One hundred years after its birth, Canada still resembled an overly protected child swathed in the arms of its British parent. Years after the end of the Second World War, Canada still appeared to the world as a British colony -- a Union Jack flag-waving bastion of Protestantism. In the 1930s, Toronto was essentially a "British" city with over 80 percent of its population being of British descent. Fifty years later, Canada is now seen as one of the most ethnically diverse cosmopolitan nations in the world. Since this seemed unlikely to have happened just by chance, author Barry Lipson sought to identity the causes that created changes in Canada and in its system of social justice. Invariably it was a person, an event, or a court decision that altered the course of Canadian history. In each of the twenty-two chapters in The Canadian People: How We Became Who We Are , Lipson traces how Canadian courts and legislatures have altered Canadian history. But, not surprisingly, there was always someone or something that moved courts and politicians to act.

Many of the causes were unexpected, frightening, and sometimes tragic; but all created an effect that became the legacy that one generation handed to the next.