In Memoriam: Lorna Ruth McLean
1951–2024
Dr. Lorna McLean died on March 19, 2024 in Ottawa surrounded by the love of her family: her sisters, Joan and Janice McLean, her husband of 52 years, Gord Robertson, and her daughters, Heather and Andrea Robertson. She also leaves her two young grandsons, Douglas and Bradley. Lorna chose MAID to end her struggle against Parkinson’s disease.
Lorna began her career as an elementary school teacher, having attended Stratford Teachers’ College and thereafter teaching at Cedarbrae Public School in Waterloo, Ontario. This early professional preparation not only equipped her with outstanding pedagogical skills but also with insights into school culture that sustained her when she was hired in 1999 by the University of Ottawa to teach in the Faculty of Education’s preservice and graduate programs. By that time too, she had completed MA and PhD degrees in History at the University of Ottawa. Her PhD dissertation contained “a stunningly brilliant set of new ideas,” in the words of her external examiner.
Lorna was a long-term member of CSSE and CAFE. With Sharon Cook, she was the recipient of the 2002 CAFE National Book Award for Framing Our Past: Canadian Women’s History in the Twentieth Century Montreal and Kingston, McGill/Queen’s University Press. (495 pp.).[i] The book featured different distinguished women’s historians who wrote introductory essays, all of which are based on archival documents, for each of the book’s six parts, on women’s cultural history, to labour history, and all topics in between. These introductions were matched with longer chapters by other equally prominent women’s historians and with engaging short vignettes to illustrate the archival themes in the book. The book successfully appealed to a wide audience of scholarly and popular readers.[ii] Until very close to her death, Lorna worked with a team of young scholars and graduate students to develop lesson plans for the book’s use at the secondary-school level.
Lorna’s early work concentrated on women and the law in the nineteenth century.[iii] She charted the contours of domestic violence as it appeared in court records along with evidence of widows’ contributions to the family economy. In addition to refereed articles she published on the topic, she was also co-editor of a book on the law in historical perspective.
In addition to her scholarship in women’s history, Lorna developed an extensive research program in citizenship education. This work was historical and contemporary, taking on such topics as women’s peace activism and “global” education.[iv] She published as well on historical thinking skills.
Lorna always generously gave her time and expertise. She was a member of the History Education Network (THEN/HiER) and was a co-applicant on the landmark Thinking Historically for Canada’s Future Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Partnership Grant whose mandate is to assess and improve history education in Canada. Her dedication to building bridges between historians and educators was particularly striking as a founding member (2009-2012), and then as director (2012-2020), of the Educational Research Unit Faire de l’histoire/Making History at the University of Ottawa. She further upheld educational and women’s history through contributions to such groups as the Ontario Women’s History Network and the Citizenship Educational Research Network. Lorna also served as Director of Graduate Studies in the Faculty of Education.
A good citizen herself, Lorna tirelessly promoted Democracy Studies and Global Education. For a decade she co-coordinated a far-reaching program in Global Education for pre-service teacher candidates funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) that involved two yearly conferences, workshops, film festivals, lesson-writing projects and working retreats.
Her strong mentoring skills were a further reflection of the quality and span of her work. Graduate students leapt to work with Lorna and she attracted a number over the years who produced an impressive and diverse range of theses. Lorna organized writing workshops and co-authored at least one published article with most of her students. In 2017, she was the recipient of the Excellence in Thesis Supervision Award by the Faculty of Education, a prize only awarded every three years. Lorna hosted many visiting graduate doctoral students and post-doctoral fellows, and mentored novice professors.
Over the years, her work garnered numerous awards. She won the Carol Crealock Memorial Award from CSSE for her dedication to social justice education and the University of Ottawa’s Excellence in Education Prize for her leadership, to name just two. She was also a visiting scholar at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland (2015) and at the University of Sydney, Australia (2005-2006).
Lorna McLean was a talented scholar, valued mentor and treasured colleague. No list of her accomplishments, no matter how long that list would be, can speak to her personal qualities, including her quiet, calm and considered support for others around her, human and animal. Lorna and Gord lived in a gracious home with a succession of well trained and adored dogs and cats, most of them rescued, and all with huge personalities. To all, she was devoted. She is much missed.
Sharon Anne Cook & Marie-Hélène Brunet
University of Ottawa
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[i] Tina Loo and Lorna McLean, eds., Historical Perspectives on Law and Society in Canada (Toronto: New Canadian Readings Series, Copp Clark Longman Ltd. 1994).
[ii] Sharon Cook, Lorna McLean and Kate O’Rourke, eds., Framing Our Past: Canadian Women’s History in the Twentieth Century (Montreal & Kingston: McGill/Queen’s University Press; 2001, Reprinted, 2006).
[iii] Lorna McLean, “‘Deserving’ Wives and ‘Drunken’ Husbands: Wife Beating, Marital Conduct, and the Law Ontario, 1850-1910”, Histoire sociale/Social History 35, no. 69 (2002): 50-81. See also Lorna McLean, “The Legal and Political status of Women from 1850 to the Present”, in Canadian History in Multimedia, 1867 to the Present, eds. Chris Hackett and Bob Hesketh (Edmonton: Chinook Multimedia CDROM, 2001), 45 pages and Lorna McLean, “Single Again: Widows’ Work in the Urban Family Economy, 1871”, Ontario History LXXXIII, no. 2 (1991), 127-150.
[iv] Lorna McLean, “‘The Good Citizen’: Masculinity and Citizenship at Frontier College, 1899-1933,” in Constructing Canadian Citizenship: Historical Readings, eds. Robert Adamoski, Dorothy Chunn and Robert Menzies (Vancouver: Broadview Press, 2002), 225-245; Lorna McLean and Jamilee Baroud, “Democracy Needs Education: Performance, Peace and Pedagogy, Julia Grace Wales,” Paedagogica Historica 56, no. 4 (2019): 503-519. DOI:1080/00309230.2019.1616783; Jennifer Bergen, Sharon Cook and Lorna McLean, “Global citizenship Education and Teacher Education,” in Global Citizenship Education and Teacher Education: International Perspectives and Practices, eds., Daniel Schugurensky and Charl Wolhuter (New York: Routledge, 2020), 40-59; Lorna McLean and Nicholas Ng-A-Fook, eds., Developing a Global Perspective for Educators, Special Issue: Revue d’éducation/Education Review (Ottawa: Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa, 2013); Lorna McLean, “‘The Necessity of Going’: Julia Grace Wales’s Transnational Life as a Peace Activist and a Scholar” in Writing Feminist History: Productive Pasts and New Directions, eds. Catherine Carstairs and Nancy Janovicek (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2013), 77-95; and, Sharon Cook and Lorna McLean, “Historically Invisible: The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 1914-29,” in Breaking Barriers, Shaping Worlds: Canadian Women and the Search for Global Order, eds., Jill Campbell-Miller, Stacey Barker and Greg Donaghy (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2021), 93-115.