Tamara Myers is Professor of History at the University of British Columbia. Her specialisations include women’s and gender history and the history of youth, delinquency, and juvenile justice.

Her books include Caught: Montreal’s Modern Girls and the Law, 1869-1945 and Youth Squad: Policing Children in the 20th Century; co-edited collections include Rethinking Canada: The Promise of Women’s History and The Difference Kids Make: Bringing Children and Youth into Canadian History.

She is a deputy editor of Women’s History Review, a long-standing member of the Montreal History Group, and is a past President of the Society for the History of Children and Youth.

Her current project is funded by a SSHRC grant (2024-29): “The Runaways Project: Street Youth and the Transformation of Adolescence in Canada, 1960s-1990s.

Research Interests

• History of Children and Youth
• Gender/Women’s History
• History of Crime and Delinquency
• History of Adolescence and the Family
• Quebec/Canada

Working Groups:

Montreal History Group

Books

Youth Squad: Policing Children in the Twentieth Century. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019

Caught: Montreal’s modern girls and the law, 1869-1945. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2006.

Edited Collections

Tamara Myers and Mona Gleason, “History of Childhood in Canada,” Oxford Bibliographies in Childhood Studies, Heather Montgomery, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013; Updated 2017 and 2024).

Mona Gleason and Tamara Myers, eds, Bringing Children and Youth into Canadian History: The Difference Kids Make (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2017).

Lara Campbell, Tamara Myers, and Adele Perry, eds., Rethinking Canada: The Promise of Women’s History 7^th ed. (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2016).

Mona Gleason; Adele Perry; Tamara Myers. Rethinking Canada: The Promise of Women’s History. : Oxford University Press, 2011.

Mona Gleason, Leslie Paris, Tamara Myers, and Veronica Strong-Boag, eds., Lost Kids: Vulnerable Children and Youth in Canada and the United States (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010).

B. Bradbury; T. Myers; M.History Group. Negotiating identities in 19th and 20th century Montreal. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005.

Articles/Book Chapters

With Georgia Twiss, “The Rising (Street) Generation: The Vancouver Runaway Revolution and 1970s Child Saving,” Urban History Review, Fall 2025.

With Megan J. Davies, “An Accident’s Afterlife: Childhood, Disability, Maternalism, and Rehabilitation,” in Accidents in Canada: A History (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024).

“Policing Women and Girls in Canada, 19th and 20th Centuries,” in Helen L. Johnston and Jo Turner, eds., Policing Women: Histories in the Western World, 1800-1950 (London: Routledge, 2023).

“Youth Consciousness, Delinquency, and the Montreal Miracle,” in William Bush and David Tanenhaus, eds., Ages of Anxiety: Delinquency in Global Perspective (New York: NYU Press, 2018), 81-100.

“Didactic Sudden Death: Children, Police, and Teaching Citizenship in the Age of Automobility,” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 451-475, 2015.

“Local Action and Global Imagining: Youth, International Development, and the Walkathon Phenomenon in Sixties’ and Seventies’ Canada ,” Diplomatic History, vol. 38, pp. 282-293, 2014.

“L’Escouade de la moralité juvénile de Montréal et la corruption des garcons dans les années 1940,” in Une histoire des sexualités au Québec, J. – P. Warren VLB Éditeur, 2012.

“Blistered And Bleeding, Tired And Determined: Visual Representations Of Children And Youth In The Miles For Millions Walkathon”, Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, vol. 22, 2011.

“Nocturnal Disorder and the Curfew Solution: A History of Juvenile Sundown Regulations in Canada”, in Lost Kids: Vulnerable Children and Youth in Twentieth-Century Canada and the United States, T. Myers, Paris, L., and Strong-Boag, V. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010.

“Women and Kids in the Court: Feminist History and Anthony Platt’s The Child Savers”, in The Child Savers: The Invention of Delinquency, A. Platt New Brunswick, NJ: Rutger’s University Press, 2009, pp. 213-224.

“On Probation: The Rise and Fall of Jewish Women’s Anti-Delinquency Work in Interwar Montreal”, in Negotiating Identities in 19th- and 20th-Century Montreal: A Collection of Essays by the Montreal History Group, T. Myers and Bradbury, B. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005.

“Regulation, Agency, and the Transformation of Care for “Predelinquent” Girls”, in La régulation sociale entre l’acteur et l’institution/Agency and Institutions in Social Regulation, J. – M. Fecteau Sainte-Foy, QC: Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2005, pp. 343-56.

“Embodying Delinquency: Boys’ Bodies, Sexuality, and Juvenile Justice History in Early-Twentieth-Century Quebec”, Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 14, pp. 383-414, 2005.

T. Myers and Poutanen, M. A., “Cadets, Curfews, and Compulsory Schooling: Mobilizing Anglophone Children in WWII Montreal”, Histoire sociale/Social History, vol. 38, pp. 367-398, 2005.

“Deserting Daughters: Runaways and the Red Light District of Montreal before 1945”, in Child Welfare and Social Action: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, P. Starkey and Lawrence, J. Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 2001, pp. 15-35.

T. Myers and Sangster, J., “Retorts, Runaways and Riots: Patterns of Resistance in Canadian Reform Schools for Girls, 1930-60”, Journal of Social History, vol. 34, pp. 669-697, 2001.

“The voluntary delinquent: Parents, daughters, and the Montreal Juvenile Delinquents’ Court in 1918”, CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW, vol. 80, pp. 242-268, 1999.

“Qui t’a débauchée?: Female Adolescent Sexuality and the Juvenile Delinquents’ Court in Early Twentieth-Century Montreal”, in Family Matters: Papers in Post-Confederation Canadian Family History, L. Chambers and Montigny, E. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 1998, pp. 377-394.

“Women Policing Women: A Patrol Woman in Montreal in the 1910s,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Society NS 4 (Ottawa 1993): 229-245.

T. Myers and Gleason, M. L., “History of Childhood in Canada (An annotated bibliography)”, Oxford Bibliographies in Childhood Studies. Oxford University Press, New York, 2013 and 2017

• Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Standard Grant, 2009-12, “On the Youth Beat: Age Consciousness and the Transformation of Policing Children, 1939-1960s”
• SSHRC, 2009-12, “Criminal Justice and Gendered Bodies in Quebec City and Montreal, 1840s-1930s,” with Don Fyson, U. Laval (PI), Mary Anne Poutanen, Concordia (CI).
• UBC Hampton Grant, 2010, “The Miles for Millions Walkathon: International Development, Physical Culture, and Canadian Youth in the 1960s and 1970s.”