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Canadian Historical Association celebrates top history writing

 A ground-breaking book on the fur trade has won Canada’s top prize for academic history writing.

The winner of the Governor General's History Award for Scholarly Research (Sir John A. Macdonald Prize) was announced to be historian Jean Barman for her book, French Canadians, Furs, and Indigenous Women in the Making of the Pacific Northwest, published by UBC Press in 2014. The award will be presented by the Governor General this fall.

“This grand narrative of a history long lost powerfully illuminates the influence that French Canadians and their Indigenous partners had in the making of the Pacific Northwest during the eighteenth through the twenty-first centuries. It will influence scholarship on imperialism, state formation, and heritage creation for some time to come,” the jury citation read. Four other academics were shortlisted for the prize: