CBHA Awards

2024 Awards

Upcoming 2024 Awards

The CBHA/ACHA is now accepting submissions for the following awards and prizes, with a deadline of February 28th, 2024. All submissions or inquiries can be directed to dimitry.anastakis@utoronto.ca.

Chris Kobrak Research Fellowship in Canadian Business History: Open to doctoral and postdoctoral students conducting research on business history, open to Canadian citizens studying in Canada or abroad.
Desautels Research Fellowship in Private Enterprise, History and Law: For innovative research that has potential to expand the boundaries of the discipline of history, and to be interdisciplinary. Scholars, including graduate students and recent PhDs (within five years of completion) may submit self-nominations. Eligible research projects should have a Canadian focus, one that examines aspects of private enterprise, business law, and history, widely defined.
Best Article in Canadian Business History: Eligible articles must be from 2023.
Wilson Undergraduate Essay Prize in Business History: Eligible articles must be from the 2022/23 academic year. Inquire for more information.
Waugh Family Foundation Prize in Canadian Business History: Career Achievement Prize: Inquire for more information.

2023 Awards

Our 2023 Award Winners

View the 2023 award winners and their contributions to the field of business history in Canada.

Best Article in Canadian Business History: Providing an insightful blend of business and cultural history, Bellamy’s exploration of how, in the 1980s, brewer Labatt’s utilized an anti–drinking and driving campaign to establish itself as a “responsible corporation”, though it remained largely interested in the bottom line. The piece engagingly reflects upon the interactions between corporations and social issues in an increasingly neoliberal world, one which shifted responsibility for drunk driving away from regime-based institutions and onto the individual “allowing the neoliberal state to govern from a distance.”
Best Book in Canadian Business History: CBHA/ACHA member Daniel Robinson provides a thought-provoking history of how Canadians became cigarette smokers and why the practice continued despite a proven link to cancer and illness. Thanks to the generous donation of an anonymous donor, the award includes a prize of $10,000.
Honourary Member Recognition: The CBHA/ACHA hosted a cocktail reception to honour Lynton 'Red' Wilson for his generous gift of $2 million to endow the CBHA/ACHA through the Wilson Foundation Endowment for the Study of Canadian Business History. Together with an additional $1 million in matched funding raised by the CBHA/ACHA, the total $3 million endowment will ensure the programming and activities of the organization into the future. Among the guests in attendance were many matching donors. Red Wilson was named an Honourary Member of the CBHA/ACHA during the evening's festivities.

2022 Awards

Our 2022 Award Winners

View the 2022 award winners and their contributions to the field of business history in Canada.

Chris Kobrak Research Fellowship (2022-2023): Nicholas is a PhD candidate in History at the University of Toronto whose area of interests lie in unionism in the Canadian meatpacking industry; labour and economic history; social movement. His MA thesis explored the tensions between the Canadian Farmworkers Union (CFU) and the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) during the early 1980s as a result of the CLC's decision to adopt a community union model for organizing. His PhD research returns to his roots at the cutting block to explore unionism in the meat packing industry after World War II in Winnipeg, Manitoba. During his tenure as Research Fellow, Nicholas Fast will continue his comparative, transnational study of the process of deindustrialization and technological change in meatpacking business practices.
Desautels Research Fellowship: This award is given in support of his research project A Social History of Montreal Rolling Mills, 1868 to 1903. The Fellowship is in the amount of $1,000 and can be used to support any aspect of Jean-Philip's project. Jean-Philip Mathieu is a PhD candidate at McGill University. His dissertation uses a case study of Montreal Rolling Mills, a major secondary iron and steel producer in the second half of the nineteenth century, to examine the relationship between the joint-stock corporation, the rise of Montreal's bourgeoisie, and the formation of the Canadian state. He is also passionate about the public history of Montreal, giving historical tours in non-pandemic years, and acting as a consultant for the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada.
Best Article in Canadian Business History: The Jury was very impressed with the article, and their deliberations included commentary such as, “This is a completely original article based mostly on archival sources, looking at the networks that enabled Canadians to travel in Europe. Its main historical significance is revealing the transnational linkages shaping Canadian tourism in Europe at this time, as well as the business enterprise that enabled such travel.” This is an excellent contribution to Canadian business history, Quebec history, and social and cultural history as well, and the CBHA/ACHA is thrilled that Professor Dahan's article was submitted to the Association for its Best Article Prize

2019 Awards

Our 2019 Award Winners

View the 2019 award winners and their contributions to the field of business history in Canada.

Chris Kobrak Research Fellowship (2019-2021): Dr Hollow is a Lecturer in Strategy at the Management School at the University of York. His research is based around utilizing historically-informed insights to contribute to contemporary debates in strategy and management. The work that has emerged from this research has led to the publication of a number of independently peer-reviewed articles, chapters and books. Dr Hollow is the second recipient of the award, which honours CBHA/ACHA founding co-chair Chris Kobrak, a renowned scholar of financial history. Research Fellows will receive up to $5,000 per year over two years, for a total of up to $10,000, to support the completion of their project. Academic support and oversight will be provided by an Academic Advisory Board drawn from the CBHA/ACHA’s membership.
Best Book in Canadian Business History: The citation for the winning book reads: “As winner of the $10,000 2019 Canadian Business History Association’s Best Book Prize, Michael Stamm’s wonderfully written and deeply researched Dead Tree Media: Manufacturing the Newspaper in 20th Century North America (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018)reminds readers of just how culturally, socially, economically and politically important the tactile, tangible newspaper has been in North American history. Brilliantly weaving together business practices, environmentalism, mass production, small-town existence and the relentlessness of change, Stamm’s study of a seemingly simple commodity becomes the muse for a host of important historical questions related to the rise and demise of the newsprint industry, the integration of the North American economic and cultural space, the causes and impact of deindustrialization, and the paradoxical death of newspapers in the midst of the Information Age. Evocative of Harold Innis’s staples approach in its scale and scope, Stamm fascinatingly knits the Canadian news and newsprint story into its broader North American context, from Chicago in the age of wood to the 1911 Reciprocity Election to Baie Comeau and the Mulroney Myth to the decline of the broadsheet today. Dead Tree Media is timely, provocative business history at its best.” Michael Stamm is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Michigan State University. He is a political and cultural historian, and his research is organized around inquiries into media and journalism history.