2022
Latest Winners
The Clio Prizes
2000
The North
Nancy Wachowich, in collaboration with Apphia Agalakti Awa, Rhoda Kaukjak Katsak, and Sandra Pikujak Katsak, Saqiyuq: Stories from the Lives of Three Inuit Women, (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999).
In Saqiyuq, Nancy Wachowich, Apphia Agalakti, Rhoda Kaukjak Katsak and Sandra Pikujak Katsak provide detailed and unique insights into the lives of Inuit women in the 20th Century North. The three Inuit collaborators – a grandmother, daughter and granddaughter – offer perspectives from three successive generations and, in the process, document the changing social and cultural dynamics of the Arctic. The accounts collected and presented by Nancy Wachowich are particularly important for the light that they shine on aspects of women’s experience, including marriage, child-rearing, and community relations.
Saqiyuq is a strong example of the new practice of collaborative indigenous history, combining the insights of elders and participants with the perspective and editorial hand of an academic. This volume is an important addition to the history of the Inuit, women in the Arctic and northern Canadian history generally.
Lifetime Achivement Award
Dr. Bruce Hodgins
In a full and rewarding career, Dr. Bruce Hodgins established himself as one of the leading figures in Northern Canadian history. Although his initial work was in the broader field of Canadian political history, Bruce’s love for the North – and his passion for wilderness canoeing – turned his scholarly attentions to northern districts. His contributions have been many-fold, and include pioneering work in the development of undergraduate courses in northern history, service as Director of the Frost Centre for Northern Studies at Trent University, and tireless promotion of Northern Canadian Studies at the national and international level. He has published significant works on the history of northern Ontario and has edited several key collections of articles on northern themes. Perhaps his most enduring contribution, however, has come through his supervision of undergraduate and graduate theses, as he managed, with great success, to pass his love of the Canadian North on to new scholars. For thirty years, Bruce Hodgins has been at the forefront of the field of northern Canadian history and he is a worthy recipient of this recognition.
British Columbia
Beyond the City Limits: Rural History in British Columbia. (Ruth Sandwell editor).
Beyond the City Limits is a welcome addition to the written history of British Columbia. This collection of essays moves the focus of analysis away from the Lower Mainland in a much needed treatment of rural British Columbia. Each essay offers fresh insights into a diverse range of subjects from cougar hunting on Vancouver Island to pimping in Prince George. But this text is more than just an important shift from the usual, it is also a theoretically – informed, methodologically-sophisticated study of what has traditionally been deemed marginal in British Columbia history – the small towns, the farms, and the communities of the north and the interior. As such, Beyond the City Limits, contributes to a new scholarship of Western history that spans beyond provincial and national borders and so makes a most significant contribution to the history of British Columbia.
The Prairies
Jack Glenn, Once Upon An Oldman.
Once Upon An Oldman is a captivating study of the intense and bitter controversy over the Oldman Dam in southern Alberta, from its beginnings in 1976 to the present day. The Alberta government began construction of the dam in 1986, with the support of a highly effective irrigation lobby, and despite the opposition of the Peigan First Nation, local landowners, environmental groups and anglers. There were court actions, demonstrations, public debates, and a federal government panel declared the project unacceptable, but the dam was completed by the end of 1991. Glenn argues that the provincial and federal governments proved that they were not dedicated to protecting the environment, or safeguarding the interests of Aboriginal people, despite claims to the contrary. The book is a valuable contribution to regional history as Glenn provides context to the dispute through an examination of human occupation and water management in the Oldman River Basin. He effectively explores the historic associations of this region of Alberta to the Peigan.
Ontario
Mark McGowan, The Waning of the Green
McGowan’s book insightfully traces the development of the Catholic Irish in Toronto from an ethnic enclave into an integral part of the community. McGowan’s work is based on extensive statistical research, which substantiates his claims regarding this group’s dispersion throughout the city and their upward mobility. McGowan provides new insights into the organizational nature and activities of new Catholic organizations that supplanted older nationalistic ones. He looks at gender relations, compares and contrasts Irish-Canadian Catholics with immigrant Catholics from other countries, and examines the role of the Irish-Canadian community during the First World War. The Waning of the Green is a well-written and compelling piece of historical scholarship.
Atlantic Canada
David Frank, J. B. McLachlan: A Biography
David Frank’s richly textured J.B. McLachlan: A Biography combines extensive archival research with an accessible style to tell the gripping life story of the Scottish-born Cape Breton mine leader. James Bryson McLachlan played a central role among the miners as educator and organizer in the early to mid-twentieth century. He supported the miners when they joined the United Mine Workers of America, 1908-09, served on the union executive and led the legendary 1909-11 strike. Probably best remembered, however, as the radical leader of the miners in the dramatic labour struggles of the 1920s and 30s, McLachlan comes to life in this compelling biography. Frank skillfully weaves McLachlan’s life into the story of Cape Breton where economic boom was accompanied by dire poverty for the miners, and widening class divisions. This long-awaited biography of a working class leader makes a major contribution to the history not only of Nova Scotia and Atlantic Canada but to Canadian history as well.
Quebec
Peter Gossage, Families in Transition. Industry and Population in Nineteenth-Century Saint-Hyacinthe. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999.
Families in Transition is a genuine monograph which makes intelligent use of numerous and various sources to show convincingly the local impact of the transition to industrial capitalism and of the demographic transition. The author has compiled a remarkable data bank, which can be used to make unusual correlations and conclusions differentiated by class, and to reconstitute family files which provide eloquent illustrations of important phenomena brought up to date. While making use of the theories of socio-economic history from the past thirty years, he remains attentive to the specifics of Saint-Hyacinthe whose environs he describes evocatively, with the help of a rich collection of illustrations astutely analysed.
René Hardy. Contrôle social et mutations de la culture religieuse au Québec, 1830-1930, Les Éditions du Boréal, 1999.
This very mature study, which deals with the volution of the place of religion in culture, plunges into an area of social life so difficult to grasp that it seems homogeneous and unchangeable. Excellent articles enable us to appreciate clever approaches, a work of rigorous and exacting evidence, and clear explanations informed by theories of European historiography. The subtle analysis enables an astute reflection on the significance of the institutions. There is a refreshing variety of themes selected to explore the religious culture. The author introduces important distinctions, and he accomplishes the patient work of dating by gradually introducing the new practices in Quebec’s religious tradition.
H.V. Nelles, The Art of Nation-Building. Pageantry and Spectacle at Quebec’s Tercentenary. University of Toronto Press, 1999.
The Art of Nation-Building is a new and fascinating application of current trends in the history of memory with regard to the history of Quebec and Canada. Particularly pleasant reading, the work integrates collective history and individual experiences. It uses various approaches, from different areas, from intellectual history to urban history, by way of political history and the history of religions.