Canada Prizes

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 (ASPP). The winning books make an exceptional contribution to scholarship, are engagingly written, and enrich the social, cultural and intellectual life of Canada.

Every year, four prizes of $2,500 are awarded:

Canada Prize in the Humanities
Canada Prize in the Social Sciences
Prix du Canada en sciences humaines
Prix du Canada en sciences sociales

2015 Canada Prizes

Latest news
Winners
Finalists
Awards ceremony
Jury
Sponsors

Latest news

The winner of the 2015 Canada Prizes have been announced! See the list of this year’s winners below. More details are available in the Federation media release and accompanying media kit.

The awards ceremony will be taking place Wednesday, April 29 at the Appel Salon of the Toronto Reference Library. This event will be emceed by former CBC correspondent Brian Stewart and include a keynote address by internationally celebrated storyteller M.G. Vassanji.

The Federation gratefully acknowledges the support of the sponsors of the 2015 Canada Prizes awards ceremony: York University, the Toronto Public Library, Boyden Global Executive Search, Marquis, Faculty of Arts, Ryerson University, Presses de l’Université de Montréal and University of Toronto Press.

2015 Canada Prize winners

The Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences is pleased to announce the winners of the 2015 Canada Prizes. This year’s winners are:

Canada Prize in the Humanities

Charlotte Townsend-Gault, Jennifer Kramer, and Ḳi-ḳe-in
Native Art of the Northwest Coast: A History of Changing Ideas
UBC Press

Jury’s citation: Native Art of the Northwest Coast: A History of Changing Ideas represents an outstanding collaborative effort by three editors—a professor of art history, Charlotte Townsend-Gault; an anthropologist and museum curator, Jennifer Kramer; and a Nuuchaanulth historian and creator, Ḳi-ḳe-in —and twenty-eight artists, critics, owners and scholars to bring diverse perspectives to bear on a highly contested subject. Illustrated with artwork and photographs, this book takes the form of a comprehensive ‘archive’ of historical documents illuminated by well-crafted essays and prologues. The result is a treasure trove of information on Northwest Coast Native art. It will be essential reading for all future work on this topic.

Charlotte Townsend-Gault is a professor in the Department of Art History and a faculty associate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Jennifer Kramer is an associate professor of anthropology and a curator at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Ḳi-ḳe-in is a Nuuchaanulth historian, poet, and creator of many things, with forty years' experience as a speaker and ritualist.

Read more about this book on our blog.

Canada Prize in the Social Sciences

Michael Asch
On Being Here to Stay: Treaties and Aboriginal Rights in Canada
University of Toronto Press

Jury’s citation: Michael Asch’s On Being Here to Stay: Treaties and Aboriginal Rights in Canada, is a rigorously documented and brilliant dissection of Canada’s troubled relations with its native peoples. It is hard to think of a more timely book or a more important domestic issue for Canadians, as the country tries to square apparently urgent questions of economic development with the basic principles on which Canada is founded. Although it draws on constitutional law and thus will appeal to legal specialists, it is accessibly written in a way that will enlighten anyone interested in this critical aspect of our history and its impact on contemporary events. As such, it is the best kind of academic book.

Michael Asch is a professor of anthropology at the University of Victoria and a professor emeritus at the University of Alberta. In 2001, his contributions to the field of applied anthropology were honoured by Canadian Anthropology Society with the Weaver-Tremblay award. He has served as President of the Canadian Anthropological Society, Senior Research Associate for Anthropology on the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and as Director of the Dene/Metis Mapping Project. He is currently a member of the board of advisors of Smithsonian Folkways Records. He is the author of many books, including Home and Native Land, Aboriginal and Treaty Rights in Canada and, most recently, On Being Here to Stay.

Read more about this book on our blog.

