The J.J. Talman Lecture Series
Speaker: Lianne Leddy, Associate Professor, Wilfrid Laurier University
Title: When the Cold War came to Anishinaabe Homelands: Northern Ontario in Global Perspective
Date: Thursday, March 26, 2026
Time: 2:30PM - 4:00PM, Reception to follow
Location: 
Our 2025-2026 Speaker
Associate Professor Lianne Leddy, Wilfrid Laurier University
Dr. Lianne C. Leddy (Anishinaabekwe) is a member of Serpent River First Nation and grew up in Elliot Lake, Ontario. She is an associate professor of History and Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Histories and Historical Practice in Canada at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her award-winning book, Serpent River Resurgence: Confronting Uranium Mining at Elliot Lake was published by University of Toronto Press in 2022. Leddy's work has appeared in the Canadian Historical Review, Oral History Forum, NAIS, and Herizons as well as several edited collections.
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 |
| 2025 | Prof. Kristina Llewellyn | Developing Our Historical Consciousness to Confront Polarized Politics in Ontario Today |
| 2024 | Dr. Lori Chambers | Legal Story-Telling: Case Files and the Historian |
| 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.
