Library and Archives Canada Scholar Awards

The Library and Archives Canada Scholar Awards, co-presented by the LAC Foundation and Library and Archives Canada, with the generous support of Founding Sponsor Air Canada, recognize remarkable Canadians who have made an outstanding contribution to the creation and promotion of our country’s culture, literary heritage and historical knowledge.

As the custodian of our distant past and of our recent history, Library and Archives Canada is an essential resource for all Canadians who wish to know themselves better, individually and collectively.

As such, it is essential for Library and Archives Canada and the Library and Archives Canada Foundation to recognize the exemplary work of those who support its fundamental mission which is to promote all aspects of Canadian culture, here and around the world.

This recognition also seeks to highlight the fact that the creation and dissemination of our heritage are increasingly democratic undertakings, no longer reserved to environments where knowledge has traditionally been developed.

 

Alfred Pellan painted this mural, Les Alphabets / The Alphabets, on the western wall of the second floor in the former National Library of Canada building at 395 Wellington Street in Ottawa, which is currently Library and Archives Canada’s main building. This work, and the accompanying mural on the eastern wall entitled La Connaissance / Knowledge, was begun in 1957 and completed just over a decade later. The Quebec artist began this work by first creating preliminary studies, on a smaller scale, for both murals. Library and Archives Canada holds both of these studies in its collection; they are described in The Alphabets and Knowledge.

For Les Alphabets / The Alphabets, Pellan contrasts vibrant colours on a largely grey background, using flat paint to ensure that his work would not reflect light. The mosaic at the centre of the piece shows schematic faces topped with pen nibs surrounding an open book. The design evokes a human face. A popular interpretation, and one that the artist supports, is that these are the faces of readers and writers. The swirling scripts are from two dozen languages, including ancient, medieval and modern languages (Illyrian, Hebrew, Etruscan and many more).

2023 Recipients

• Anita Rau Badami

  

  Anita Rau Badami is an award-winning novelist who was born in Rourkela, Odisha, India, in 1961 before moving to Canada in 1991. Her novels, which have been translated into more than a dozen languages worldwide, deal with the complexities of family life and issues associated with immigration to the West. Her use of humour and the memorable characters she has created have helped expand the understanding of the Canadian experience and the cultural heritage of our country.

  Ms. Badami published her first story when she was only 18. After graduating university, where she studied English Literature, followed by a graduate diploma in Social Communications Media, she worked as a freelance writer before moving to Canada and earning her M.A. in English Literature at the University of Calgary. Her graduate thesis became her first novel, Tamarind Mem (1996), which explores the complicated forces of memory and familial expectation.

  Ms. Badami’s second novel, The Hero’s Walk (2001), tells the story of an ordinary Indian man who has to care for his Canadian granddaughter after the sudden death of her parents. It won the Regional Commonwealth Writers’ Best Book Award and Italy’s Premio Berto. It was longlisted for both the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction (now the Women’s Prize for Fiction). It was also shortlisted for the Kiriyama Prize and a finalist for the 2016 Canada Reads competition.

  Both Ms. Badami’s third and fourth novels were also longlisted for the IMPAC Award. Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? (2006), which was a finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award, moves between Canada and India and explores the conflicts among ordinary people caused by major events such as the Partition of India in 1947 and the 1985 Air India bombing. Tell It to the Trees (2012), about the silence surrounding domestic abuse, was a finalist for the OLA Evergreen Award.

  In 2000, Ms. Badami was the youngest recipient ever of the Marian Engel Award, which recognizes a Canadian woman author in mid-career. She is currently working on her fifth novel, tentatively titled It Is As It Is, as well as co-authoring the non-fiction book Mixed Borders: An exchange between countries and continents.

  Ms. Badami was the Chair of the 2017 Giller Prize and has served as a juror for the Kiriyama Prize for Fiction, the Writer’s Trust Prize and the inaugural 2023 Carol Shields Prize.

• Eric Chan

  

  Eric Chan (a.k.a. eepmon) is a world-renowned digital artist whose work sits at the intersection of fine arts, design and technology. His fusion of art and computer code and the traditional and the modern, as well as the artistic and the commercial, demonstrates his unique ability to create in the ever-changing landscape of modern, contemporary society.

  As eepmon, he has collaborated on designs with companies and institutions including Canada Goose, Marvel Entertainment, Microsoft, Snoopy, Quantropi and the Canada Science and Technology Museum. His artwork Chaos Bloom has been acquired by the Canada Council Art Bank, and he has participated in art performances such as Gutai: Splendid Playground at the Guggenheim Museum. His open data paintings, INTERSECTIONS, were shown at Gallery O2 Tokyo, HPGRP Gallery New York, Carleton University and the Ottawa Art Gallery. He is a passionate speaker on themes surrounding STEAM education and art x entrepreneurship.

  In 2018, eepmon travelled to China as a delegate on Canada’s first creative industries trade mission, led by Canadian Heritage. Between 2017 and 2021, he served first as a Director and then as a Vice President on the Canadian Museums Association’s Board of Directors.

  Born and raised in Ottawa, Mr. Chan came up with the concept of his alter ego eepmon while in university, formally establishing his company EEPMON Inc. in 2017. The name eepmon is a wordplay on “ape man,” chosen because under the Chinese zodiac he was born in the year of the monkey. The monkey also serves as a reminder to himself that life should always include curiosity and playfulness—observed through many of his designs that feature creatures floating through his digital worlds.

   

• Michel Jean

  

   

  Michel Jean is a writer, news anchor, host and investigative reporter from the community of Mashteuiatsh, Quebec. Mr. Jean uses his works to make his readers aware of Indigenous issues. Through his books, he deals sensitively with complex and sometimes painful issues in a way that has touched thousands of readers. He is also recognized for the important role he has played in the journalistic field.

  Born in 1960, Mr. Jean studied history at the Université de Québec à Montréal before beginning his career as a journalist. His experiences as a reporter inspired his first book, Envoyé special (2008), and influenced some of his novels, such as Un monde mort comme la lune (2009) and Tsunamis (2017).

  Many of Mr. Jean’s works deal with his Innu heritage and the experiences of Indigenous peoples in Canada. His 2019 novel Kukum, which tells the story of his community through the eyes of his grandmother, won the Prix littéraire France-Québec in 2020 and was a finalist for the Prix littéraire Jacques Lacarrière that same year.

  Some of his other works deal with residential schools (Le vent en parle encore, 2013), urban Indigenous homelessness (Tiohtiá:ke, 2021), and his own Innu heritage (Elle et nous, 2012). Mr. Jean also edited several short story collections, including Amun (2016), the first anthology of Indigenous literature from Quebec, and Wapke (2021), Quebec’s first collection of science fiction short stories by Indigenous writers.

  In 2022, Mr. Jean was made a member of the Ordre des arts et des lettres du Québec, an honorary distinction awarded to individuals who have played a prominent role in Quebec’s artistic development.

• Kevin Loring

  

  Kevin Loring is a playwright, actor and director from the Nlaka’pamux First Nation in Lytton, British Columbia. In his work, he uses Indigenous theatre methodologies and language to explore issues affecting Indigenous peoples and to bring Indigenous stories and songs to audiences in Indigenous communities and to stages across the country.

  Mr. Loring is a graduate of Studio 58, Langara College’s prestigious professional theatre training program, and of Full Circle: First Nations Performance’s ensemble training program. Loring was honoured with an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Ottawa in 2022. As an actor, he has performed in roles on both the big and small screens and on stages across the country. He is also a voice actor with numerous credits for animated characters, including the voice of Raven in Raven Tales: the Movie and two characters on Corner Gas: The Animated Series.

  Mr. Loring won the Governor General’s Award for English Language Drama in 2009 for his first play, Where the Blood Mixes, which explores the devastating impacts of residential schools. The play also won both the Jessie Richardson Award and the Sydney J. Risk Prize for outstanding original script. Mr. Loring’s play Thanks for Giving was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award in 2019. His latest play, Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer, won the 2022 Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Original Script.

  In 2012, Mr. Loring created the Songs of the Land project, which explores audio recordings from the late 1800s and early 1900s of songs and stories of the Nlaka’pamux First Nation. As part of this project, Mr. Loring has written several plays, including Battle of the Birds (2015), about domestic violence and abuse of power; The Boy Who Was Abandoned (2016), about youth and elder neglect; and The Council of Spider, Ant & Fly (2018), about the introduction of death into the universe.

  Mr. Loring received the Governor General’s Performing Arts Mentorship Award in 2010. He is the founding Artistic Director of Savage Production Society, and in 2017 he became the first Artistic Director of Indigenous Theatre at the National Arts Centre of Canada. Under Loring’s leadership, Savage Society won a 2022 Jessie Richardson award for Outstanding Empowering and Uplifting of Indigenous Artists and Narratives.

• Dorothy Williams

  

  Dorothy Williams is a historian, author and researcher who specializes in the history of Black Canadians. Through her public presentations, her work with the National Film Board of Canada and her efforts to make resources related to the historical presence of Black Canadians more widely available, she has expanded the cultural and historical heritage of our country.

  Dr. Williams grew up in the historic Black community of Little Burgundy in Montreal. She published her first book, Blacks in Montreal, 1628-1986: An Urban Demography, at the behest of the Quebec Human Rights Commission in 1989 for their study on racism in Montreal’s rental housing. Her second book, The Road to Now: A History of Blacks in Montreal, published in 1997, remains the only chronological study of Blacks on the island of Montreal.

  With the objective of making Black history accessible to all, in 1995 Dr. Williams founded the non-profit organization Ethnocultural Diffusions to collect the oral history of Blacks in Montreal. Eleven years later, she registered Blacbiblio.com Inc. to record Canada’s Black history sources. Blacbiblio launched the ABC’s of Canadian Black History kit in 2016 to promote the teaching of Black history in Canadian schools. Dr.Williams also teaches the extremely popular Concordia University course Black Montreal, which aims to dispel myths and misconceptions around Montreal’s Black history.

  Dr. Williams has been recognized with many awards, including the Mathieu da Costa Award, and she was the first Canadian to win the ALA’s prestigious E. J. Josey Scholarship. In 2002, she was made a Quebec Laureate and received the Anne Greenup Award for the fight against racism and the promotion of civic participation. In 2022, she was given the John G. Dennison Award for her “research, scholarly publications, teaching and public speaking engagements showcasing Canada’s Black History.”

  For revealing Quebec’s Black history to the world, in 2022 Dr. Williams was honoured as the subject of the first exhibition in the Afromuseum, Quebec’s first Black museum. She was also named as one of CBC Quebec’s 2022 Black Changemakers.

2022 Recipients

• Jean-Marc Carisse

  

  Jean-Marc Carisse is an accomplished Canadian photojournalist, visual artist and author. He has photographed political, cultural and social scenes in Ottawa and around the globe for over 50 years. The extraordinary images he has created through the camera lens over the course of his career have been and will continue to be an inspiration to many generations of Canadian visual artists. His photographic legacy bears witness to our collective history and enriches our cultural heritage.

  Mr. Carisse is best known for the spontaneous photographs he took as one of the official photographers for three of Canada’s prime ministers. In 2000, he published a book on this experience, entitled Privileged Access with Trudeau, Turner & Chrétien. Mr. Carisse has been an accredited photographer for many world events, such as G7 and G8 summits, Summit of the Peacemakers, Francophone summits, Summit of the Americas, and intergovernmental organizations, including the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).

  Mr. Carisse’s photo exhibit My Trudeau Years was on display at Library and Archives Canada (LAC) from October 2002 to April 2003. It was extended by three months due to its popularity and then moved on to Winnipeg. The exhibit reflected his professional relationship with Pierre Trudeau and their mutual respect, and included some previously unpublished images. This last sitting together, weeks prior to Trudeau’s passing, is a testament to their relationship.

  Mr. Carisse donated part of his collections on Pierre Trudeau, John Turner and Jean Chrétien (69,000 negatives, Jean-Marc Carisse fonds) and on Jean Chrétien (400,000 negatives, Jean Chrétien fonds) to LAC.

  Mr. Carisse obtained a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Ottawa in 1974. In 2002, he was awarded a Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal for his outstanding contribution to Canada.

