Prize Watch: Dafoe and Cundill longlists

It's getting to be book prize season, and both the John W. Dafoe Prize (Canadian) and the Cundill Prize (international)  have nominee lists out.  The Dafoe longlist is ten, the Cundill "shortlist" is eight.

The JW Dafoe Book Prize ("awarded to the best book on Canada, Canadians, and/or Canada’s place in the world published in the previous calendar year")  once again rather buries its longlist deep in its website -- but you can find it here.  in "news.  Last year's winner was Gerald Friesen's The Honorable John W. Norquay,

The Cundill Prize shortlist is here.  The Cundill, run by McGill University, with a mostly American jury and a prize of  $US75,000, is "awarded annually to the book that embodies historical scholarship, originality, literary quality and broad appeal."
There are a couple of Canadians in the running this year:  Jonathan Cheng for Shattered Messiah and Eric Jennings of the University of Toronto, for Vanilla.

We'll get back to these as the Dafoe shortlist and winner and the Cundill finalists and winner are announced.

Prize Watch: Cundill Prize to Lyndal Roper

Lyndal Roper's Summer of Fire and Blood: the German Peasants' War was announced recently as the 2025 winner of the Montreal-based Cundill Prize for the best history book published in English.

Summer of Fire and Blood is the very model of a Cundill winner.  That is, it is a big, widely-acclaimed narrative history on a topic both substantial and relatively neglected (at least in English), readable but deeply researched, from a distinguished professor at a leading university (Roper, an Australian, is Regius Professor at Oxford, and the first woman ever to hold that chair -- Hugh Trevor-Roper may be rolling in his grave), and published by a major press  -- though in this case not actually an academic press by Basic Books).

Roper makes much of the simultaneous explosion of the Protestant Reformation and the Peasants' Revolt in Germany,  both of which were at fever pitch in the early 1520s.  It's not quite that the reformation inspired the peasants or that the peasants inspired the reformation, but how they overlapped and influenced each other.  Luther's demand that Christians be allowed to think for themselves, keep their pastors accountable, and read and pray in their own language definitely resonated with the peasants, in ways Luther, a mine owner's son and friend to many German princes, came to loathe and denounce).  The peasants had issues and crises of their own that made them receptive to religious reform as well as social revolution.

Spoiler alert (and I haven't got to the end yet myself):  it doesn't end well for the peasants, as pretty much always in peasant revolts.

Update November 17:  I was clever enough to read the tealeaves and borrow this from our public library before it won.  But it's a big book, and I was not diligent enough to finish reading it before the renewal date came up. And with the news out, they would not let me renew: too many requests in line.

Prize Watch: The GGs

No suspense here.  History is hardly present in the shortlists for the Governor-General's Literary Awards, our most prestigious and comprehensive prizes for literary writing in Canada.  

On the nonfiction list -- five titles -- Wong's "multigenerational family odyssey" and Diaz's biography of Vancouver's legendary black swim instructor Joe Fortes both sound at least history-adjacent. I have not read either and know little of them, though I'm pleased to see their small press publisher defying the branch-plant hegemony. Memoir remains deservedly strong. 

But the jury found no big-history, big-research-based, big-historian books of the kind that used to appear on these lists from time to time.  It just ain't the zeitgeist -- until someone comes along with a book big enough to shift the zeitgeist.

All Our Ordinary Stories: A Multigenerational Family Odyssey by Teresa Wong (Arsenal Pulp Press)

How to Survive a Bear Attack by Claire Cameron (Knopf Canada/PRHC)

Searching for Serafim: The Life and Legacy of Serafim “Joe” Fortes by Ruby Smith Dίaz (Arsenal Pulp Press)

The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse: A Memoir by Vinh Nguyen (HarperCollins Canada)

What to Feel, How to Feel: Lyric Essays on Neurodivergence and Neurofatherhood by Shane Neilson (Palimpsest Press)

Full details here.  The fiction shortlist looks nothing like the Giller's, which suggests there is no critical consensus on that side either. Winners announced November 6.

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.) 

