John Vaillant wins Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for political writing for Fire Weather

John Vaillant has won the $25,000 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing for his book Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast.

The award for the book on the 2016 Fort McMurray, Alta., forest fire was announced Tuesday night at the Politics and the Pen fundraising event in Ottawa.

“Like a blazing inferno that commands our attention and awe, we cannot look away from Fire Weather,” said a citation by the jury that selected the Knopf Canada book as the best among five finalist titles.

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“This is a deeply compelling, skillfully crafted story packed with information but completely free of ponderous lecturing. It is terrifying in its honest, textured description of what we have wrought in the name of progress, what we stand to lose, and where we might find the possibility of hope.”

In remarks to a gala where the award was presented, Vaillant told an audience that included other writers, journalists and federal cabinet ministers that he was honoured to be awarded the prize for his book.

Of the work of writing his book, an effort that took seven years. “It turned my hair grey and wrecked my eyes,” he said, quipping that the process of seeing it through was like having an affair.

“You’re having an affair right under your wife’s nose with this other thing, you know, and in this case, it was fire,” he told an audience that included his wife, Nora, whom he thanked.

“Fire, you know, is hot and time consuming.”

He said he was changed and profoundly moved by what he learned and experienced researching the book in Fort McMurray where he noted that people welcomed him and were open about telling their stories.

“What makes the book powerful is the voices in it.”

Vaillant lives in Vancouver. His previous non-fiction books include The Golden Spruce and The Tiger. He is also the author of a novel, The Jaguar’s Children.

Fire Weather has already received a number of other honours including being picked as one of The New York Times top 10 books of 2023. This week, Vaillant was a finalist in the general non-fiction category of the Pulitzer Prize.

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The jury for the Shaughnessy Cohen award consisted of past prize winner Joanna Chiu, honoured in 2022 for her book China Unbound: A New World Disorder, as well as past prize finalist Dale Eisler, nominated in 2023 for his book Saskatchewan’s Political and Economic Transformation. Former Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne was also on the panel.

The prize, named for the late Windsor, Ont., MP and sponsored by Canadian National Railway Co., honours a book of literary non-fiction that captures a political subject of relevance to Canadian readers and has the potential to shape or influence thinking on Canadian political life.

The other finalists, who receive $2,500, were:

• Not Here: Why American Democracy is Eroding and How Canada Can Protect Itself. By Rob Goodman, published by Simon & Schuster Canada.
• Indictment: The Criminal Justice System on Trial. By Benjamin Perrin, published by Aevo UTP.
• Canada: Beyond Grudges, Grievances and Disunity. By Donald Savoie, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press.
• The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart. By Astra Taylor, published by House of Anansi Press.