Love in Laws

Simon Chester has really covered the subject beautifully in his Valentine’s Day post, so that all that remains for me is to be picky (or, as a former colleague used to say, more or less, pick the fly specks out of the pepper) and point out that with one exception the term “love” does not appear in any Canadian statute as referring to love between adults. All of the half dozen or so references to “love” in our laws are to the parental love of children in some (but not all) of the child welfare or adoption acts.

For database searchers there is the confusion sowed by the fact that a town in Saskatchewan is called Love, and the name appears in various grain laws — as does something called Love-Feed, likely a feedlot business. As well there’s a plethora of references to “loving subjects” of our Dear Leader in all of the many proclamations in the statute books. And finally there’s love of country, noted in Newfoundland’s Provincial Anthem Act. None of which is quite what’s wanted for Valentine’s Day.

Love of country rears it’s dubious head once more in Ontario’s Education Act (which didn’t show up in a CanLII search, by the way), where the duty of a teacher is laid down and includes a bunch of things worth quoting here, given recent fusses about religious love:

264. (1) It is the duty of a teacher and a temporary teacher,
…
(c) to inculcate by precept and example respect for religion and the principles of Judaeo-Christian morality and the highest regard for truth, justice, loyalty, love of country, humanity, benevolence, sobriety, industry, frugality, purity, temperance and all other virtues;

Quite the list, no? O tempora, o mores!

Closer to the arrow’s aim, perhaps, but still not true, is the love referred to in Ontario’s Land Transfer Tax Act’s regs: “natural love and affection” as consideration for a contract.

No, the sole statute I could find in which adult love dares speak its name, albeit at a dialogue’s remove, is section 11(1) of the Newfoundland and Labrador Solemnization Of Marriage Act (R.S.N.L. 1990, c. S-19) in which the intended are made to say: “I solemnly declare that I intend to enter into this marriage which I acknowledge to be a union of faithful love”.