OTTAWA, April 30, 2014 – The Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences is very pleased to announce the winners of the 2014 Canada Prizes. The Canada Prizes are awarded annually to the best scholarly books in the humanities and social sciences that have received funding from the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program.
Celebrating the best Canadian scholarly books across all the disciplines of the humanities and social sciences, the Canada Prizes are awarded to books that make an exceptional contribution to scholarship, are engagingly written, and enrich the social, cultural and intellectual life of Canada.
“These books represent the best of our country’s scholarly output. This year’s winners have written about the lives of two exceptional Canadian poets and about two very different aspects of Canadian politics,” said Antonia Maioni, President of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. “Rooted in a holistic understanding of our past, these books contribute to Canadians’ understanding of our rich and varied history, how that is relevant to where we are now, and how it influences where we are headed as a nation.”
The prizes, each valued at $2,500, will be presented at the awards ceremony on Wednesday, May 7, 2014 at York University's Glendon College in Toronto. The awards ceremony will be open to the media and will feature keynote remarks by Michael Adams, President of Environics and a member of the jury. All four winners are expected to be in attendance.
This year’s winners are:
Canada Prize in the Humanities
Sandra Djwa, for Journey With No Maps: A Life of P.K. Page (McGill-Queen's University Press)
From the jury’s citation:
“Journey with No Maps is an engaging portrait of an intriguing woman who was not only one of Canada’s most beloved poets and painters but one who was living and creating at an important moment in Canada’s cultural history. Incorporating Page's poetry seamlessly into her life story, … it is both an intimate biography and a wide-ranging literary history.”
Canada Prize in the Social Sciences
David E. Smith, for Across the Aisle: Opposition in Canadian Politics (University of Toronto Press)
From the jury’s citation:
“David E. Smith has produced an elegantly-written, tightly argued and timely scholarly book on the role of the opposition in our Canadian parliamentary democracy. … [Across the Aisle] will help inform the growing debate on how parliamentarians, including the opposition, can be brought back into the centre of the Canadian political system as our founders intended.”
Prix du Canada en sciences humaines
Pierre Anctil, for Jacob-Isaac Segal, 1896-1954 : Un poète yiddish de Montréal et son milieu (Presses de l'Université Laval)
From the jury’s citation:
“Pierre Anctil’s book is more than just a passionate and fascinating biography. … Through Segal, we hear the story of the entire Eastern European Jewish community that arrived in Montreal, its world travels, and the many links between European, North American and Quebecois history. This book’s great triumph is the way it shines new light on the history of pluralism in Quebec.”
Prix du Canada en sciences sociales
Hugues Théorêt, for Les chemises bleues : Adrien Arcand, journaliste antisémite canadien-français (Éditions du Septentrion)
From the jury’s citation:
“In his book Les chemises bleues, Hugues Théorêt [covers] a very serious subject: the life of Adrien Arcand, an intellectual and militant anti-Semite between 1930 and 1960 … , producing a patient, nuanced, humanist, and contextualized narrative. Without a trace of sterile polemic, overinterpretation or an overly personal position, this book is an invaluable resource for understanding, from a Quebecois and Canadian perspective, a phenomenon that recurs throughout human history and that is not confined to Europe: hate speech.”
Biographies and photos of the 2014 winners, along with the full jury citations, are available on the Federation’s website at www.ideas-idees.ca/canada-prizes.
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Media inquiries:
Nicola Katz
Manager of Communications
Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences
613-238-6112, ext. 351
nkatz@ideas-idees.ca