• Jeremy Dutcher

  

  Jeremy Dutcher is a Canadian performer, composer, activist and musicologist, and a member of Tobique First Nation in New Brunswick. In his career, he has consistently merged the old and the new, the historical and the contemporary, in bold compositions and melodies. By reimagining the traditional songs of his Wolastoq First Nation ancestors, Mr. Dutcher has revived past stories and is keeping the Wolastoqey language alive.

  Mr. Dutcher studied music and anthropology at Dalhousie University in Halifax. After graduating, he had the opportunity to work in the archives at the Canadian Museum of History, transcribing Wolastoq songs from century-old wax cylinders. Inspired by his ancestor’s recordings from 1907–14, Mr. Dutcher recorded his debut album Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, which he releasedin April 2018 at the age of 27. In this album, he creatively uses archival material to create a vibrant contemporary work that is sung entirely in Wolastoqey.

  In 2018, the Polaris Grand Jury deemed Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa to be the best Canadian album of the year and awarded Mr. Dutcher the Polaris Music Prize. The following year, at the 2019 Juno Awards, Mr. Dutcher won the Juno Award for Indigenous Music Album of the Year.

   

• Stan Douglas

  

   

  Stan Douglas is a Canadian visual artist and photographer born in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he continues to live and work. Throughout his life, Mr. Douglas has created and re-enacted pivotal moments in Canadian history, connecting us to geography, culture, literature, music, media, social revolution and more—with incredible detail and exquisite results.

  Mr. Douglas studied at Emily Carr College of Art in Vancouver in the early 1980s. He had his first American solo exhibition in 1993, the second-ever artist to be featured at the David Zwirner Gallery. Mr. Douglas’s fascination with history inspired him to reconstruct and reinterpret cultural artifacts—films, books and photographs—to find new truths or perspectives in several artistic disciplines.

  Mr. Douglas’s work is held in major museum collections in Canada and around the world, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Tate Modern in London. His work has also been featured in world exhibitions such as documenta IX, X and XI (1992, 1997 and 2002) and the Venice Biennale (1990, 2001, 2005 and 2019).

  Mr. Douglas has received numerous awards, including the Audain Prize for the Visual Arts (2019), the Hasselblad Award (2016), the Scotiabank Photography Award (2013), and the Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography (2012). Mr. Douglas is a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France. He has been chosen to represent Canada, for the first time, in the Canada Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale, which will take place from April to November 2022.

• Naomi Fontaine

  

  Naomi Fontaine is a Canadian novelist, a teacher and a member of the Innu Nation from Uashat, Quebec. Thanks to Ms. Fontaine’s work, the past and present, joys and pains of the Innu people have touched thousands of readers and cinephiles well beyond the borders of Quebec and Canada. She has contributed significantly Canada’s culture and collective memory, and plays an important role in teaching the adults of tomorrow. She is also recognized for her efforts in the areas of dialogue between peoples and reconciliation.

  Ms. Fontaine studied at Université Laval and is noted as one of the most prominent First Nations writers in contemporary francophone Canadian literature. She wrote her debut novel Kuessipan (2011) in French when she was twenty-three years old. The poetry novel revolutionized Indigenous literature as she was the first Innu writer to tell a contemporary story.

  Ms. Fontaine’s second novel, Manikanetish (2017), tells the story of a young teacher who returns to her remote Innu community and transforms the lives of her students. Her latest book, Shuni (2019), is also about her community. It invites readers to open their minds as the writer goes beyond statistics to tell the stories of the individuals of Uashat.

  Ms. Fontaine has been nominated many awards, including the Prix des 5 continents de la Francophonie (2011) and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction in French (2018). Her debut novel was successfully adapted to the screen in 2019, and the film was nominated for the Prix Iris for Best Screenplay at the 22A Quebec Cinema Awards in 2020.

• Deepa Mehta

  

  Deepa Mehta is an Oscar-nominated filmmaker who was born in Amritsar, India, in 1950 and moved to Canada in 1973. She is a masterful storyteller, combining history, traditions and the sometimes harsh realities of the human experience in both her native India and Canada, her adopted homeland. Her careful use of literature and archives of all kinds in support of her work has led to a remarkable contribution to Canada’s cultural and historical heritage.

