Latest news with #GovernorGeneral'sLiteraryAward
Winnipeg Free Press
30-06-2025
- Health
- Winnipeg Free Press
Author Miriam Toews among Manitobans named to Order of Canada
OTTAWA — Manitoba-born, Toronto-based novelist Miriam Toews has been appointed an officer of the Order of Canada. The 61-year-old Toews was one of three Manitobans among the 83 recipients of the Order of Canada announced on June 30 by Gov. Gen. Mary Simon. The governor general's website lauded Toews' 'unique ability to portray very human stories of overcoming adversity and finding meaning is a gift to her readers, and a source of inspiration to her adoring students and fans.' Toews was raised in Steinbach and began her literary career while living in Winnipeg, before moving to Toronto in 2009. SUPPLIED Manitoba-born author Miriam Toews has been given Canada's highest civilian honour. She is the author of nine books, primarily novel-length fiction, much of which is peppered with autobiographical components. Among her novels are 2004's A Complicated Kindness, winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction, 2014's All My Puny Sorrows, winner of the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and 2018's Women Talking, which was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Awards and was made into an Oscar-nominated 2022 film. Toews' next book, A Truce That Is Not Peace, is her first work of autobiographical non-fiction, and will be published on Aug. 26 by Knopf Canada. Two Manitobans were named members of the Order of Canada: Albert Friesen, who helped build the province's biotechnology industry, and created WinRho, Canada' first biotech product; and Kathy Mulder, for her work to improve care for people with inherited bleeding disorders. She was the first woman and first Canadian to chair the World Federation of Hemophilia's Musculoskeletal Committee. The list of appointees also includes Marc-André Blanchard, who takes over in July as Prime Minister Mark Carney's chief of staff. Blanchard previously worked as a lawyer and as Canada's ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations. Dr. Theresa Tam, who retired in June as Canada's chief public health officer, will be inducted as an officer of the Order of Canada. Tam became a household name as she led the country's public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Bonnie Henry, who led British Columbia's pandemic response as the provincial health officer and is heading its public health response to the drug overdose crisis, joins Tam among the new appointees at the officer level. More than 8,200 people have been appointed to the Order of Canada since its creation in 1967. Many are national household names, including politicians, musicians, actors and writers. Many others are awarded for their contributions at a more local level to multiple fields, including science, medicine, education and the arts. The latest list includes several politicians, including former finance minister John Manley, who is being promoted to the companion level after initially being inducted as an officer of the Order of Canada in 2009. Companion is the highest level within the order, followed by the officer level, which are both generally awarded for contributions to Canada as a whole, or 'humanity at large.' A member of the Order of Canada recognizes distinguished service to a specific community or within a specific field. Maureen McTeer, a lawyer and author who has worked on gender issues and health guidelines, will be appointed as an officer. McTeer, who is married to former prime minister Joe Clark, is currently a visiting professor in the faculty of common law at the University of Ottawa. Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. 'We proudly recognize each of these individuals whose dedication and passion for service not only enrich our communities but also help shape the fabric of our nation,' Simon said in a statement released with the list. 'Together, they inspire us to strive for greatness and to foster a future filled with hope and possibility.' Others appointed to the Order of Canada include biologist Ford Doolittle, musician Gilbert Donald Walsh, former senator Claudette Tardif and poet Louise Bernice Halfe, whose Cree name is Sky Dancer. Genealogist Stephen White received an honorary appointment. The inductees being announced Monday will be invested in ceremonies to be scheduled at a later date. — The Canadian Press, with files from Ben Sigurdson
Calgary Herald
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Calgary Herald
Add these 10 B.C. book titles to your summer reading list
Article content Article content Written by a former Hollywood assistant and screenwriter, this romp of a novel is set in 1997 and follows a young assistant with big dreams, who moves from Vancouver to Los Angeles to work for an A-list director. Once there, Charity Trickett's dream of climbing the ladder to screenwriting and producing success is stymied at every turn by a backstabbing co-worker and a big, potentially billion-dollar mistake. Article content Article content If you're a and you're looking to stay in the province for your summer vacation, chances are, you're thinking about the Okanagan Valley. If you do decide to head for the sun, pick up a copy of this informative, entertaining and very packable book from seasoned travel writer Arnott. Article content Article content Article content The Kelowna author of the Governor General's Literary Award finalist All the Quiet Places is back with the novel Bones of a Giant. Set in 1968 on the Okanagan Indian Reserve, where Isaac was born, the novel dives into a teenager's struggle with grief and becoming a man in a world that does him no favours. Article content Article content This cosy mystery is set in the fictional northern Oregon Coast town of Twilight Cove as it readies to celebrate an 18th-century pirate and all-around bad guy Dead Eye Dawson. Just before the day of celebration, pirate enthusiast and celebration committee member Jasper Hogan is found in a pool of blood in his study by fellow committee member Georgie Johansen. Georgie, who works at an animal sanctuary, goes into sleuth mode and sets out to find the killer. This is a perfect beach bag addition that comes with all cosy mystery signposts: murder, intrigue, love and two dogs with supernatural powers. OK, maybe that last thing is unique. Article content Article content Who doesn't like a good adventure story, especially a true one? Hughes — whose previous book Capturing the Summit: Hamilton Mack Laing and the Mount Logan Expedition would also make a great addition to your summer reading list — is back. This time Hughes looks at pioneering climbers who tried, in the early 1930s, to conquer Mystery Mountain, a.k.a. Mount Waddington. The Final Spire is a chronicle of fascinating history and good old-fashioned chutzpah. Article content Article content If the west coast of Vancouver Island is on your summer travel list, this book would be a perfect companion. Martin, whose family has spent four generations in the area, has done decades of research and interviews for this comprehensive history of Ucluelet, complete with stories about settlement and dispossession, tragedies and triumphs, First Nations history and contemporary culture. And yes, shipwrecks and sea serpents too.
