
| Full case name | Caldwell and another v McLaren |
| Decided | 7 April 1884 |
| Citation(s) | [1884] UKPC 21, (1884) 9 AC 392 |
| Case history | |
| Prior action(s) | McLaren v. Caldwell 1882 CanLII 3, 8 SCR 435 (28 November 1882), reversing McLaren v. Caldwell et al., 6 Ont. App. Rep. 456 (8 July 1881). and restoring a decree of the Court of Chancery of Ontario |
| Appealed from | Supreme Court of Canada |
| Case opinions | |
| Since 1849, the law in what is now Ontario has made public waterways of all streams, whether they are naturally or artificially floatable. Judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada should be reversed, and that of the Ontario Court of Appeal restored. | |
| Court membership | |
| Judges sitting | |
| Case opinions | |
| Decision by | Lord Blackburn |
| Keywords | |
| free use of waterways, provincial jurisdiction | |
McLaren v Caldwell was a landmark decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council that upheld provincial jurisdiction in matters of a local or private nature, as well as over property and civil rights. It has been described as "a decision in a non-constitutional legal context that had indirect non-legal, but profound, constitutional consequences."
The case arose from a controversy that came to be known as the "Lumbermen's Feud".Peter McLaren owned a lumber mill and had added timber slides on the Mississippi river and its northern tributaries that flowed through land that he owned in Lanark County, Ontario, in order to provide for transporting his own logs. Boyd Caldwell owned a rival mill, and was attempting to drive 18,000 logs through those slides. McLaren sued Caldwell's firm, B. Caldwell & Son, to restrain them from passing or floating timber and saw logs through his slides.
Caldwell claimed that McLaren was unable to prevent the use of the river for the passage of his logs because of the statutes in force in Ontario. McLaren, however, asserted that he had the right to do so under the common law.
In support of Caldwell, Ontario Premier Oliver Mowat arranged the passage of the Rivers and Streams Act, 1881 which required the unobstructed passage of logs, timber, rafts, etc. down all waterways in the province, whether improved or not, subject to the payment of any reasonable tolls. This Act was disallowed by the federal government under Sir John A. Macdonald on the grounds that it infringed upon private property rights. This conflict added fuel to the ongoing quarrel between the federal and provincial governments; the bill was re-enacted and disallowed again in 1882 and 1883.
In an 1882 debate in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Mowat maintained that the Rivers and Streams Bill fell wholly within provincial jurisdiction, and asserted that federal disallowance could only take place:
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