Prize Watch: Pierre Berton Prize to Sylvia D. Hamilton

Sylvia Hamilton

Note:  These prize-givings are part of Canada's History's annual History Forum in Ottawa, which is open to the public at the Canadian Museum of History on Sunday, January 19, from 10.00 am to 3.30 pm local time, and can also be followed online.  Details and registration here. 

The Afro-Nova Scotian documentary filmmaker Sylvia D. Hamilton is the 2020 recipient of the Pierre Berton Award for Popular History, Canada's National History Society has announced.

Hamilton has been making films, mostly rooted in the black experience in Nova Scotia, since the late 1980s. The Little Black Schoolhouse (2007) examines the history of segregated schooling in Ontario and Nova Scotia. Portia White (2000) is a biography of the great Nova Scotia-born operatic contralto. Hamilton also teaches at King's College in Halifax.

The Berton Award is presented by the Governor-General along with awards for excellence in teaching history, and the award for scholarly research for Shirley Tillotson for her income-tax history, Give and Take: The Citizen Taxpayer and the Rise of Canadian Democracy, previously announced at the CHA AGM last spring