Waugh Prize, September 18th, 2025

The Canadian Business History Association (CBHA) is pleased to announce that Dream Car: Malcolm Bricklin’s Fantastic SV1 and the End of Industrial Modernity (University of Toronto Press, 2024), by Professor Dimitry Anastakis, has been awarded the inaugural Waugh Family Foundation Book Prize in Canadian Business History.

Dream Car is the tale of entrepreneur Malcolm Bricklin’s sporty, sexy Safety Vehicle-1, a legendary failure in automotive history yet one that reveals much about postwar North America’s economic, political, and cultural evolution. The Waugh Family Foundation Book Prize in Canadian Business History, which comes with $10,000, was awarded on 18 September 2025 at our Toronto keynote event.

“As daily events regularly demonstrate, having a sense of business history in Canada is more important now than perhaps ever before,” said Dr. Andrew Ross, Chair of the CBHA. “A book like Dream Car reminds us that Canada has a long history of innovation in the automotive sector. It also shows how history can be a guide to the road ahead.”

The Waugh Book Prize jury for this year comprised Professor Don Nerbas, Associate Professor and the St. Andrew’s Society/McEuen Scholarship Foundation Chair in Canadian-Scottish Studies at McGill University, Professor Erik Thomson, Associate Professor of History at the University of Manitoba, and Alex Walker Turner, Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company. Professor Nerbas is a Board member of CBHA.