  We develop elementary canonical methods for the quantization of abelian and
nonabelian Chern-Simons actions using well known ideas in gauge theories and
quantum gravity. Our approach does not involve choice of gauge or clever
manipulations of functional integrals. When the spatial slice is a disc, it
yields Witten's edge states carrying a representation of the Kac-Moody algebra.
The canonical expression for the generators of diffeomorphisms on the boundary
of the disc are also found, and it is established that they are the
Chern-Simons version of the Sugawara construction. This paper is a prelude to
our future publications on edge states, sources, vertex operators, and their
spin and statistics in 3D and 4D topological field theories.