Hot Histories at the Cundill

I figure, who but the author cares about the tenth or fifteenth book on a "short" list? CBC Books had a twenty-five title shortlist recently.

But the Cundill Prize's short list (8 this year) is sometimes the most interesting thing it issues.  The Cundill goes looking for the best book about history published in English in the past year, and it gathers a crew of mostly Ivy League and Oxbridge historians to pick 'em.  Their selection usually offers a look at what some credible observers consider to represent some of the world's best historical writing at this moment.  When they get down to the winner, well, we may or may not be interested in its particular topic.  But there's gotta be something in the longlist that sparks some interest.

This year's eight books, introduced by previous winner Ada Ferrer:  

Ada Ferrer, Chair of the Jury, said: “The eight books on our list are all quite different from one another, but all share some essential characteristics: analytical sharpness, engaging writing, and a firm belief that what the past reveals must be urgently understood. The committee is so proud to present this slate of eight books to the world.”

• Emily Callaci (Allen Lane) Wages for Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise
• Kornel Chang (The Belknap Press of Harvard University) A Fractured Liberation: Korea Under US Occupation
• Marlene L. Daut (Knopf) The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe
• Greg Grandin (Penguin Press) America, América: A New History of the New World
• Benjamin Nathans (Princeton University Press) To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement
• Lyndal Roper (John Murray Press) Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War
• Sophia Rosenfeld (Princeton University Press) The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life
• Martha A. Sandweiss (Princeton University Press) The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West

The only one I have heard any review comment about is Roper on the German Peasants' War.  Winner: October 30.

Prize Watch: The Dafoe Prize

The J.W Dafoe Book Prize, presented by the Dafoe Foundation that honours the crusading twentieth-century journalist John W. Dafoe, announced a long list of ten books on Bluesky today. It's for "the best book on Canada, Canadians, and/or Canada’s place in the world published in the previous calendar year."

I like shortlists better (isn't three usually enough?) but I suspect no writer agrees with me. And there's some good history and some good friends on this long one, so why not?  Here's the list.

Short list of five to come on September 25. Winner October 14. The fall book prize season is underway. 

Crystal Gail Fraser’s By Strength, We Are Still Here

Jody Wilson-Raybould and Roshan Danesh’s Reconciling History: A Story of Canada

Raymond B. Blake’s Canada’s Prime Ministers and the Shaping of a National Identity

Asa McKercher and Michael D. Stevenson’s Building a Special Relationship: Canada-US Relations in the Eisenhower Era, 1953–61

M.G. Vassanji’s Nowhere, Exactly

Gerald Friesen’s The Honourable John Norquay

Ken McGoogan’s Shadows of Tyranny: Defending Democracy in an Age of Dictatorship

Mark Bourrie’s Crosses in the Sky: Jean de Brébeuf and the Destruction of Huronia

Tim Martin’s Unwinnable Peace: Untold Stories of Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan

Niigaan Sinclair’s Wînipêk: Visions of Canada from an Indigenous Centre

History of the Giller: money and politics in arts, culture, and sport.

I have to agree with a lot of the criticism online after the Giller Prize told Ottawa it might have to shut down if federal subsidy for the big fiction prize is not forthcoming.

If a private nonprofit foundation wants to give a literary prize, no one will stop them, say the critics I was reading. But there is no reason for taxpayers' money to take over when the foundation's aspirations start to exceed its budget. The withdrawal of Scotiabank funding after protests of the bank's alleged support for Israel is no doubt a factor in the Prize's financial woes. But if the feds want to support arts and culture, they can give more to the Canada Council and stop talking about more cuts to the CBC. 

It is not only literary nonprofits that go down the road of assuming the feds should pay for everything, of course. Look at the provinces on medicare and housing!  

Sticking to the arts/culture area: the history NGO Historica launched with a lot of billionaire money, but over the years it has gone to Ottawa for a lot of funding. It sometimes looked from here as if its choices seemed to reflect the historical preferences of the party in power at the time. (Lots of hockey and military Heritage Minutes in the Harper years, lots of diversity achievement Minutes in Liberal times?)  The situation may be a little different, however: Historica does things the feds would not do themselves, so government contracting some work to the NGO makes (some) sense, whereas the Canada Council is designed to support the arts, with the Giller as to some degree a competitor.

A different angle on politics and culture: an anti-Israel protester tried to run in front of the sprinters charging to the finish line at yesterday's Tour de France (and failed to cause a possibly fatal crash, fortunately).  The protest was demanding a boycott of the team Israel-Premier Tech, which this year is led by Canadian cyclist Michael Woods.

There is a lot of sports washing in Grand Tour cycling:  one leading team is called UAE  and another Bahrain Victorious, both subsidized by the governments of those states. There used to be an Astana team, linked very closely to the Kazakhstan government.  Israel Premier Tech is sponsored by a wealthy Israeli private citizen and his partner, a Canadian, not by the Israeli government, apparently.

The solution should be a rejection of sportswashing by the cycling authorities:  no more state-sponsored teams.  (There are no Arabic riders on the Arabian teams, and no Jewish riders on IPT at the moment, I believe.) But that's never going to happen.  Politicize your sport and political activists will respond, I guess.  

Prize Watch: True North for Patrice Dutil

A new-to-me Institute called the Canada History Society -- "dedicated to promoting and preserving the history of Canada" --has announced the inaugural winner of its True North Prize "awarded annually for an outstanding work of historical writing that deepens public understanding of Canada’s past." 

The winner is Patrice Dutil for his book Sir John A. Macdonald and the Apocalyptic Year 1885, published by Sutherland House. Congratulations, Patrice.

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. 

Prize Watch: the Shaughnessy Cohen

The Writers' Trust announces the finalists for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. A diverse and pretty interesting list. 

Canada’s Prime Ministers and the Shaping of a National Identity by Raymond B. Blake  -  a substantial political history from a history prof.

The Prince: The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau by Stephen Maher  -- political biography by a journalist. 

Health for All: A Doctor’s Prescription for a Healthier Canada by Jane Philpott -- a substantial policy agenda by a doctor and former health minister. 

The Adaptable Country: How Canada Can Survive the Twenty-First Century by Alasdair Roberts  -- unknown to me, who wonders: "Is it in such doubt?" 

The Knowing by Tanya Talaga --  reminding that indigenous survival is political too.

Finalists were selected by a jury composed of Jennifer Ditchburn, Sara Mojtehedzadeh, and Christopher Waddell. The jurors read 34 books submitted by 22 publishing imprints.  Only 34 books submitted?

Update, May 3:  Helen comments from Auz (where they also have re-elected the non-Trumpy choice for prime minister.

Canada’s Prime Ministers and the Shaping of a National Identity by Raymond Blake sounds like a suitable book for members of the British Commonwealth to be reading now. As an Australian, I always assumed that Canada shaped its national identity as a British-linked country with just a neighbourly relationship to the USA.

But what will happen to national identity if Canada is absorbed into the USA as the 52^nd state (after Greenland).

No worries, Helen.  We don't even visit that country anymore, let alone consider joining it.  But few Canadians are likely to consider us a "British-linked" country any more. It's very different here, definitely a North American nation, except for that awkwardness with the head of state we have yet to clean up.  (Like you!)

Salute a history teacher today

The Canada's History Foundation administers the Governor General's History Awards program which, among other things, honours Canadian history teachers for doing terrific things. 

I know, you read all the time, "They don't teach Canadian history in the schools!" But they do, often in ways you never dreamed of, and here is somewhere that they get noticed.

Anyway the foundation is inviting nomination for history teachers.  Details here.

Prize Watch: Pierre Berton/Stephen Bown

Pierre Berton and Ruby the cat

Pierre Berton (1920-2004) died twenty years ago this week month. I recently noticed in one of those polls taken to prove Canadians know nothing about history that only 57% of respondents could identify who Pierre Berton was. Here's Wikipedia, if you need to brush up.

Also recently, writer Stephen Bown was recently named the 2024 winner of the Pierre Berton Award for Popular History, gradually becoming better known as the Governor-General's Medal for Popular History. Congratulations, Stephen.

