Largely unrecognised by modern courts, concubinage – the formal position of a mistress maintaining a religiously-sanctioned partnership with a man to whom she is not wed – has a varied history when it has appeared in Canada.
In New France, the institution of common-law or informal unions between French men and aboriginal women (known as marriages according to the ways of the land) had an ambiguous legal status.
I think the evidence...will clearly show which of these three courses he did adopt, and which of them...he honorably and religiously followed.In July 1867, controversy broke out over the case of Connolly v. Woolrych, wherein a Canadian working for the North West Company had taken a 15-year-old native wife and lived with her for 28 years, before leaving her to partake in a traditional Christian marriage ceremony with his cousin, Miss Woolrich, with whom he lived another 17 years.
[8] In the lead-up to the codification of the 1866 Civil Code of Lower Canada, Member of Parliament O'Farrell noted the inconsistency that would allow a man to leave his estate to a "common concubine" to the exclusion of his wife, but not to a charitable organisation in the same circumstance.
[9] The draft which was finally approved was "torturous and detailed, emphasizing the sharp contradiction between freedom and morals", and allowed bequests only to provide such as was necessary to "maintain" a concubine and any "incestuous or adulterine children".