At the University of Windsor, I am grateful to Dr Michael Sui, vice president of research, and to Dr Robert Orr, acting dean of arts and social sciences, for generously supporting the publication of this work. Additional support came from the university’s Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric, which took the project under its wing. Invaluable research assistance was given by Annette L. Demers at the university’s Paul Martin Law Library.
Thanks are also due to Professors Maurice Charland, Thomas Flanagan, Desmond Morton, and Jennifer Reid for their early support of this project. Indeed, all the contributors have been exceedingly supportive in putting this book together. Our initial submission was helped by good suggestions from three anonymous reviewers for McGill-Queen’s University Press and was brought to completion by the thoughtful and exacting copyediting of Robert Lewis. Sheila Flavel composed a very thorough index, Kerry Sloan helped with some of the more difficult passages in Riel’s speeches, and Heng Wee Tan designed the book’s perspicacious cover. I thank these people for lending their talents and goodwill to our project. But most of all, I am thankful to Jacqueline Mason, our editor at the press, who assiduously steered the project through treacherous shoals.
Closer to home I am grateful for discussions with friends Christopher Tindale, Carmela Patrias, and Wayne Thorpe, who gave both encouragement and advice in just proportions. Closest of all to home is Jane McLeod, whom I thank for never faltering.
HVH