Ian Kyer’s The Ontario Bond Scandal of 1924 Re-examined investigates a famous case from the 1920s. Peter Smith, the former treasurer of the Province of Ontario, and Aemilius Jarvis, one of Canada’s most prominent businessmen, were found guilty of criminal conspiracy to defraud the Ontario government in connection with the repurchase of three series of succession duty-free bonds. At the time (and since), people have disagreed about whether they were guilty or whether they acted honestly and legitimately but were caught up in the tangled party politics of the period. Kyer, a historian and a lawyer with extensive experience with corporate finance and government-business relations, has extensively researched the case to provide a very well-written and well-​informed analysis of the bond transactions, the police investigation, the trial, and the appeal decision. He argues cogently that Smith and Irving were wrongly convicted and explains why. This is a first-rate example of the genre of legal history usually known as “legal archeology,” an excavation of a case fully informed by the law, politics, and personalities involved that serves to illuminate not just the case, but the tenor of the times.

C. Ian Kyer is a distinguished lawyer, historian, and author. For more than 30 years he has practised law in the Faskens firm. He is now legal counsel to RPM Technologies. Ian is also the Senior Director of Content for the Intellectual Property Technology module of Lexis Practice Advisor Canada. He practices corporate/commercial law with an emphasis on information technology contracting.

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“The author has done an absolutely extraordinary job of tracing the threads of a complex financial, political, and legal “scandal” from its earliest inspiration to its final — perhaps! — implications in the creation of the Serious Fraud Office in Ontario in 2018. At its simplest, the Ontario Bond Scandal is a convoluted affair, and here Ian Kyer does herculean work to untie the knots and lay it all out for his readers to understand.”

“The cast of interesting and important legal characters is unmatched in any other Canadian case, as are the twists and turns in the case. I am proud to have this book dedicated to me.”

“This is a very interesting, first class book of interest to legal historians in the corporate-commercial context. It is very thoroughly researched and well and clearly written. Although the subject matter is somewhat technical, the author makes everything clear to the general reader.”