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Q&A with Margaret Anne Wilkinson, author of Genealogy and the Law in Canada

How did you come up with the idea for this book?
I was asked to speak to the London Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society through the good offices of my husband’s first cousin-once-removed, Carolyn Croke. Carolyn, a librarian herself,  knew that, as both a trained professional librarian and a lawyer, I am naturally interested in the legal questions that involve those working with information in any capacity.  Carolyn and others in the London Branch acquainted me with genealogical practices and matters which they felt might involve questions of law.  In researching their concerns, I became fascinated with the intersection between genealogy and law in Canada.

Tell us a little about the overarching theme of your work, and why you felt compelled to explore it.
Genealogy is one of the fastest growing hobbies in Canada.  It is  a hobby that attracts people with a keen interest in history, which has always been one of my interests.  It is a hobby which tends to bring people to libraries and, as a professor of library and information science, as well as a law professor, I am naturally drawn to an area that involves supporting library use.  However, from a legal perspective, it appears that the law is evolving in Canada in ways that increasingly can impinge upon the genealogist.  The genealogist is naturally curious about other people.  Privacy and personal data protection law increasingly tends to block one from access to information about other people.  Thus we have a growing group of people engaged in information work and supporting information-centred institutions and yet laws related to information seem to increasingly discourage those involved in this hobby.  In this book, I have set out the law that creates this paradox.  If those involved in genealogy agree with my observation that this is a paradox, they may wish to speak to governments about it.

Did you have a specific readership in mind when you wrote your book?
Over several years I was invited to speak  branches of the Ontario Genealogical Society in many parts of the province.  I was also invited to write a series of four articles for the Families journal of the Ontario Genealogical Society which were published in 2007.  However, it is not always easy to get to a talk or find a given journal article when you want it and so, when it was suggested that this book might be helpful, I saw the project as a chance to expand and update the information I had previously provided in the Families articles and make the information more readily available to genealogists working in Canada.

How did you research your book?
I have been supported in my research over the years by a number of grants, including grants from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.  I have worked with issues involving copyright, moral rights, other aspects of intellectual property, personal data protection, professionalism and professional ethics, and so on, from many different perspectives.  However, becoming acquainted with the information needs of genealogists provided me with a insight into the unique perspective of the genealogist and this allowed me to bring together a number of otherwise disparate threads of research.

What is your next project?
I am involved in leading a project which seeks to explore ways of bringing accurate legal information (particularly information about intellectual property and other information law problems) through trained and supervised law students in Canadian law schools to those in situations where it is not practical to seek legal advice directly from practicing lawyers.  This work is funded by the Law Foundation of Ontario.  I am also working with the Ivey Centre for Health Innovation and Leadership at The University of Western Ontario on questions involving the legal regulation of information in the context of health.

Genealogy and the Law in Canada, part of the Genealogist’s Reference Shelf, will be releasing next week.  Margaret Anne Wilkinson lives in London, Ontario.

© 2010 Defining Canada.