WHAT IS A BOOK IN PROGRESS?

A “Book in Progress,” quite simply, is a publication that we at PrimaryDocuments.ca are working on, but which is not yet complete. However, due to the importance of the material both to the field of scholarship and law, we felt an obligation to release the book in this imperfect format. It is our intention to publish this book, once complete, as an eBook and print edition. In the meantime, we will be updating this book in the near future—both quantitatively and qualitatively.

Status of The Book

Introduction, Preface, etc: These items are not yet complete. It is our intention to translate the introduction to match our English publication, while also highlighting any element unique to the French publication. Other elements found in the English, such as a list of members and councillors, will eventually be added to this volume. It is our intention to publish this in the first edition of our publication. (2026-2027)

Footnotes: Some footnotes have been added by the editors to the French edition. It is our intention to add the same explanatory footnotes as are found in the English. This means several hundred footnotes are left to add. These will also be hyperlinked. Thus, for example, when a piece of legislation or a newspaper article is referenced, it is our intention to put the citation down, and link to the original document.  It is our intention to publish these footnotes in our second edition of our publication. (2027 and beyond)

Stylistic: Paragraphs will be further broken up to match the English edition. These were done in the English to make the text more readable. I Some further stylistic changes may be made regarding interruptions such as “Applaudissements”. We are still in discussion about the best way to go forward with these. For now, they are in brackets like in the original. We have italicized them. It is our intention to publish this in the first edition of our publication.(2026-2027)

[Note: We also hope to provide an overview of the stylistic changes we made so the reader can be made aware of these. For example, these include the standardization of all names when they are speaking.]

Source Material: The English edition includes additional content not found in the original 1865 edition. This includes:

• additional newspaper debates from the 8th Parl, 3rd Sess (January-March, 1865);
• an entire session of the 8th Parl, 4th Sess (Summer 1865) which were recreated using Confederation era newspapers; and
• an entire session of the 8th Parl, 5th Sess (Summer 1866) which were largely recreated using the Scrapbook Debates.

We hope, where possible, to reconstruct these parliamentary sessions using French-language newspapers. However, there is no French-language equivalent to the Scrapbook Debates, and thus, additional time is required to put together our own scrapbook debates. Thus, we anticipate this to be done in our second or third edition of publication (2027 and beyond)

Index: A large scale index is in progress for the English volume. Once complete, we hope to replicate it for the French, but is labour-intensive and as a result may only be available in our second or third edition of publication (2027 and beyond)