The J.J. Talman Lecture Series
Speaker: Dr. Lori Chambers
Title: Legal Story-Telling: Case Files and the Historian
Date: Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Time: 2:30 pm
Location: Conron Hall, University College (UC 3110)
Reception to follow
Our 2023-2024 Speaker
Professor Lori Chambers, Lakehead University
Lori Chambers is Professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Lakehead University. She specializes in legal history and contemporary legal issues, with a focus on adoption, intimate partner and sexual violence, and human rights legislation. Dr. Chambers has been the recipient of numerous academic awards, including the 2001 and 2008 Alison Prentice Awards for the best book in Ontario women’s history and the 2011 Canadian Journal of Law and Society’s English Language Article Prize. In addition to publishing an array of co-authored and co-edited articles and books, Professor Chambers has produced several monographs, including A History of Adoption Law in Ontario, 1921-2015 (Toronto: The Osgoode Society and University of Toronto Press, 2016); Misconceptions: Unmarried Motherhood and the Ontario Children of Unmarried Parents Act, 1921-1969 (Toronto: The Osgoode Society and University of Toronto Press, 2007); and Married Women And Property Law In Victorian Ontario (Toronto: The Osgoode Society and University of Toronto Press, 1997). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, class of 2021.
Diverse sources such as archival materials, legal data bases, legislation, and newspapers are very useful for story-telling in the study of law. I will provide examples of how I have utilized all of these sources in various ways, particularly to tell single-person stories that build out from one case. I will focus on the case Martinie v The Italian Society of Port Arthur (1995). Giovannina (Joanne) Ruberto, a young Italian Canadian woman living in Thunder Bay, submitted a membership application to the all-male fraternal Italian Mutual Benefit Society of Port Arthur (presently the Italian Society of Port Arthur). When the group denied her membership, she filed a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Commission claiming sex discrimination. In June 1995, human rights tribunal handed down its decision in favour of the society; as a “special interest organization” protecting Italian culture, it was permitted to discriminate against Ruberto. Little has been written about this case, but Martinie is important, not only because of the specifics of the challenge and the fact that the Italian Society continues to exclude women, but also because of the insight it provides about gender-based struggles within immigrant communities, and the limitations – and contradictions – of human rights regimes.
About the J.J. Talman Lecture Series
Presented by the Department of History and Western Libraries
The J.J. Talman Lecture Series focuses on Ontario history, Ontario regional collections and innovative uses thereof, or previously unstudied aspects of Canadian history.
Reflecting the breadth of Dr. Talman’s career at Western, as a respected historian and Chief Librarian, the lectures are organized annually by a joint committee comprised of representatives from the Department of History and Western Libraries.
The J.J. Talman Lecture Series was envisioned and is funded by Raj Jain, Librarian Emerita, and her brother, Dr. Sushil Jain, in gratitude for Dr. Talman’s many personal kindnesses, and to recognize his substantial contribution to Western.
Past Talman Lectures
| Year | Lecturer | Lecture Title |
| 2023 | Dr. Kevin Spooner | Canada's Peacekeeping History: Symbols, Contradictions, and Hard Truths |
| 2022 | Prof. Linda Mahood | The Legend of the Wawa Hitchhiker: Youth Mobility in the Hippie Generation |
| 2020 | Dr. David Koffman | Unsettling Ethnic History: Jewish Indigenous Encounters in Canada |
| 2019 | Dr. Barrington Walker | The Honourable Leonard Braithwaite: The Imprint of a Black Canadian Legal Pioneer on the History of Modern Ontario |
| 2017 | Prof. Constance Backhouse | Viola Desmond: Her Historic Challenge to Race Segregation in Canada and Her Appearance on Our $10 Note |
| 2015 | Prof. Jane Errington | 'A burthen to the community'? J.B. Hawke and Managing Migration to Upper Canada |
| 2013 | Prof. Alan Taylor | Settling and Unsettling Borders: Continental Legacies of the War of 1812. |
| 2012 | Dr. Cecilia Morgan | "Among the Six Nations": Celia B File and the Politics of Writing Memory, History and Home in Southern Ontario, 1920s-1960s |
| 2011 | Dr. Tim Cook | Ghosts from the Trenches: Stories of the Supernatural and the Uncanny among Canada's Great War Trench Soldiers |
| 2009 | Dr. Carl Benn | Mohawks in the Sudan War, 1884-85 |
| 2008 | Dr. Peter Neary | From War to Peace: Canada in the 1940s |
Accessibility
Please contact us at history-inquiries@uwo.ca if you require information in an alternate format, or if any other arrangements can make this event accessible to you. For a campus accessibility map please visit: http://www.accessibility.uwo.ca/resources/maps/index.html.