Winnipeg Free Press
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Book club to survey Sinclair's essays
The Free Press Book Club and McNally Robinson Booksellers are pleased to welcome Winnipeg author (and Free Press columnist) Niigaan Sinclair for the next virtual meeting on Tuesday, June 24 at 7 p.m. to read from and discuss his award-winning essay collection Wînipêk: Visions of Canada from an Indigenous Centre. Published in May 2024 by McClelland & Stewart, Wînipêk compiles a year's worth of Sinclair's Free Press columns as well as other writing about how our perception of Winnipeg, and the ways in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous citizens co-exist and survive, is a window into larger questions about colonialism and reconciliation nationwide. Wînipêk was a national bestseller, landing on a number of year-end lists of best books. Sinclair's debut collection also netted him the Governor General's Literary Award for non-fiction, news he was able to share with his father, Murray Sinclair, before he passed in November 2024. Mikaela MacKenzie / Free Press files Niigaan Sinclair In his review of Wînipêk for the Free Press, Matt Henderson says Sinclair 'takes the reader on a journey through the land, water and seasons, the underbelly and magnificence that is Winnipeg,' adding 'Sinclair identifies the overt racism as well as the legislative, calculated mindsets that have intentionally set out to destroy Indigenous Peoples and culture.' Yet Sinclair retains hope for the future of the city; 'Wînipêk is a portal into our violent past, our precarious present and the promise of tomorrow. It should be mandatory reading for all Canadians,' Henderson writes. Sinclair will join fellow Free Press columnist Jen Zoratti, McNally Robinson Booksellers co-owner Chris Hall and Free Press audience engagement manager Erin Lebar to read from Wînipêk, discuss the book and field questions from viewers and readers. Copies of Wînipêk are available to purchase at McNally Robinson Booksellers; there's no cost to join the book club or virtual discussion. Video of the meeting will be available for replay on the Free Press YouTube channel following the event. For more information and to register, visit Wînipêk
Calgary Herald
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Calgary Herald
The newest Tory senator is a Trudeau appointee. What to know about about David Adams Richards
Article content He's married to Peggy McIntyre, with whom he has two sons, John Thomas and Anton Richards. Article content While his first published work after studying literature and philosophy at St. Thomas University in the early 1970s was a small book of poems, Richards became an acclaimed Canadian novelist with 16 titles on his resume, along with six non-fiction books and two collections of short stories. Article content His writings have been translated into 12 languages and are part of the curriculum of Canadian and U.S. universities, according to the Senate of Canada. Article content In a style said to be influenced by the likes of Leo Tolstoy and compared to William Blake, his fiction work is mostly set in the Miramichi Valley where he grew up and the characters are inspired by the lives and experiences of its poor and working-class people. Article content Article content Article content Richards has been a writer-in-residence at multiple universities and colleges across Canada, three of which have awarded him honorary doctorates — the University of New Brunswick (1995), Mount Allison University in Sackville (2008), and St. Thomas University in Fredericton (1990). He received the same honour from the Atlantic School of Theology in 2010. Article content In 1998, he became one of just three Canadian writers to win a Governor General's Literary Award in both fiction and non-fiction for Nights Below Station Street (1988) and Lines on the Water: A Fisherman's Life on the Miramichi (1998). Writers Laura G. Salverson and Hugh MacLennan are the others. Meanwhile, his 1993 fiction novel For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down and 2007's The Lost Highway were also nominated for the government honour. Article content Article content In 2000, his Mercy Among the Children was a co-winner of the Giller Prize along with Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje, the only time two recipients have shared the honour in its 31-year history. Lost Highway and The Friends of Meager Fortune (2006) were both longlisted for the Giller. Article content Richards has also been awarded two Gemini Awards for scriptwriting (Small Gifts and For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down), the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Canadian Authors Association Award for his novel Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace, the 2011 Matt Cohen Award for a distinguished lifetime of contribution to Canadian literature and the Canada-Australia Literary Prize. Article content He is a member of the Order of New Brunswick (2005) and the Order of Canada (2009). Article content Richards the Senator Article content When first appointed to the Senate by Trudeau in 2017, two years after the then-prime minister established the Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments to make the Upper House less partisan, Richards joined the relatively new Independent Senators Group (ISG).
