This book will be of special interest to Canadian readers of this journal, for it is the first book to be published in Canada on the Canadian law and practice of commercial arbitration. Both authors are Professors of Law at the University of Western Ontario and have had considerable experience in acting as arbitrators.

It is not to be overlooked that the main text of the book provides a concise and lucid general account of Canadian arbitration, making the book well-suited to any non-Canadian who seeks merely an overview of the book’s subject-matter.

However, the authors’ main aim, as stated in the Preface, has been to produce “a reference for lawyers and laypersons alike, whether considering the inclusion of an arbitration clause at the time of concluding an agreement or subsequently deciding to utilize arbitration to resolve a dispute”. Since arbitration is a matter of provincial law and the book is intended to have national coverage (excluding Quebec), it follows that the merits of the book as a work of reference rest principally on the fullness and accuracy of the footnotes in the main text coupled with the relevant passages in the Appendices. It is typical, for instance, to find in the main text a statement such as (p. 123): “All the provincial Arbitration Acts provide generally for the setting aside of an award in the event that arbitrators have misconducted themselves or the award has been improperly procured”, this being linked by a footnote to the appropriate sections of the nine Canadian Arbitration Acts and the two Arbitration Ordinances set out in Appendix A.

The authors have focused on Canadian cases where such exist, but since the Canadian statutory provisions are for the most part so obviously derived from English legislation, it was both natural and right of the authors to include numerous English decisions also. Though the Canadian legislation dates only from the years 1967 to 1980, it preserves two aspects of arbitration which were the subject of the principal reforms enacted by the English Arbitration Act 1979, namely, the special case procedure and the setting aside of an award on the ground of error on its face. Consequently on those aspects English cases may continue to be useful in Canada, though superseded in the country of their origin. On the other hand, the reviewer