The following are the 2021 recipients for Margaret McWilliams Awards, one of the oldest literary awards in Canada, named in honour of writer Margaret McWilliams. Books nominated for this award have been published in the 2021 calendar year.
SCHOLARLY HISTORY
Authorized Heritage: Place, Memory, and Historic Sites in Prairie Canada
by Robert Coutts
University of Manitoba PressAuthorized Heritage analyses the history of commemoration at heritage sites across western Canada. Using extensive research from predominantly government records, it argues that heritage narratives are almost always based on national messages that commonly reflect colonial perceptions of the past. Yet many of the places that commemorate Indigenous, fur trade, and settler histories are contested spaces, places such as Batoche, Seven Oaks, and Upper Fort Garry being the most obvious. At these heritage sites, Indigenous views of history confront the conventions of settler colonial pasts and represent the fluid cultural perspectives that should define the shifting ground of heritage space.
LOCAL HISTORY
Thinking Big: A History of the Winnipeg Business Community to the Second World War
by Jim Blanchard
Great Plains PublishingFrom the HBC and the Indigenous free traders of the fur trade to the establishment of companies that still exist today, Thinking Big examines the history of Winnipeg’s business development. Through profiles of Manitoba industries and personalities, Blanchard reveals how Winnipeg’s business community dealt with challenges, organized itself to take advantage of periods of growth and prosperity, and shaped the city we know today.
POPULAR HISTORY
Ancestors: Indigenous Peoples of Western Canada in Historic Photographs
by Sarah Carter and Inez Lightning
Bruce Peel Special Collections, University of Alberta PressThis exhibition catalogue introduces historic photographs of Indigenous peoples of Western Canada from a collection housed at the University of Alberta’s Bruce Peel Special Collections. The publication focuses on the ancestors represented in the collection and how their images continue to generate stories and meanings in the present. The selected photographs contribute to a richer, deeper understanding of the past. There is strength, character, persistence, determination, humour, artwork, dance, celebration, and so much more in the photographs. Some serve as records of cherished landscapes that may have been altered. Others provide links to ancestors: revered leaders, soldiers, healers, thinkers, and orators. The curators hope that the process of identifying the people in these photographs, only begun here, will continue.
Page revised: 24 June 2022
