The History Department is pleased to announce the first talk in its 2026-27 Speaker Series.
“Within and Without the Home: Displaced Girls, Settler Colonialism, and the Limits of Legal Protection in Late Victorian Ontario”
Jordyn Beaupré, part-time Instructor, Department of History, Brock University; Ph.D. candidate, Department of History, McMaster University
Tuesday, November 10, 2026
1:30 – 3:00 p.m.
573A Glenridge Ave. (GLA), Room 201
The talk will be followed by a question-and-answer period. Light refreshments will be served. All are welcome.
With generous support from Brock’s Social Justice and Equity Studies M.A. Program.
Our Western Home, Canadian Illustrated News, 1879
In her talk, Jordyn Beaupré explores how ideas about home and the family influenced public debates and legal proceedings that focused on protecting adolescent girls in late nineteenth-century Ontario. She examines how race and class affected which kinds of families were seen as legitimate and capable of producing girls who, if subjected to sexual violence, would be considered worthy of legal protections – and how, in turn, institutionalization and settler-colonial policies prevented some girls from receiving those protections. Juxtaposing the experiences of Indigenous girls and immigrant girls sent to Canada as “home children,” she shows how prioritizing white settler families produced distinct and uneven forms of unprotected girlhood.
Jordyn Beaupré is a part-time instructor in Brock University’s Department of History and a doctoral candidate in McMaster University’s Department of History, currently in the final stages of her studies. At McMaster, she received a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship and completed a graduate diploma in Gender and Social Justice. She is a historian of girlhood, law, and colonialism, focusing on late nineteenth-century Canada and the position of girls in the nation-building project. Her work has appeared in the Journal of History and the Canadian Journal of Law and Society and will soon appear in the Journal of the History of Sexuality.
