Posted by: Richard J. Gwyn - Author of John A

Winning a prize of the calibre of the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction, the premiere prize in its category, is like having an epiphany. You’ve spent weeks, months, scribbling and writing and re-writing, and staring out of the window and stabbing at the Delete button and then, suddenly, you’re told that you’ve actually done it—written a book that has something to say and says it pretty well, and that perhaps even says it better than have all other Canadian non-fiction writers through the past year.

There’s of course the 15 minutes of fame in the form of media interviews and the flashes of the cameras. And there’s the cash, that so far, has served to cover the cost of a splendid, if extravagant, dinner.

Neither will last, though I’ll always remember the congratulations, quick and generous, of the other four finalists.

What will last, for at least a decent length of time, is the knowledge that my peers—the jurors—judged that John A: The Man Who Made Us had actually done what I hoped it would do—to tell Canadians about our most interesting and important Prime Minister, and so to tell Canadians about themselves.

If the result will be to turn on more Canadians to their own history, and most especially so younger ones who are now taught so little about how our past remains part of our present and future, and also encourages more writers to set out to bring that past alive for today’s readers, then I just won’t be a happy guy today but a contented one for quite a while. Or at least I’ll stay that way until my research on Volume Two, which will go up to Macdonald’s death in 1891, is completed and I’ll go back to again staring out of the window and fingering the Delete button.