This article undertakes a reconstruction of the legal scheme under which the working class in Quebec had to operate, from the enactment of the Civil Code of Lower Canada in 1866 to the adoption of provincial accident legislation in 1909. Examination of the laws governing wage labour shows a quite blatant contradiction of the liberal ideal of the formal legal equality of all individuals: in many respects, the marginalization of workers is at the core of Quebec’s civil law at the time. During that period, however, Quebec revised the content of the Civil Code and the Code of Civil Procedure as it applied to workers on a relatively frequent basis. The limited nature of those reforms, some of which were complex and difficult to put into effect, appears to suggest that the legalistic approach to social issues had been exhausted as a response to the social upheavals instigated by wage labor, its risks and weaknesses.
