The Basil Stuart-Stubbs
Prize for Outstanding
Scholarly Book on British Columbia

In the coming years, we hope to increase the value of the prize with your help. By making a gift to support the prize, you will honour Basil’s memory, support local authors, and celebrate the importance of BC’s literary and scholarly landscape.

Previous winners of the prize have all gone on to receive further accolades for their winning books.

Since 2013, the prize has been awarded to:

• 2024 – Wayne McCrory for The Wild Horses of the Chilcotin: Their History and Future
• 2023 – Robert Amos for E.J. Hughes Canadian War Artist.
• 2022 – Dr. Gregory Betts for Finding Nothing: The VanGardes, 1959-1975
• 2021 – Dr. Lara Campbell for A Great Revolutionary Wave: Women and the Vote in British Columbia
• 2020 – Michael Layland for In Nature’s Realm: Early Naturalists Explore Vancouver Island
• 2019 – Daniel Marshall for Claiming the Land: British Columbia and the Making of a New El Dorado
• 2018 – Marianne Ignace and Ronald E. Ignace for Secwépemc People, Land, and Laws: Yerí7 re Stsq’ey’s-kucw
• 2017 – Arthur J. Ray for Aboriginal Rights Claims and the Making and Remaking of History
• 2016 – John Thistle for Resettling the Range: Animals, Ecologies, and Human Communities in British Columbia
• 2015 – Jean Barman for French Canadians, Furs and Indigenous Women in the Making of the Pacific Northwest
• 2014 – David Stouck for Arthur Erickson: An Architect’s Life
• 2013 – Derek Hayes for British Columbia: A New Historical Atlas

About Basil Stuart-Stubbs

Basil Stuart-Stubbs had a profound impact on UBC and the wider literary and scholarly community. He was University Librarian from 1964 to 1981, and Director of the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies from 1981 to 1992. Professor Emeritus and University Librarian Emeritus at UBC, Stuart-Stubbs is remembered as a bibliophile, scholar, fierce intellect and great leader.

He served the federal and provincial governments in an advisory capacity on bodies such as the National Research Council’s Advisory Board on Scientific and Technical Information, the National Library Advisory Board, the Canada Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the British Columbia Arts Board.

Stuart-Stubbs had a leadership role in many national and regional library and publishing activities. During his exceptional career, Basil took particular interest in the production and distribution of Canadian books, and was associated with several initiatives beneficial to authors and their readers, and to Canadian publishing.

He received many awards and honours, including:

• the Order of Canada in 2005
• Fellow, Royal Society of Canada in 1984
• the Gray Campbell Distinguished Service Award by the Association of Book Publishers of BC
• the first Miles Blackwell Medal for Outstanding Academic Librarian by the Canadian Library Association
• the Helen Gordon Stewart Award by the BC Library Association
• Honorary Life Memberships from the BC Library Association and American Library Association
  the Canada Medal in 1967
• the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012

Stuart-Stubbs’ writings encompass Canadian history, historical cartography, historical bibliography, library history, copyright law, library automation, union catalogues, resource sharing and computerized networks. Basil Stuart-Stubbs passed away on May 29, 2012, at the age of 82. Several tributes have been published, including “He made books and writers a priority” in the Globe and Mail, “Basil Stuart-Stubbs: 1930-2012″ in Quill & Quire and “Remembering Basil Stuart-Stubbs” in ABC Bookworld.

Please make a donation to support the annual prize in Basil’s name and continue his legacy of advocacy for Canadiana and local scholarly work.