Bourinot's Rules of Order

Bourinot's Rules of Order is a Canadian parliamentary authority originally published in 1894 by (the younger) Sir John George Bourinot, Clerk of the Canadian House of Commons under the title A Canadian Manual on the Procedure at Meetings of Shareholders and Directors of Companies, Conventions, Societies, and Public Assemblies generally. The title page states that it is an abridgement of the author's larger work, but it should be seen as a shorter re-write, dealing in considerable depth with public meetings outside and separate from the Parliament in Ottawa. The fourth, posthumous, edition of the work was given the cover title of the present article.

Printings

The first three printings by the Carswell Company, Law Publishers in Toronto, are identical in title, text, and pagination.

• 1894, first edition, 1 p.l., [v]-viii, 444 pages
• 1911, second reprint, 1 p.l., [v]-viii, 444 pages
• 1914, third reprint, 1 p.l., [v]-viii, 444 pages

The fourth printing by McClelland, Goodchild & Stewart, Toronto, 1918, and prepared by Thomas Barnard Flint, was identical to the previous versions, except that it dropped the Fourth Part Church synods and conferences and the Fifth Part Municipal Councils, was re-paginated to viii, 208 pages and the title was changed to Rules Of Order being a Canadian Manual on the Procedure at Meetings of Shareholders and Directors of Companies, Conventions, Societies and Public Assemblies Generally. This was the first printing to use Rules of Order in the title.

• 1918, fourth reprint, viii, 208 pages

The 1924 printing by McClelland & Stewart has the identical text and pagination, with minor changes to the numbering of the preliminary leaves, as the 4th printing, but Bourinot's name is added to the cover title as Bourinot's Rules of Order, most probably in response to the American publication Robert's Rules of Order.

• 1924, Rules of Order: Being a Canadian Manual on the Procedure at Meetings of Shareholders and Directors of Companies, Conventions, Societies and Public Assemblies Generally, iv, [2], 208.

Bourinot's larger work, Parliamentary procedure and practice; with a review of the origin, growth and operation of parliamentary institution in the Dominion of Canada, and an appendix, containing the British North America act of 1867 and amending acts from which this was derived was first published in 1884 in Montreal by Dawson Brothers, with further editions in 1892, 1903, and 1916.

See also

• Parliamentary procedure
• Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules and Forms
• Robert Marleau, co-editor of the 2000 edition of House of Commons Procedure and Practice