Crystal Gail Fraser, By Strength, We Are Still Here: Indigenous Peoples and Indian Residential Schooling in Inuvik, Northwest Territories. University of Manitoba Press, 2024.Which lets me mention that I have been reading Gregory P. Marchildon's Tommy Douglas and the Quest for Medicare in Canada from U of T Press. It's a very big book and I have been proceeding slowly (not for lack of interest!). I have been learning a great deal even about relatively recent events that I would have thought I was reasonably familiar with.
Gregory M.W. Kennedy, Lost in the Crowd: Acadian Soldiers of Canada’s First World War. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024.
Mark G. McGowan, Finding Molly Johnson: Irish Famine Orphans in Canada. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024.
Shannon Stunden Bower, Transforming the Prairies: Agricultural Rehabilitation and Modern Canada. University of British Columbia Press, 2024.
Matthew S. Wiseman, Frontier Science: Northern Canada, Military Research, and the Cold War, 1945-1970. University of Toronto Press, 2024.
So, more to say later. But the thought had crossed my mind that this might be in the running for a prize like this one. Then -- checks copyright page) -- I find it was published this year, in 2025, so presumably not eligible for this prize this year.
Congratulations to these nominees for their 2024 books, and since I have not looked at any of the books nominated, I have no quibble with the jury's choices at all.
You can also consult the list of the four books up for the CHA's best French-language book here. I have not read any of these either, though the New France one looks interesting.
Apparently the Congress -- where all the academic societies in the arts and social sciences, like the CHA, get together in a lollapalooza of a gathering every spring -- has been cancelled for 2026. But that's too insiderish for me to parse. I liked it better when it was called "the Learneds," anyway. I once had a sweatshirt that said that, with a nice pink rhododendron image.