J. Donald Mawhinney Lectureship in Professional Ethics with Constance Backhouse

The Extraordinary Stella March – A Captivating Fraudster from Canadian Legal History

The J. Donald Mawhinney Lectureship in Professional Ethics will be delivered by Prof. Constance Backhouse, CM OOnt FRSC.

Prof. Backhouse will share the extraordinary tale of Stella March, a woman who made a grand entrance in a McLauchlin Six roadster as she tore through the backroads of southern Saskatchewan’s wheat fields in 1922.  She made a dazzling figure in stylish driving gloves and goggles, draped in jewels.  She portrayed herself as fabulously wealthy, a Scandinavian American widow who owned ranches with purebred horses and cattle in South Dakota. Before she disappeared, she romanced a series of lonely farmers, attempting to swindle their money while orchestrating bank heists across small-town Saskatchewan.  Efforts to bring her to justice failed, and she vanished without a trace.  It is a remarkable story that can help unveil the gender ideologies, sexual identities, and racial histories that prevailed in early 20th-century Canada. 

Speaker

Constance Backhouse, CM OOnt FRSC is a Professor of Law and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Ottawa.  She has published a number of prize-winning books: Petticoats and Prejudice: Women and Law in Nineteenth-Century Canada; Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900-1950; Carnal Crimes: Sexual Assault Law in Canada, 1900-1975; Claire L’Heureux-Dubé: A Life; Two Firsts: Bertha Wilson and Claire L’Heureux-Dubé at the Supreme Court of Canada; Reckoning with Racism: Police, Judges, and the RDS Case.  She was the recipient of the Augusta Stowe-Gullen Affirmative Action Medal in 1981. She has been awarded five honorary doctorates, was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2004, and was named to the Order of Canada in 2008.