Prix du Canada en sciences humaines

Yan Hamel
L'Amérique selon Sartre : littérature, philosophie, politique
Presses de l'Université de Montréal

Jury’s citation: Yan Hamel’s work provides insight into Jean-Paul Sartre’s thoughts about America and, more widely, those of an entire generation of engaged European writers, philosophers and intellectuals. In this ambitious book, long-awaited by those who study Sartre, the author manages to distance Sartre from the anti-American sentiment in which critics had confined the left at the time. Without glossing over Sartre’s dreams of a New York with its sky scrapers, where he felt free, his passion for jazz music, and his admiration for the works of American novelists, Hamel invites us to understand those positions that this intellectual would take in the Rosenberg trial and the Vietnam War. In this journey, where biographical anecdotes meet theoretical contemplation, it is a matter of seeing another Sartre—one inspired by the language and its poetic allure. Hamel also pays tribute to Sartre the writer. The philosopher’s work is then no longer a coherent discursive system: The literature reigns supreme with its contradictions and aesthetic oscillations.

Yan Hamel is a professor at TÉLUQ (Université du Québec) where he develops multimedia distance learning courses on Québec culture and literature. He is the author of La bataille des mémoires. La Seconde Guerre mondiale et le roman français, which received an honourable mention for the Prix Raymond-Klibansky from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Yan Hamel was president of the North American Sartre Society and is a member of the board of directors of the Groupe d’études sartriennes.

Read more about this book on our blog.

Prix du Canada en sciences sociales

Dominique Perron
L’Alberta autophage : identités, mythes et discours du pétrole dans l’Ouest canadien
University of Calgary Press

Jury’s citation: Dominique Perron’s essay is well-researched, rigorous and relentless, and provides a penetrating analysis of the contradictory identities of petroleum-rich Alberta, with a writing style that achieves the same level as her scholarly and compelling study. Loaded with literary references that pertinently illustrate her observations, the work dissects the common core of speeches related to Alberta’s petroleum industry in order to understand the ramifications and separate the wheat from the chaff. This work comes at an opportune moment as the Alberta economy is in severe crisis as a result of falling global oil prices. Dominique Perron’s book pushes us to reflect on the precariousness of an industry that has seen its share of both wealth and misfortune. Who says what, and why? How does the discourse of industry, politicians, media, environmental militants and observers from outside of Alberta, shape the identity-building of ‘Petro-Albertans’? Based on a rigorous methodology, and powered by exhaustive theoretical and factual research and an unfailing discursive analysis, the work helps to debunk the myths and to strive for a better understanding of the social tensions related to natural resources in western Canada, while casting a lucid and compared gaze on those of ‘Hydro-Québecers’. Dominique Perron’s work is a great contribution to the social sciences and to the social and intellectual life of Canada.

Dominique Perron was a professor of Québec studies at the University of Calgary from 1990 to 2015. She is the author of Le nouveau roman de l’énergie nationale : Analyse des discours promotionnels d’Hydro-Québec de 1964 à 1997, and was shortlisted for the Prix Raymond-Klibansky in 2006. In 2013, her work entitled L’Alberta Autophage : Identités, mythes et discours du pétrole dans l’Ouest canadien, was a finalist for the Governor General's Prize for Non-Fiction.

Read more about this book on our blog.

Congratulations to all the winners!

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2015 Canada Prizes finalists

The Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2015 Canada Prizes. This year’s finalists are:

Congratulations to all the finalists!

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2015 Canada Prizes awards ceremony

The 2015 Canada Prizes awards ceremony will be held on Wednesday, April 29, 2021 in the Bram and Bluma Appel Salon at the Toronto Reference Library. Hosted jointly by the Federation and York University, and in partnership with the Toronto Public Library, this event will be emceed by former CBC correspondent Brian Stewart and include a keynote address by internationally celebrated storyteller M.G. Vassanji. This year will mark the 25th awarding of these prestigious prizes.

To reserve your free ticket, click here.

In partnership with:

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2015 Canada Prizes jury

The Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences is pleased to announce the jury members for the 2015 Canada Prizes.

