Congratulations to the winners!

2022 Wilson Prize Finalists!

It’s the time of year again! The moment when we, once again, reveal the Wilson Book Prize and Viv Nelles Essay Prize finalists.  Our thanks to the publishers and authors who have made the task of arriving at a short-list so difficult!

Wilson Book Prize

The Wilson Book Prize is awarded to the book that, we believe, “offers the best exploration of Canadian history that, in the view of the Wilson Institute, succeeds in making Canadian historical scholarship accessible to a wide and transnational audience.” Last year’s winner, published by Louisiana State University Press, was Robert Englebert and Andrew N. Wegmann, eds., French Connections: Cultural Mobility in North America and the Atlantic World, 1600-1875.

This year, the finalists are:

Daniel R. Meister, The Racial Mosaic: A Pre-History of Canadian Multiculturalism (McGill-Queen’s University Press). Canada’s renowned policy of multiculturalism is critically revisited in this innovative and comprehensively researched book, which asserts that ‘scientific race theory’ underwrote the works of the policy’s most influential early proponents.

Donald B. Smith, Seen But Not Seen: Influential Canadians and the First Nations from the 1840s to Today (University of Toronto Press).

In this timely book, Donald Smith draws upon a lifetime of research to offer an overview of attitudes towards the First Nations on the part of Canada’s leading politicians and intellectuals, with a focus on the period from the 1840s to the 1960s. He meticulously documents both moments of respect and understanding alongside far more numerous instances of racism and imposed cultural change.

Allyson D. Stevenson, Intimate Integration: A History of the Sixties Scoop and the Colonization of Indigenous Kinship. (University of Toronto Press).  The traumatic removal of Indigenous children from their families and communities is the focus of this pathbreaking study, which examines the formation of federal and provincial policies on transracial adoptions, their application in Saskatchewan from the 1960s to the 1980s, and Indigenous pushback against policies later described as a form of genocide.

After deliberation by our Associates and Fellows, the Institute has chosen Allyson D. Stevenson, Intimate Integration: A History of the Sixties Scoop and the Colonization of Indigenous Kinship (University of Toronto Press) for the Award. Our congratulations to Dr. Stevenson for bringing out a book that, based on rigorous research in many sources, including oral history, raises fundamentally important questions about the project of Canadian states in northern North America.

Viv Nelles Essay Prize

We have three nominations for the Viv Nelles Essay Prize, awarded to the graduate student paper that we believe best places Canada in a transnational framework.

The winner of the 2020 Viv Nelles Essay Prize was Geneviève Riou, Concordia University, for a paper titled, “D’une île à l’autre: Transnational Activism, Memory, and Other Trajectories in Haitian-Montrealer Life Stories During the Duvalier Era.”  

The nominees for the 2021 Prize are:

Catherine Charlton, “O Worship the King: Founding Loyalty at the University of King’s College, 1789-1829,” Dalhousie University.

Cassandra Hadley, “Attached Detachment: The Search for Female Agency in the Guiding Movement Continues,” University of Victoria.

Nina Sartor, “Hidden Figures: Canadian Women in Mixed-Gender Denuclearization Movements, 1960-1967,” McMaster University.

The 2022 Viv Nelles Essay Prize, honouring the graduate student paper from 2021 we believe best places Canada in a transnational framework, is awarded to Catherine Charlton of Dalhousie University for her essay, “O Worship the King: Founding Loyalty at the University of King’s College, 1789-1829.”