Prize Watch: Raymond Blake for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize

I missed this one last week. The Writers' Trust announced the 2025 winner of the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing (given annually for a book of literary nonfiction that embodies a political subject relevant to Canadian readers and Canadian political life) is historian Raymond Blake of the University of Regina, for Canada's Prime Ministers and the Shaping of a National Identity. 

Quite a few historians have been nominated for this prize over the years, but it's not a historical prize per se, and only a handful have won. Good year to win it too: they just raised the prize to $40,000.  The CBC's coverage says

Blake is a Regina-based author and editor of more than 20 books. His book Where Once They Stood: Newfoundland's Rocky Road Towards Confederation, co-authored with Melvin Baker, won several awards, including the Pierre Savard Award from the International Council for Canadian Studies. Blake is professor of history at the University of Regina and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

I think of Raymond as a friend, and I have not read Canada's Prime Ministers, so I won't say more.  But I like this win.  And Where Once They Stood is a terrific window into Newfoundland history in the 19th and 20th centuries. (Blake comes from one of the farthest-out of the old outports.)