As clerk of the House of Commons, Bourinot advised the speaker and other members of the house on parliamentary procedure; he also wrote the standard Canadian work on the subject. A founding member of the Royal Society of Canada, he played a leading role during the Society's first twenty years. Ahead of his time in writing intellectual history, Bourinot was also an early supporter of higher education for women. He was a man of contrasts, an early Canadian nationalist as well as an imperialist. In spite of the constitutional changes of 1982, there is still much in Bourinot's writing that is relevant today.

Margaret A. Banks (1928-2010) was an archivist in the Ontario Department of Public Records and Archives. She was appointed as the first Law Librarian at the library at the University of Western Ontario Faculty of Law and then appointed as full professor.

Margaret Banks' profile page

"Sir John George Bourinot, Victorian Canadian is excellent. It is a fine example of scholarly work." Ken Munro, Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta
"A major contribution to parliamentary history." Philip Girard, Faculty of Law, Dalhousie University

"Sir John George Bourinot, Victorian Canadian is excellent. It is a fine example of scholarly work." Ken Munro, Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta "A major contribution to parliamentary history." Philip Girard, Faculty of Law, Dalhousie University