Winnipeg Free Press
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
A delicate structure
Fans of Madeleine Thien's writing could be excused for feeling impatient about the author's followup to her bestselling novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing. The novel, published in 2016, won the Montreal author the Giller Prize, the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction and landed on the short list for the Booker Prize. The nine-year gap was worth the wait. Babak Salari photo Madeleine Thien is the author of four novels and a short story collection. Thien's new novel, The Book of Records, published May 6 by Knopf Canada, is sure to satiate fans and win new ones, and will likely again draw the attention of national and international book prize juries. Thien didn't anticipate the novel, which she started in 2016, would take so long to come together. 'All I knew at the beginning was I wanted to write about a father and daughter and I had this idea about a building made of time — I was thinking about Einstein: time is space, space is time. I thought, 'What are the ideas or the questions I want to live with, I need to live with for the next five years?'' Thien says by Zoom. 'It turned out to be almost 10 years — maybe because I felt like I was chasing something for a long time that I couldn't pin down.' The Book of Records defies simple summation. In the future, Lina and her ailing father flee their home in Foshan as it is ravaged by the effects of climate change, arriving at a mysterious building called the Sea, which seems to exist outside conventional notions of space and time. Other migrants come and go from the Sea, but the two settle in for years. Lina has brought three books with her that detail the lives of three real-life thinkers: 17th-century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza; 8th-century poet Du Fu;and 20th-century German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt. A trio of neighbours at the Sea, essentially stand-ins for the real-life trio, tell their stories in an attempt to set their proverbial records straight; Thien provides riveting accounts of actual events that took place in each of their lives. 'One of the paradoxes of writing literature is that you're almost always trying to capture in language that thing which is not capturable by language. And even if you're able to hold it in your hands, you think, 'But that's not it' — and the search continues. So much is intertwined, so much only becomes visible as the structure materializes over the course of the book. It's not something that can be seen in the first 15 or 20 pages — it requires going on a journey together,' Thien says. On her journey, the 50-year-old Thien found more literary companions in authors Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges and Yoko Ogawa. 'The joy of having those as figures in my mind … was that they're all so different from each other, and I'm so different from them, so there was no model, just companions, and maybe a recognition that they too, had been looking for structures that could hold that thing that is just beyond our grasp,' she says. Despite the weighty philosophical and political themes that run throughout The Book of Records — displacement, migration, climate change, biography and betrayal — the novel is propulsive, with the ideas acting like brushstrokes that form a rich and complete picture by the novel's end. The Book of Records While writing the book, Thien envisioned a reader along the lines of Lina's age (she's seven when she arrives at the Sea with her father and 14 when they leave). 'There's a lightness of touch that I wanted, that sense that these ideas belong to all of us, that I, too, am just an ordinary reader. I'm not a philosopher, I'm not a theorist of any kind, just a person looking for answers, meaning, some way to hold all this together,' Thien says. 'Young Lina was very much at the forefront of my thoughts as an imagined reader.' Winnipeg Jets Game Days On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop. The passages detailing events in the lives of Spinoza, Du Fu and Arendt saw Thien attempt to see the world from their respective perspectives, a task requiring extensive research. 'I tried to read what they were reading at that time in their life, but it was an almost impossible task because someone like Hannah Arendt was reading Immanuel Kant when she was 14 and that is not me,' she says, laughing. And while Thien found it daunting to tell their stories in her sprawling, fluid literary landscape, she also enjoyed the trio's company. 'I did feel at times — and maybe every fiction writer has to believe this — I felt they were sitting beside me. They were so real to me. They are so real to me. I feel like I spent nine years in a room with the three of them talking to each other and that I was just literally the housekeeper,' she says. Thien launches The Book of Records at McNally Robinson Booksellers' Grant Park location at 7 p.m. tonight, joined in conversation by Jenny Heijun Wills. Ben SigurdsonLiterary editor, drinks writer Ben Sigurdson is the Free Press's literary editor and drinks writer. He graduated with a master of arts degree in English from the University of Manitoba in 2005, the same year he began writing Uncorked, the weekly Free Press drinks column. He joined the Free Press full time in 2013 as a copy editor before being appointed literary editor in 2014. Read more about Ben. In addition to providing opinions and analysis on wine and drinks, Ben oversees a team of freelance book reviewers and produces content for the arts and life section, all of which is reviewed by the Free Press's editing team before being posted online or published in print. It's part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