  Ms. Mehta graduated from the Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi, with a degree in Philosophy. In 1996, she cofounded Hamilton-Mehta Productions with her husband, producer David Hamilton, in Toronto. Ms. Mehta believes that "The power of cinema is that it can start a dialogue." Her provocative and moving films, which largely focus on issues of human rights and social injustice, have earned her an international reputation.

  Ms. Mehta’s award-winning films include the Elemental Trilogy: Fire (1996), Earth (1998)and Water (2005)—Water was an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film in 2007—Bollywood/Hollywood (2002), Heaven on Earth (2008), Midnight’s Children (2012), Anatomy of Violence (2016) and Funny Boy (2020). Ms. Mehta has also directed episodes of “Leila” (Netflix Original), “Little America” (Apple TV) and “Yellowjackets” (Showtime). She is currently working on the feature film Burnt Sugar (Girl in White Cotton), based on Avni Doshi’s Booker-shortlisted novel.

  Ms. Mehta received the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2012, as well as the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medal. In 2013, she was appointed to both the Order of Ontario and the Order of Canada.

2020 Recipients

• Margaret Atwood

  

  Margaret Atwood is the author of more than 50 books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her novels include Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin and the MaddAddam trilogy. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, went back into the bestseller charts with the election of Donald Trump, when the Handmaids became a symbol of resistance against the disempowerment of women, and with the 2017 release of the award-winning TV series. The Testaments, her long-anticipated sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, won the 2019 Booker Prize.

  Ms. Atwood has won numerous awards including the Booker Prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade and the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature. She has also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, librettist, playwright and puppeteer. She lives in Toronto, Canada.

• Roch Carrier

  

  Roch Carrier was born on May 13, 1937, in Sainte-Justine, Quebec. He has a PhD in literature from the Sorbonne in France, and he also studied at the Université Saint-Louis in New Brunswick and the Université de Montréal.

  From 1964 to 1994, Mr. Carrier was an instructor, professor and administrator at the Royal Military College Saint-Jean. He served as Director of the Canada Council for the Arts between 1994 and 1997. He was the last National Librarian of Canada from 1999 to 2004, when the National Library merged with the National Archives and was renamed Library and Archives Canada.

  In addition to his outstanding professional and academic achievements, Mr. Carrier is recognized for his talents as a novelist, playwright, and author of children’s stories and books. In 1970, his stage adaptation of his novel La Guerre, Yes Sir opened at the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde in Montréal; the play toured France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Czechoslovakia in 1971. It was also performed at the Stratford Festival. His script for Le Martien de Noël became the first feature film for children made in Canada. His best-known work is “The Hockey Sweater.” This short story so effectively captured the national identity that an excerpt ended up on the back of the Canadian five-dollar bill. An Officer of the Order of Canada since 1991, and recipient of the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour in 1992, Mr. Carrier has over 40 novels, poems, stories and other publications to his credit, making him one of Canada’s most illustrious literary figures.

   

• Charlotte Gray

  

  Charlotte Gray is one of Canada’s best-known biographers and writers of popular history. Author of 11 acclaimed books of literary non-fiction, her most recent best-seller is Murdered Midas. Her ability to provide original and intriguing entry points into Canadian history has earned her a large and faithful readership, and regular requests to appear on television and radio. She was the celebrity advocate for Sir John A. Macdonald on CBC’s “Who is the Greatest Canadian?”

  Her other award-winning books include The Promise of Canada: People and Ideas That Have Shaped Our Country; The Massey Murder; Reluctant Genius: Alexander Graham Bell and the Passion for Invention; and Gold Diggers, Striking It Rich in the Klondike. Gold Diggers was the basis of both a U.S. Discovery Channel docudrama and a PBS documentary.

  Sisters in the Wilderness, published in 1999, was named as one of the 25 most influential Canadian books of the past 25 years by the Literary Review of Canada.

  Ms. Gray has chaired the boards of both Canada’s National History Society and the Art Canada Institute, has been a board member of PEN Canada and the Ottawa International Writers Festival, and has been a juror for the International Cundill History prize, Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the RBC Taylor Prize.

  Born in the United Kingdom, Ms. Gray came to Canada in 1978. An adjunct research professor at Carleton University, in Ottawa, she holds five honorary degrees and is a member of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

• Serge Joyal

  

  The Honourable Serge Joyal, jurist, has served as a member of Parliament, cabinet minister and senator.