Jury members for the 2015 Canada Prize in the Humanities
	Margaret Conrad is Professor Emerita of history at the University of New Brunswick, where she held the Canada Research Chair in Atlantic Canada Studies from 2002 to 2009. Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and Officer of the Order of Canada, she is also the author or co-author of numerous books, including A Concise History of Canada (2012) and Canadians and Their Pasts (2013).
	Sandra Djwa is renowned for her award-winning writing on iconic Canadian authors, such as Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, Al Purdy and E.J. Pratt. In 2013 she was awarded a Governor General’s Literary Award for Journey with No Maps: A Life of P.K. Page, which also won the 2014 Canada Prize in the Humanities and was shortlisted for the Charles Taylor Prize. Sandra Djwa taught English at Simon Fraser University from 1968 to 2005.
	Jane Koustas is a Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Brock University. She has served as the Craig Dobbin Professor of Canadian Studies at University College Dublin, as well as the Academic Convenor for the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences (2014). An expert of English-Canadian literature in translation, she is the co-editor of four books and the author of Les belles étrangères : Canadians in Paris (2008).
Jury members for the 2015 Canada Prize in the Social Sciences
	Pat Armstrong is Professor of sociology and women’s studies at York University. An expert in the fields of social policy, women, work, health and social services, she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the co-author or co-editor of many books, including Wasting Away (2010), Women’s Health (2008), and Critical to Care (2008). She is also a board member of the Canadian Health Coalition and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
	Robert Bothwell is Professor of history at University of Toronto, where he has taught since 1970. A specialist in late twentieth-century international and Canadian history, he is the author or co-author of many books, including The Penguin History of Canada (2006) and Alliance and Illusion (2007). From 1995 to 2011, he was Director of the International Relations Program at Trinity College. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
	David E. Smith is the author of Federalism and the Constitution of Canada (2010), The People’s House of Commons (2007), and many books on Canadian politics. His 2013 book, Across the Aisle: Opposition in Canadian Politics was the winner of the 2014 Canada Prize in the Social Sciences. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, he is currently Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Ryerson University.
Jury members for the Prix du Canada en sciences humaines 2015
	Pierre Anctil is Full Professor at the department of history of the University of Ottawa, where he teaches contemporary Canadian history. He received the 2014 Prix du Canada en sciences humaines for his book Jacob-Isaac Segal (1896-1954) : un poète yiddish de Montréal et son milieu (2012). He is the author of several books including ‘Soyons nos maîtres’ : 60 éditoriaux pour comprendre Le Devoir sous Georges Pelletier, 1932-1947 (2013).
	Jocelyn Maclure is Full Professor of the Faculty of Philosophy at Université Laval, and co-holder of the Chair in Philosophy in the present world. His last book, Laïcité et liberté de conscience (2010) co-written with Charles Taylor, has been translated into several languages. A philosopher actively involved in the community, he has taken part in the proceedings of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission on Reasonable Accommodation of Minorities and contributed to the Bastarache Commission on Judicial Appointments, among other projects.
	Catherine Mavrikakis currently lives in Montréal where she teaches literature at the Université de Montréal. A well-known novelist, her most recent novel, La ballade d’Ali Baba, has just been published. She is also the author of several essays, including Diamanda Galás. Guerrière et gorgone (2014), L'éternité en accéléré (2012), and Condamner à mort. Les meurtres et la loi à l'écran (2005) for which she won the Prix Victor-Barbeau.
Jury members for the Prix du Canada en sciences sociales 2015
	Gérard Bouchard, historian and sociologist, is Professor of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences and holder of a Canada Research Chair at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. He has received numerous awards, including the Governor General of Canada Award in 2000 for his book Genèse des nations et cultures du Nouveau Monde. In 2007, he has co-chaired with Charles Taylor the Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices related to Cultural Differences in Quebec.
	Fannie Lafontaine is a lawyer and Professor of the Law Faculty at Université Laval and holder of the Canada Research Chair on International Criminal Justice and Human Rights. She has been, among other functions, a special adviser and human rights officer in the Executive Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. She is the author and co-author of a number of publications, including the book Prosecuting Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes in Canadian Courts (2012).
	Winner of the Prix du Canada 2014 en sciences sociales awarded by the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences for his book Les chemises bleues : Adrien Arcand, journaliste antisémite canadien-français, Hugues Théorêt holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in history. Journalist, publicist and intergovernmental affairs advisor, he has also worked on a series of television documentaries about the history of Canada. He is currently engaged in doctoral studies in history at the University of Ottawa.