Selected essays

"Moses R. Smith & Family," Vancouver Island Local History Society, (1 February 2024).
Read the essay.

"Naming British Columbia," The British Columbia Review, (10 February 2023).
Read the essay.

"Victorian SimCities: Playful Technology on Google Earth," in Pastplay: Teaching and Learning History with Technology, edited by Kevin Kee (2014). [co-author]
Read the essay.

"Dwelling Places and Social Spaces: Revealing the Environments of Urban Workers in Victoria Using Historical GIS,"Labour/Le Travail, 72 (Fall 2013).
Read the essay.

"Race and Space in Victoria's Chinatown, 1891," BC Studies, no. 169, Spring 2011; reprinted in Home Truths: Highlights from BC History, edited by Richard Mackie & Graeme Wynn (2012).
Read the essay.

"Sex, Charades and Census Records: Locating Female Sex Trade Workers in a Victorian City," Histoire sociale/Social History, vol. 42, November 2009.
Read the essay.

"Geographies of sexual commerce and the production of prostitutional space: Victoria, British Columbia, 1860-1914," Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, vol. 19 (2009).
- awarded a prize in 2010 by the Canadian Historical Association as the year's best essay on the history of sexuality in Canada
Read the essay.

"Child Emigrants, Child Welfare, and the Fairbridge Society in British Columbia, 1931-1951," in Child and Family Welfare in British Columbia: A History, Eds. Diane Purvey and Chris Walmsely (2006).
- originally published as "Waifs: The Fairbridge Society in British Columbia, 1931-1951," Histoire sociale/Social History, Vol. XXI, No. 42 (November 1988) .
Read the essay.

"Gender, Generatioins and Social Class: The Fairbridge Society and British Child Migration to Canada, 1930-1960," in Child Welfare and Social Action in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. International Perspectives, Eds. Jon Lawrence and Pat Starkey (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001).

"Making the 1891 Census in British Columbia," Histoire sociale/Social History, Vol. XXXI, No. 62 (November 1998).
Read the essay.

"John Jessop (1829-1901) [British Columbia's first provincial Superintendent of Education]," Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Volume XIII (1901-1910). [1994].
Read the essay.

"'Making Good:' The Canadian West in British Boys' Literature, 1890-1914" Prairie Forum, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1979).
Read the essay.