Prize Watch: The Canadian Historical Association Prizes; and one for Martha Langford's Canadian photography history

The Canadian Historical Association's recent Annual Meeting in Charlottetown included a giving of prizes.  According to Google's AI, these are some of the prizes.  I was unable to find any prize list later for 2025 yet posted on the CHA website so far, so this seems to be the best we can offer. Congratulations to these winners and the others not listed here.  

The Clio Prizes are for works in local or regional history, and the Albert Corey Prize is given for works in Canadian-American history, so there may be some AI slop here. But until the CHA updates its website prizes page, we are kinda stuck

Best Scholarly Book Prize: The Jesuit Relations: A Biography by Micah True.

Clio Book Prize (Atlantic): Publishing Place: Transatlantic Modernity and Periodical Culture on Canada’s East Coast by Billy Johnson.

Clio Book Prize (Ontario): Students by Day: Colonialism and Resistance at the Curve Lake Indian Day School by Jackson Pind.

Clio Book Prize (Québec): Montreal After Dark: Nighttime Regulation and the Pursuit of a Global City by Matthieu Caron.

Clio Book Prize (Canadian Committee on Women’s and Gender History): Their Benevolent Design: Conservative Women and Protestant Child Charities in Montreal by Janice Harvey.

Albert B. Corey Prize: Tradition and Tension: The Presbyterian Church in Canada, 1945–1985 by Stuart Macdonald.

I confess that when I saw first saw notice of the publication of Micah True's study of the Jesuit Relations, I concluded there could not be much new or original to say on that subject.  Evidently I was wrong: the CHA jury concluded it was the best work of historical scholarship on Canada published last year.  Congratulations and apologies to Micah True.  We should agree that there are new things to be learned about every topic in Canadian history. 

Update, same day

Martha Langford's new History of Photography in Canada: Volume 1 has been selected by the Art Libraries Society of North America as the 2026 winner of its best book prize.

I happened on this book in a bookstore the other day, and was impressed first by its weight and size. It has the problem that with a history of photography, one rather expects a lavishly illustrated "picture book" when in fact this one is necessarily dominated by a lengthy and very detail text.  There are photographs, yes, but they seemed to me as very much an accessory to the historical text.  Still, a discerning specialist jury loves it, and I'm sure their verdict is more authoritative than mine.

There is also a volume 2.