Prize Watch: The CHA Prizes for best books

The Canadian Historical Association is announcing its 2025 prizes, including this list for best scholarly book in Canadian history (in English) published in 2024.

Crystal Gail Fraser, By Strength, We Are Still Here: Indigenous Peoples and Indian Residential Schooling in Inuvik, Northwest Territories. University of Manitoba Press, 2024.
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.

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. 

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.