Kelly Morrison is a PhD candidate in history, specializing in War & Society studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. She earned her Honours BA and MA in history at the University of Toronto. Morrison has published two articles. In 2016, “The North West Rebellion Monument and its Enduring Place in the Historical Landscape of Toronto,” was published in ImagiNATIONS, the University of Toronto’s Canadian Studies Undergraduate Journal. In 2020, “The Missing and the Missed of Lanark County, Ontario: Great War Sacrifice and the Memorialization of Exclusion in ‘The Volunteer’ Monument,” was published in the Ontario History. She has guest lectured on the subject of War, Commemoration and Propaganda at the University of Toronto and Wilfrid Laurier University. She has been a guest speaker on Home Child history at the Brant Museum and Archives and the British Consulate in Toronto. She is a regular keynote speaker at Remembrance Day luncheons hosted by the Royal Canadian Navy and HMCS York from 2020-2025.
At 102, Sir George Beardshaw is the last surviving veteran of the Second World War-era Queen’s Own Rifles and the only surviving British “Home Child” left in Canada. He is one of approximately 100,000 poor or orphaned child migrants sent to this country as part of British social and philanthropic programs developed across the United Kingdom between 1869 and 1939. Many Home Children, despite enduring hardship and abuse in their placements, chose to stay in Canada and contribute to this country’s efforts in the First and Second World Wars—approximately 10,000 in the Great War and 20,000 in the Second World War. Countless others served in various ways on the Canadian home front. Kelly Morrison’s presentation introduces Beardshaw and a select group of Home Children, revealing how this marginalized group helped to define Canada’s national wartime and postwar identity.
Location: Guelph Civic Museum, 52 Norfolk St, Guelph, ON N1H 2W9.
Doors open at 6:30 and the presentation starts at 7 p.m., followed by a question period.
The lecture premieres in-person at the Civic Museum. The recorded conversation will be available on YouTube, and our Museum Everywhere Portal.
Guelph Museums’ Military Lecture series is presented in partnership with the Laurier Centre for the Study of Canada.
