The annual Canada Prize distinctions—two in Humanities and two in Social Sciences—celebrate the best of our country’s scholarly manuscripts. Each spring, four $2,500 prizes (two English and two French) are awarded to researchers whose works enrich the social, cultural, and intellectual life of Canada and the world.
Eligible titles have been supported by CFHSS's Awards to Scholarly Publications Program. Winners are selected by a cross-Canada jury of scholars.
2012 Canada Prize winners in Humanities
Susan R. Fisher,Boys and Girls in No Man’s Land: English-Canadian Children and the First World War, published by University of Toronto Press
Boys and Girls in No Man’s Land examines how the First World War entered the lives and imaginations of Canadian children. Drawing on educational materials, textbooks, adventure tales, plays and Sunday-school papers of the time, this study explores the role of children in Canada’s war effort.
Susan R. Fisher teaches in the Department of English at the University of the Fraser Valley.
Louise Vigneault, for her work Espace artistique et modèle pionnier. Tom Thomson et Jean-Paul Riopelle, published by Hurtubise
Louise Vigneault examines the works of two iconic Canadian painters, Tom Thomson and Jean-Paul Riopelle, and explores how each helped reshape and redefine the imagery associated with Canada by breaking with the country’s European past and creating powerful images anchored in our own experiences of nature, from the boreal forests of Ontario to the age-old hunting traditions of Quebec.
Louise Vigneault is a professor of art history at the Université de Montréal.
2012 Canada Prize winners in Social Sciences
Veronica Strong-Boag, for her work Fostering Nation? Canada Confronts Its History of Childhood Disadvantage, published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Fostering Nation? breaks new ground in the history of social welfare and the family. By offering the first-ever comprehensive look at how Canada cared for marginalized youngsters between the 19th and 21st centuries, it tells heart-breaking stories that were the reality for children in foster care, and serves as a reminder that children’s welfare cannot be divorced from that of their parents.
Veronica Strong-Boag is a professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia.
Michel Ducharme, for his work Le concept de liberté au Canada à l’époque des Révolutions atlantiques, 1776-1838, published by McGill Queen’s University Press
For several decades starting in 1776, countries on both sides of the Atlantic were shaken by a series of revolutions and wars of independence in which the ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ were rallying cries. Ducharme looks at how opposing groups in Canada interpreted the word in very different ways in the lead-up the failed rebellions of 1837-38, and how that debate shaped the Canada we know today.
Michel Ducharme is an associate professor with the Department of History at the University of British Columbia.
Titles shortlisted for the 2012 Canada Prizes
Canada Prize in the Humanities
- Susan R. Fisher, Boys and Girls in No Man's Land: English-Canadian Children and the First World War, published by University of Toronto Press
- Carole Gerson, Canadian Women in Print, 1750-1918, published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press
- Marylin J. McKay, Picturing Land: Narrating Territories in Canadian Landscape Art, 1500-1950, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press
- Roderick Stewart and Sharon Stewart, Pheonix: The Life of Norman Bethune, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press
- Tony Tremblay, David Adams Richards of the Miramichi, published by University of Toronto Press
Canada Prize in the Social Sciences
- Stuart Henderson, Making the Scene: Yorkville and Hip Toronto in the 1960s, published by University of Toronto Press
- Timothy B. Leduc, Climate, Culture, Change: Inuit and Western Dialogues with a Warming North, published by University of Ottawa Press
- Paulette Regan, Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth-telling and Reconciliation in Canada, published by UBC Press
- Veronica Strong-Boag, Fostering Nation? Canada Confronts Its History of Childhood Disadvantage, published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press
- Peter C. Van Wyck, The Highway of the atom, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press
Prix du Canada en sciences humaines
- Marc André Brouillette, Spatialité textuelle dans la poésie contemporaine, publié par Éditions Nota bene
- Karine Cellard, Leçons de littérature : Un siècle de manuels scolaires au Québec, publié par Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal
- Denis Saint-Jacques et Lucie Robert, La vie littéraire au Québec, tome VI (1919-1933), publié par Les Presses de l'Université Laval
- Louise Vigneault, Espace artistique et modèle pionnier. Tom Thomson et Jean-Paul Riopelle, publié par Éditions Hurtubise inc.
Prix du Canada en sciences sociales
- Agnès Blais, Une ONG en Rusie post-soviétique, publié par Les Presses de l'Université Laval
- Michel Ducharme, Le concept de liberté au Canada à l'époque des Révolutions atlantiques, 1776-1838, publié par McGill-Queen’s University Press
- Donald Fyson, Magistrats, police et société : la justice criminelle ordinaire au Québec et au Bas-Canada (1764-1837), publié par Éditions Hurtubise inc.
- Simon Jolivet, Le vert et le bleu. Identité québécoise et identité irlandaise au tournant du XXe siècle, publié par Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal