Lecture

Join Dr. Jade Ferguson, as he examines how Black soldiers and their families in early twentieth-century Canada pursued citizenship and equality through military service during the World Wars, only to confront systemic discrimination that persisted despite their sacrifice. 

• In person at Laurier Centre for the Study of Canada, 232 King St. N., Waterloo
• On Zoom -  Register for the Zoom livestream

Join Madelaine Drohan, award-winning author as she discusses her book, He Did Not Conquer: Benjamin Franklin's Failure to Annex Canada.

Location

St. Jerome's University/University of Waterloo, SJ2, Room 2002

Date

Tuesday, March 3, 2026, 7:00 pm

Light refreshments following. Free parking.

Sponsors

St. Jerome's University History, University of Waterloo History, Canada International Council.

Waterloo PhD candidate Gillian Wagenaar examines a case of illicit correspondence between a Canadian teenager and a group of civilian internees in Quebec in the early years of the Second World War.

The lecture premieres in-person at the Civic Museum. The recorded conversation will be available on YouTube, and the Museum Everywhere Portal.

The Military Lecture series is a partnership between the Laurier Centre for the Study of Canada and Guelph Museums.

Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the presentation starts at 7 p.m., followed by a question period.

Join Dr. Tami Parr, author and historian, who will give a talk entitled, "Goats in America: From the Poor Man's Cow to Urban Icon."

Parr explores the unexamined yet compelling role of goats in American history.

The event will be held on Zoom. Register for the link on Eventbrite.

If you have any questions, contact Rebecca Beausaert or Ben Bradley.

Wilfrid Laurier PhD graduate, Eric Story, and adjunct professor there, follows the journey of thousands of men and women who paid an entirely different price than did the dead in service to Canada after the Great War: the 180,000 military service members who suffered some form of wounding, injury or illness on the battlefields of the Western Front.

The lecture premieres in-person at the Civic Museum. The recorded conversation will be available on YouTube, and our Museum Everywhere Portal.

The Military Lecture series is a partnership between the Laurier Centre for the Study of Canada and Guelph Museums.

Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the presentation starts at 7 p.m., followed by a question period.

Join the Tri-U's own Emily Kaliel, PhD candidate in history at the University of Guelph, who will give a talk entitled, "Public Health in Rural Alberta and Settler Colonialism as a Structure, 1919-1971."

Kaliel explores which rural populations the Alberta government considered to be a "public" worthy of interwar public health programs.

The event will be held on Zoom. Register for the link on Eventbrite.

If you have any questions, contact Rebecca Beausaert or Ben Bradley.

Join Professor Karly Kehoe, St. Mary's University, for this Scotland-Canada Academic Partnership annual lecture.

Dr. Kehoe's talk explores the legacy of colonial privilege by looking at patterns of Scottish Highland settlement in Nova Scotia. Catholic Highlanders made use of the spectrum of advantages inherent in the White European settler experience despite facing significant persecution at home. Examining their connections with the process of empire building builds a deeper understanding of the complexities of colonization and helps us to think about Scottish History’s connection with Canada’s reconciliation process. 

This talk will be presented virtually, so register on Eventbrite.

Dr. Mark Humphries, Laurier History Department presents, The Strange Tale of Alexander Henry, a Con Artist, and the Struggle for the Northwest.

Friday, February 6. 3:00 pm

Laurier Centre for the Study of Canada, 232 King St N, Waterloo.

Alexander Henry is famous as the first English trader to venture into the Northwest after the fall of New France in 1760 where he survived an attack at Michilimackinac, helped found the North West Company, and mapped the foothills of the Rockies. His story was published as a popular memoir in 1809 and helped shape historians' views about the early history of the Northwest and relations between Britain, the United States, and the Indigenous Peoples who lived there down to the present. But...new discoveries show that Henry didn't write the book: it was fabricated by an English children's author and con artist named Edward Augustus Kendall who stole Henry's journals and made-up most of the text. In sorting truth from fiction, we see Kendall consciously constructing a version of history that he hoped would resonate with audiences on the eve of the War of 1812 as tensions grew between Britain and the United States over the future of Western North America.

Light refreshments will be offered.

Organized by the Wilfrid Laurier History Department Events Committee.

Sashar Zarif's talk explores story as a lived condition rather than a narrative form, and artistic practice as a way of remaining aligned with life itself. Drawing inspiration from ancestral and traditional ways of knowing—where listening, attention, and continuity are central—it reflects on how stories are encountered, embodied, and lived, particularly in contexts shaped by movement, transition, and migration. The talk considers listening as a foundational condition for understanding experience, meaning, and action in an age of constant noise.

University of Guelph MA graduate, Austin Foster, presents the history of the University of Guelph’s War Memorial Hall, based on archival research for the War Memorial Hall: Its Early History, Heritage, and Legacy – A Centennial Retrospective (1924–2024) report. 

The lecture will premiere in-person at the Guelph Civic Museum. The recorded conversation will be available on YouTube, and the Museum Everywhere Portal.

The Military Lecture series is a partnership between the Laurier Centre for the Study of Canada and Guelph Museums.

Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the presentation starts at 7 p.m., followed by a question period.