Stephen R. Bown's Blog: Stephen Bown's random author musings

I'm happy and honored to have have been selected for the 2024 Governor Generals' History Award for Popular Media - sometimes known as the Pierre Berton Award. It is awarded for a body of work. "The Governor General’s History Awards are Canada’s top honours in the field of history and heritage. They celebrate the very best in Canadian achievements to ensure our national past has a vibrant presence in our society today."

https://www.canadashistory.ca/awards/...

Dominion made the Globe and Mail Top 100 Books of 2023 list. Good news!

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/...

I'm very pleased to receive such unexpected positive attention in the UK:

"This model popular history offers Canadians a coherent but unillusioned narrative about how their state came to be, which emphasises the ruthlessness as well as the ambition of its architects."

My new book Dominion: The Railway and the Rise of Canada is finally out. I've been busy with radio, podcast and tv interviews, and here is a little comment that I just wrote for The Page 99 Test blog - the idea is whether page 99 is a good metric for the rest of the book. Of course it is probably silly, but in this case page 99 is a pretty good test. Here is what I had to say:

https://page99test.blogspot.com/2023/...

Holy cow, I did not expect to win this award! I am happy to share the win with Mark Carney, a far more familiar household name. ;-)

The National Business Book Award is one of the last remaining non-fiction prizes that recognizes excellence in fact-based writing about big-picture issues.

I'm very honored to have been chosen for this year's Dafoe Book Prize, for non-fiction excellence in a book about Canada.

https://dafoefoundation.ca/2021/05/18...

A great review in the Wall Street Journal!

...Bown "tells the story of the Hudson's Bay Company with verve and an astringent, contemporary slant."

"The Company is compelling, both as a lively narrative about a corporation that helped shape North American development and as a thoughtful exploration of the complex indigenous cultures that once dominated the continent."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-comp...

After years of work, I'm pleased to announce the publication of my latest book, The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson's Bay Empire.

The story of the Hudson's Bay Company, dramatic and adventurous and complex, is the story of modern Canada's creation. And yet it hasn't been told in a book for over thirty years, and never in such depth and vivid detail as in Stephen R. Bown's exciting new telling.

The Company started out small in 1670, trading practical manufactured goods for furs with the Indigenous inhabitants of inland subarctic Canada. Controlled by a handful of English aristocrats, it expanded into a powerful political force that ruled the lives of many thousands of people--from the lowlands south and west of Hudson Bay, to the tundra, the great plains, the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific northwest. It transformed the culture and economy of many Indigenous groups and ended up as the most important political and economic force in northern and western North America.

When the Company was faced with competition from French traders in the 1780s, the result was a bloody corporate battle, the coming of Governor George Simpson—one of the greatest villains in Canadian history—and the Company assuming political control and ruthless dominance. By the time its monopoly was rescinded after two hundred years, the Hudson's Bay Company had reworked the entire northern North American world.

Stephen R. Bown has a scholar's profound knowledge and understanding of the Company's history, but wears his learning lightly in a narrative as compelling, and rich in well-drawn characters, as a page-turning novel.

Huffington Post blog and video interview:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/stephen-...

I just found out that I made the Taylor Prize shortlist. The award recognizes excellence in literary non-fiction. An honor to be included for sure!

http://www.thecharlestaylorprize.ca/l...