  A champion of human rights and freedoms, especially of the French language in Canada, he has been at the forefront of fundamental constitutional debates in Canadian society over the past 40 years.

  A collector of art and historical artifacts, Mr. Joyal is a patron of several large Canadian museums. He is a great benefactor of the Canadian War Museum, the Canadian Museum of History, and Library and Archives Canada, to name a few, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and an honorary member of the Board of Trustees of the Canadian Centre for Architecture. As a forward-thinking defender of public heritage, he chairs the Fondation Lafontaine-Cormier, which aims to promote the legal heritage of Quebec.

  Mr. Joyal is the author and co-editor of many articles and works concerning parliamentary and constitutional law, as well as numerous essays and articles about social and political history, including France-Canada-Québec : 400 ans de relations d’exception; Le Mythe de Napoléon au Canada français; Le Canada et la France dans la Grande Guerre 1914-1918; French Embassy in Canada; and Reflecting on Our Past and Embracing Our Future: A Senate Initiative for Canada.

  Mr. Joyal has received several prestigious awards, honours and distinctions in Canada and France; most recently, he was promoted to the rank of Commander in the French Légion d’honneur.

• Terry O’Reilly

  

  Terry O’Reilly began his career writing commercials for FM108 Radio in Burlington, Ontario. He went on to become an award-winning copywriter for leading Toronto advertising agencies Campbell-Ewald, Doyle Dane Bernbach and Chiat/Day. He created campaigns for many top brands, including Labatt, Pepsi USA, Goodyear Tires, Tim Hortons, Nissan and the Hudson’s Bay Company.

  In 1990, he co-founded Pirate Radio & Television. A creative audio production company producing scripts, sound and music for radio and television commercials, Pirate grew to include eight recording studios in Toronto and New York City.

  He served on the inaugural Radio jury at the Cannes International Advertising Festival in France in 2005, and was named chair of many marketing and advertising award show juries.

  When he is not creating advertising, he is talking about it as the host of the award-winning CBC Radio One/Sirius Satellite/WBEZ Chicago radio show, Under The Influence, a follow-up to the hit series, The Age of Persuasion.

  Mr. O’Reilly has been given lifetime achievement awards by the American Marketing Association, the Advertising & Design Club of Canada, and the Television Advertising Bureau. He has received honorary degrees from McMaster University, Humber College Institute of Technology & Advanced Learning, and St. Mary’s University. He was also the inaugural inductee in the RTA School of Media Hall of Fame at his alma mater, Ryerson University, and received the Alumni Achievement Award in 2015.

  He has co-written the bestselling book The Age of Persuasion: How Marketing Ate Our Culture. His latest bestseller, This I Know: Marketing Lessons from Under the Influence, was named one of the best audiobooks of the year by Audible.com.

2019 Recipients

• Marie-Louise Arsenault

  

   

  A journalist, show host, program developer and producer, Marie-Louise Arsenault has worked in media for 20 years. During her career, she has hosted cultural shows on television ("Jamais sans mon livre," "Écran Libre") and radio ("Le Mélange des Genres"), collaborated on the first four seasons of the daily television series "Flash," and produced documentaries for television (Patrick Huard, portrait d'une première fois) and radio (L'Aventure internationale du cinéma québécois, Les Leçons de Denise Filiatrault). She also wrote a column on the media for five years in the magazine ici and the newspaper 24 Heures, and has contributed to numerous print media outlets as a journalist (Elle Québec, Clin D'œil, Chatelaine). Since August 2011, she has hosted the daily literary broadcast "Plus on est de fous, plus on lit," which she developed, on Radio-Canada Première. She is also the host of "Dans les médias," which airs weekly on Télé-Québec.