Prize Watch: Cundill to Kathleen DuVal

Kathleen DuVal, historian of indigenous America, has been announced as the 2024 winner of the Cundill Prize for History for Native Nations: A Millennium in North America.  As far as I can tell, DuVal is not indigenous, but the citation says she has been working on its account of a thousand years of indigenous history in North America for over twenty-five years.

Runners-up were Gary J. Bass for Judgment at Tokyo, on the post World War Two trial of Japanese war crimes, and Dylan Pennington for Before the Movement, on antecedents to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

I'm not reviewing the Cundill shortlist for the Literary Review of Canada this year, so you will have to form your own opinions of these works.

For consolation, here's one of my previous group reviews, on a particularly interesting (I thought) group of histories.

Update, November 6:  I have to dissent from Ken White's recent suggestion, in his ever-lively booktrade SubStack "ShuSh," that the Cundill Prize is too academically-insular and needs more input from generalist nonfiction writers/jurors. Generalist nonfiction writer that I am at heart, I have to say nonfiction book prizes are a dime a dozen, even in Canada. Big, ambitious, deeply researched historical writing need the kind of attention that major book prizes can provide. The Cundill is one of the few in the world that hits that niche.  There was a journalistic tilt to last year's nominees, and it was not their best year.

Prize Watch: Nominees that might have been

Last week (see October 8 below), a friend of this blog lamented the lack of history books among award nominees (again), In response I asked for them suggestions:  a few that might have merited some attention. The reply:

• Hillary Doda, Fashioning Acadians: Clothing in the Atlantic World, 1650–1750  ("I kinda liked this book."
• Dimitry Anastakis, Dream Car: Malcolm Bricklin’s Fantastic SV1 and the End of Industrial Modernity.  "Simply wonderful."
• And next year, maybe this book by Laura Madokoro:  Sanctuary in Pieces: Two Centuries of Flight, Fugitivity, and Resistance in a North American City
• Or this one: Daniel Macfarlane, The Lives of Lake Ontario An Environmental History

I myself have not read yet any of these, mea culpa. 

Maybe other readers can suggest other authors and titles. The criteria: newly published books by or about Canadians, of sufficient heft, scope, and literary quality to be worth consideration by the Governor General's Literary Award nonfiction jury next year.

(I note there are other prizes for history books, not least all those of the Canadian Historical Association. And literary merit and historical merit are hardly identical.)

 

 

Prize Watch: The GG Nonfiction Nominees UPDATED; and the Cundill History Prize shortlist

The Cundill finalists for 2024

The Canada Council has announced the shortlists for its Governor-General's Literary Awards. The nonfiction list is... mixed.  Heavy on memoir and strong in indigenous context, it has a couple of issue- oriented books, though nothing that would count as history (again).

[Update, October 10:  A friend of the blog writes:

I caught your blog post and laughed out loud at this line: “…it has a couple of issue- oriented books, though nothing that would count as history (again).”

It’s sooo discouraging.

It’s a bit different on the French side, and I’m not sure why. Different juries, I guess.]

Strangely, the GGbooks website presents cover photos of the nominated titles, but no description or jury statements about why they were nominated, nothing about the authors at all, no links. Three PenguinRandom titles, two from indie Canadian presses. On a quick glance, Winipek and The Age of Insecurity (the 2023 Massey Lectures) look substantial, but it's a literary prize: here's hoping the jurors have been assessing on that basis.

Two of the books use that lazy trope "the age of ....[fill in the blank]" but that might be on the publishers.  Congratulations to all the nominees,

• Danny Ramadan, Crooked Teeth: A Gay Syrian Refugee Memoir
• Helen Knott, Becoming a Matriarch
• Petra Molnar, The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Surveillance
• Astra Taylor, The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart
• Nigaan Sinclair, Winipek: Visions of Canada from an Indigenous Centre

Over to the Cundill History Prize which announced its three finalists recently.  Looks like a list of big serious straight-up history books this year -- a good thing for that neglected category! Three American nominees for a global prize, however.

Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia by Gary J. Bass – A landmark history of the post-World War II trials of Japan’s leaders as war criminals, which has shaped relationships throughout modern Asia.

Native Nations: A Millennium in North America by Kathleen DuVal – A sweeping 1000-year history of the power of Indigenous North America, from ancient cities to fights for sovereignty that continue today.

Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights by Dylan C. Penningroth – Stretching from the last decades of slavery to the 1970s, Before the Movement is an account of Black legal lives that looks beyond the Constitution and the criminal justice system, to recover a rich, broader vision of Black life. 

Prize Watch: Chalmers Award to Ian Radforth

The Champlain Society announces that the 2024 winner of its Floyd Chalmers Award for the best book in Ontario history is Ian Radforth for Expressive Acts: Celebrations and Demonstrations in the Streets of Victorian Toronto, a study of: 

occasions when crowds gathered in the streets of Toronto to demonstrate, contest, or celebrate. Vividly written and richly researched, his accounts include rowdy election days, beleaguered religious processions, rallies for troops who subdued the North-West Resistance, Street Railway Company strikes, and Viceregal and Royal visits.

Prize Watch: Tyrrell Historical Medal to Stephen High

Having been a bit, uh, curious recently about the purpose of the Royal Society of Canada, I should at least take note that it recently issued a slew of prizes for scholarship, including the award of the J.B. Tyrrell Historical Medal for outstanding work in Canadian history to Stephen High of Concordia University, the oral and public historian of industrialization and deindustrialization in Montreal. 

Elegant medal, too. 

Prize Watch: Historians and Writers on the Canada Day Order of Canada list

I thought the Canada Day Order of Canada list was usually the "artsy" list, but there are not too many writers on this year's. 

(Update: On review, I'm not so sure of this. Searching some past posts, I find quite a few writers and artists on the New Year's lists as well. So whadda I know?)

I note Professor Terry Copp, the military historian, and William Fox, the Parks Canada archaeologist, among the historians and history-adjacent appointments. Congratulations to them both, and also to Arnie Gelbart, the Montreal documentary filmmaker, co-creator with the late Brian McKenna of many historical documentaries of note.  And Sylvia Hamilton, the Nova Scotian historical educator and promoter of Black culture in the Maritimes.

Among literary writers, bill bissett seems to be about it. There is a handful of musicians (eg, Daniel Lanvoie and Avril Lavigne), artists (Christi Belcourt), and actors (Tina Keeper). But it seems to be scientists and innovators more than artists and writers, who got attention this season.

The full list is here on the Governor-General's site.
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Prize Watch: The CHA Prizes 2024

The prizes awarded annually by the Canadian Historical Association at its AGM are now posted on the CHA website here.

It's a long list and I won't try to summarize it. They do suggest there is a lot of impressive and diverse work being done in academia. And the prize list has a notable mix of elder scholars and young up-and-comers.

Book Notes and Book Honours

Alan MacEachern of Western University (and Prince Edward Island!) had a double of sorts recently: publication of his book Becoming Green Gables and launching of Green Gables Diaries, which is a website rather than a book, but contains the material on which the book draws.  And Western posted a nice news release explaining what both are all about.

We are having an Island holiday of our own later this summer.  I should start reading the diaries as prep.

The Canadian Historical Association is just wrapping up its annual meeting -- in Montreal this year. TwitteX has been covering various upsets and reorganizations caused by demonstrations and occupations around the McGill campus where it was intended to meet.  

The CHA Prizes (and there are a lot of them) were to be presented on June 18, but the CHA website has not yet posted the winners. I did see (Twittex again) that Thomas Peace won one of the Clio Awards (for regional history) for The Slow Rush of Colonization. That book, briefly noted here previously, also recently won the Wilson Prize from the Wilson Institute at McMaster  -- tho' I'm having a hard time finding the deets on the Institute website.

Are we having a bit of a summer hiatus here? It has been a bit slow laterly, but the publication schedule for this blog has always been "when I feel like it." And that continues.

Picture credit:  Western University news.