Wilson Award Winners

Maxime Dagenais 

A few days ago, we officially revealed the winners of the Viv Nelles Essay Prize and the Wilson Book Prize. Thank you to all that joined us at the Studio Bar, and a huge thank you, especially, to all the nominees for attending! If you need a refresher about our nominees, refer to Maxime Dagenais’ blog post about them.

For those of you that were unable to attend, here are our winners!

1. The winner of the very first Viv Nelles Essay Prize is Alexandra Montgomery, a PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, for a paper titled “Philadelphia’s Plantations: The Great Nova Scotian Land Boom and Reimagining the British Empire

Between the Wars, 1763-1775.” You can read more about her paper and her work in general in two previous blog posts with Beyond Borders. Alexandra walks away with a $1,000 cheque. A plaque commemorating Alexandra’s achievement will also be displayed at the Wilson Institute. Well done Alexandra!

2. The winner of the Wilson Book Prize is The Graphic History Collective and Paul Buhle’s Drawn to Change: Graphic Histories of Working-Class Struggle, published by Between the Lines. Between the Lines walks away with a $10,000 cheque that will fund the publication of new creative and accessible Canadian history. This is the second time that Between the Lines has been rewarded by the Wilson

Institute for Canadian History.  In 2012, the publisher won the Wilson Prize for Publishing in Canadian History, a prize once awarded to the publisher whose catalogue excelled at promoting innovative writing in Canadian history.

We look forward to next year’s submissions!

Graduate Students: if you want your paper to be nominated for the $1,000 Viv Nelles Essay Prize contact Maxime Dagenais at dagenam@mcmaster.ca

Publishers: if you want your book(s) to be nominated for the $10,000 Wilson Book Prize, send them to:

L.R. Wilson Institute for Canadian History 
L.R. Wilson Hall Room 2802
McMaster University
1280 Main Street West
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S 4L9

Cover Image: Massachusetts, Board of Agriculture. Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board of Agriculture. 1854-1915. Wikimedia Commons.