The following are the 2022 nominees 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 2022 calendar year.
SCHOLARLY HISTORY
Medicare’s Histories: Origins, Omissions, and Opportunities in Canada
by Esyllt W. Jones, James Hanley, and Delia Gavrus
University of Manitoba PressMedicare is arguably Canada’s most valued social program. As federally-supported medicare enters its second half-century, Medicare’s Histories brings together leading social and health historians to reflect on the origins and evolution of medicare and the missed opportunities characterizing its past and present. Embedding medicare in the diverse constituencies that have given it existence and meaning, contributors inquire into the strengths and weaknesses of publicly insured health care and critically examine medicare’s unfinished role in achieving greater health equity for all people in Canada regardless of race, status, gender, class, age, and ability.
In Our Back Yard: Keeyask and the Legacy of Hydroelectric Development
edited by Aimee Craft and Jim Blaley
University of Manitoba PressIn Our Backyard tells the story of the Keeyask dam and accompanying development on the Nelson River from the perspective of Indigenous peoples, academics, scientists, and regulators. It builds on the rich environmental and economic evaluations documented in the Clean Environment Commission’s public hearings on Keeyask in 2012. It amplifies Indigenous voices that environmental assessment and regulatory processes have often failed to incorporate and provides a basis for ongoing decision-making and scholarship relating to Keeyask and resource development more generally. It considers cumulative, regional, and strategic impact assessments; Indigenous worldviews and laws within the regulatory and decision-making process; the economics of development; models for monitoring and management; consideration of affected species; and cultural and social impacts.
For a Better World: The Winnipeg General Strike and the Workers' Revolt
by James Naylor, Rhonda L. Hinther, and Jim Mochoruk
University of Manitoba PressCanada’s largest and most famous example of class conflict, the Winnipeg General Strike, redefined local, national, and international discourse around class, politics, region, ethnicity, and gender. The Strike’s centenary occasioned a re-examination of this critical moment in working-class history.
Continuing the conversations begun in 2019, editors Naylor, Hinther, and Mochoruk depict key events of 1919, detailing the dynamic and complex historiography of the Strike and the larger Workers’ Revolt that reverberated around the world and shaped the century following the war. The chapters delve into intersections of race, class, and gender and into settler colonialism’s impact on the conflict. Placing the struggle in Winnipeg within a broader national and international context, several contributors explore parallel strikes in Edmonton, Crowsnest Pass, Montreal, Kansas City, and Seattle.
For a Better World interrogates types of commemoration and remembrance, current legacies of the Strike, and its ongoing influence. Together, the essays in this collection demonstrate that the Winnipeg General Strike continues to mobilize—revealing our radical past and helping us to think imaginatively about collective action in the future.
by Scott Berthelette
McGill-Queens University PressActing as cultural intermediaries, the Canadiens made it possible for France to extend its presence into northwest North America. Over time, however, their uncertain relationships with the French colonial state splintered imperial authority, leading to an outcome that few could have foreseen - the emergence of a new Indigenous culture, language, people, and nation: the Métis.
LOCAL HISTORY
Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Services: A History
by Allan Levine
Heartland AssociatesFrom the early days of Winnipeg hospitals in the late nineteenth century, with their high maternal mortality rates, to the opening of the new HSC Women’s Hospital in 2019, with its planned and unplanned pregnancies, uncomplicated deliveries and minimally invasive gynecological surgery, this is the remarkable story of more than 150 years of women’s health care in Manitoba.
This history shows how advances in technology and science have put the health and welfare of patients first and made the experience of having a baby or a hysterectomy mostly routine, through the dedication, perseverance, intelligence and skills of several generations of Manitoba obstetricians, gynecologists, family physicians, midwives, nurses and others.
by Murray Peterson
Winnipeg Architecture FoundationMax Zev Blankstein (1874-1931) was an important architect in Winnipeg's early history. The first Jewish architect registered in Canada, he left a legacy of theatres, apartment blocks, houses and other buildings across the Prairies.
L’Université de Saint-Boniface: 200 ans d’évolution
by Michel Verrette
Editions des PlainesL’Université de Saint-Boniface est la plus ancienne institution d’enseignement de l’Ouest canadien. Située au cœur de Saint-Boniface, au Manitoba, elle a connu ses humbles débuts il y a plus de 200 ans, lorsque l’abbé Joseph-Norbert Provencher, missionnaire nommé à la colonie de la Rivière- Rouge, s’est attelé à la tâche d’enseigner les éléments latins et classiques aux jeunes garçons de la colonie. L’a suivi comme pionnier de l’histoire du Manitoba français, l’abbé Alexandre-Antonin Taché, déterminé à assurer la survie et l’essor du «Collège».
Le Collège de Saint-Boniface, désigné comme tel jusqu’en 2011, a connu une gestation turbulente mais remplie d’espoir, puis une adolescence non sans embuches, caractérisée par la présence des Jésuites faisant œuvre d’éducation, pour évoluer jusqu’à l’ouverture aux filles, sa laïcisation et l’obtention du statut d’université. Aujourd’hui, l’Université de Saint-Boniface est bien plus qu’une simple institution; elle représente un projet sociétal réunissant diverses cultures ainsi qu’un héritage pour les générations futures.