• Ronald I. Cohen

  

   

  Ronald Cohen has assembled bibliographically significant collections of the works of Lucy Maud Montgomery and Sir Winston Churchill. In 1998, he established the Ronald I. Cohen Lucy Maud Montgomery Collection at the National Library of Canada and he has provided LAC with four subsequent accessions of her works and related materials. His interest in Churchill led to the publication in 2006 of his definitive Bibliography of the Writings of Sir Winston Churchill; many articles in Finest Hour, the journal of the International Churchill Society; and more recently, in 2016, The Heroic Memory: The Memorial Addresses to the Rt. Hon. Sir Winston Spencer Churchill Society, Edmonton, Alberta, 1990–2014. Cohen received the Farrow Award from the Churchill Centre in Chicago in 2012 for his "magisterial three-volume work Bibliography of the Writings of Sir Winston Churchill." In June 2014, he was recognized on Queen Elizabeth's Birthday Honours list as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) "for services to British history," one of only two Canadians, and the only Canadian resident, to be so honoured on that occasion. Cohen is regularly consulted on bibliographical issues relating to Churchill's writings by persons around the world. He also co-founded and serves as President of the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Ottawa. He has served on the Friends of Library and Archives Canada's Board from its founding in 1991 until now. He was President from 2000–2008 and has been Past President since then.

• Lawrence Hill

  

   

  Lawrence Hill is a professor of creative writing at the University of Guelph. He is the author of ten books, including The Illegal, The Book of Negroes, Any Known Blood, and Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada. He is the winner of various awards including The Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and two-time winner of CBC Radio's Canada Reads. Hill delivered the Canada-wide 2013 Massey Lectures, based on his non-fiction book Blood: The Stuff of Life. He co-wrote the adaptation for the six-part television miniseries The Book of Negroes, which attracted millions of viewers and won eleven Canadian Screen Awards. The recipient of eight honorary doctorates from Canadian universities, as well as the 2017 Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize, Hill served as chair of the jury of the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize. He is a volunteer with Book Clubs for Inmates and the Black Loyalist Heritage Society, and is an honorary patron of Crossroads International, for which he has volunteered for more than 35 years and with which he has travelled to Niger, Cameroon, Mali and Swaziland. He is working on a new novel about the African-American soldiers who helped build the Alaska Highway in northern BC and Yukon in 1942-43. He is a Member of the Order of Canada, and lives in Hamilton, Ontario and in Woody Point, Newfoundland.

• Frances Itani

  

   

  Frances Itani, C.M., has written 17 books (best-selling novels, stories, poetry and children's works), and essays and reviews for national and international publications. She is well known as a researcher, teacher and public speaker, and has been Writer-in-Residence at the Banff Centre and at several Canadian universities. She is three-time winner of the CBC Literary Award and twice won the Ottawa Book Award. Deafening earned a Commonwealth Prize, was translated in 17 countries, chosen for CBC's 'Canada Reads' and 'Combat des Livres,' and 'Book of the Year' by Grant MacEwan University. Her novels have been shortlisted for the Giller Prize, International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and William Saroyan International Award. The Washington Post selected Requiem as a top fiction title of 2012. Born in Belleville, Ontario, Ms. Itani grew up in Quebec, lived in seven Canadian provinces, has travelled widely, holds a B.A. (U of Alberta) and M.A. (U of New Brunswick), studied Nursing at the Montreal General Hospital, with graduate work at McGill and Duke universities. She has been involved in humanitarian work all her life and established The Itani Award for Flute, presented annually to a young musician at the Ottawa Youth Orchestra Academy. She lives in Ottawa and is presently at work on two novels.

• Shelagh Rogers

  

   

  A veteran broadcast-journalist, Shelagh Rogers is the host and a producer of The Next Chapter, an award-winning CBC Radio program devoted to writing in Canada. In 2011, she was named an Officer of the Order of Canada for promoting Canadian culture, and for advocating for mental health, adult literacy, and truth and reconciliation. Also in 2011, she was inducted as an Honorary Witness to the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Through sharing what she witnessed, she has committed to helping create a national memory of the residential school era so that Canada will never forget, and never be able to deny what happened.

  Shelagh is the co-editor of three books in the "Speaking My Truth" series on truth, justice and reconciliation published by the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. She holds honorary doctorates from six Canadian universities. In 2014, she was the Jack Matthews Fellow at Trent University. Also that year, she received the Queen's University Alumni Humanitarian Award. In October 2016, she received the inaugural Margaret Trudeau Award for Mental Health Advocacy. Shelagh is Chancellor of the University of Victoria and the founding Ambassador for the Canadian Canoe Museum.