L’historien Michel Verrette nous brosse une fresque particulièrement vivante d’une entreprise bicentenaire, afin de nous rappeler la fabuleuse épopée de ce vénérable établissement et de nous donner un aperçu saisissant de son avenir.
The Fur Trader: From Oslo to Oxford House
by Einar Odd Mortensen with Gerd Kjustad Mortensen; edited by Ingrid Urberg and Daniel Sims
University of Alberta PressThe Fur Trader is a critical edition of Einar Odd Mortensen Sr.’s personal narrative detailing the years (1925–1928) he spent as a free trader at posts in Pine Bluff and Oxford Lake in Manitoba during the waning days of the fur trade. Mortensen’s original narrative has been translated from Norwegian to English, and supplemented with a scholarly introduction, thorough annotations, a bibliography, and a reading guide. This additional material presents the author as a product of Norwegian culture at the time, and guides the reader through a close reading of Mortensen’s interpretations of his work and travels, the people he encountered, the Indian Residential School system, and Indigenous participation in the First World War. Mortensen’s insights and experiences will be of interest to scholars, students, and enthusiasts of the fur trade and contribute to literary, Indigenous, and Scandinavian studies.
Valley of the Birdtail: An Indian Reserve, a White Town, and the Road to Reconciliation
by Andrew Stobo Sniderman and Douglas Sanderson (Amo Binashii)
Harper CollinsDivided by a beautiful valley and 150 years of racism, the town of Rossburn and the Waywayseecappo Indian reserve have been neighbours nearly as long as Canada has been a country. Their story reflects much of what has gone wrong in relations between Indigenous Peoples and non-Indigenous Canadians. It also offers, in the end, an uncommon measure of hope.
by Daniel Robert Laxer
McGill-Queens University PressWhile the fur trade was propelled by economic and political interests, Listening to the Fur Trade uncovers the songs and ceremonies of First Nations people, the paddling songs of the voyageurs, and the fiddle music and step-dancing at the trading posts that provided its pulse.
POPULAR HISTORY
Osborne Village, An Architectural Tour
by Susan Algie and James Wagner
Winnipeg Architecture FoundationOsborne Village: An Architectural Tour explores the historic and contemporary architecture of this dynamic Winnipeg neighbourhood.
by Sarah Ens
Turnstone PressA deeply personal long poem about migration and legacy and their resonance in a modern world.
This Meditation on the impact of human and ecological trauma explores the cost of survival for three generations of women living between empires. Writing from within the disappearing tallgrass prairie, Sarah Ens follows connections between the Russian Mennonite diaspora and the disrupted migratory patterns of grassland birds. Drawing on family history, eco-poetics, and the rich tradition of the Canadian long poem, Flyway migrates along pathways of geography and the heart to grapple with complexities of home.
Of Savages and Beasts: The Parson and the Carnage at Seven Oaks
by Lorren Pettit
Self-publishedFor Scottish Highlanders in the 1810s, the promise of Lord Selkirk’s settlement in Rupert’s Land was a godsend and an incredible opportunity to start anew after being evicted from their homes and land. The allure was especially attractive for James Sutherland, a Presbyterian church elder recruited to establish the first Protestant presence in what would later be known as Western Canada. But as James “the Parson” Sutherland and the third wave of settlers arrive in their new land in 1815, they soon learn their “promised land” is a “war zone”. With tensions rising between the two rival fur trading companies, can Sutherland’s gospel message bring peace to the land?
Following the Parson on his physical and spiritual sojourn as he navigates events leading to the Battle of Seven Oaks in 1816, this story not only provides a detailed history of the early settlement of present-day Winnipeg, Manitoba, but offers a unique, very plausible explanation for how the deadly Battle of Seven Oaks started…one the Coltman Commission looking into the affairs at Frog Plain neglected to recognize in their 1818 report to the British House of Commons.
Tales from the Homestead: A History of Prairie Pioneers, 1867-1914
by Sandra Rollings-Magnusson
Heritage HouseHighlighting the voices and personal stories of early immigrants who arrived in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Tales from the Homestead is a captivating snapshot of social history. This compilation of first-person accounts by English, Dutch, German, Russian, Ukrainian, and American homesteaders reveals fascinating, startling, heartbreaking, and inspiring details about new lives and communities built, risks taken, and hardships endured.
The Gorilla Man Strangler Case: Serial Killer Earle Nelson
by Alvin A. J. Esau
Friesen PressThe Gorilla Man Strangler Case is a detailed historical account of the Canadian manhunt, capture, and identification of Earle Leonard Nelson, an escapee from a California mental institution who was hung in Manitoba on 13 January 1928.
This case study also deals with various political and professional issues that arose in the pretrial, trial, and post-trial periods and spotlights the clash between Nelson’s court-appointed defence attorney James Stitt, and psychiatrist Dr. Alvin Mathers, along with the chilling role of Canada’s so called official hangman “Arthur Ellis” – all information that has never been published before.
Page revised: 1 August 2023
