Governor General's Awards
Canadian academic, artistic, and social awards
The Governor General's Awards are a collection of annual awards presented by the governor general of Canada, recognizing distinction in numerous academic, artistic, and social fields.
The first award was conceived and inaugurated in 1937 by the Lord Tweedsmuir, a prolific writer of fiction and non-fiction; he created the Governor General's Literary Award with two award categories. Successive governors general have followed suit, establishing an award for whichever endeavour they personally found important. Only Adrienne Clarkson created three Governor General's Awards: the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts, the Governor General's Northern Medal, and the Governor General's Medal in Architecture (though this was effectively a continuation of the Massey Medal, first established in 1950).
Governor General's Literary Awards
Inaugurated in 1937 for 1936 publications in two categories, the Governor General's Literary Awards have become one of Canada's most prestigious prizes. Since 1987, there are fourteen awards: nonfiction (English and French), fiction (English and French), poetry (English and French), drama (English and French), young people's literature – text (English and French), young people's literature – illustration (English and French), and translation (English-to-French and French-to-English). The program was created by the Lord Tweedsmuir, author of The Thirty-Nine Steps. Initially there were only awards for fiction and non-fiction books, and until 1959 the program honoured only English-language works (although the awards were occasionally won by English translations of works originally published in French). The Stephen Leacock Award for humour literature, while administered separately from the Governor General's Awards and presented to the winners at a separate ceremony, made its initial announcements of award winners as part of the Governor General's Awards announcements in this era.
In 1957, the awards were put under the administration of the Canada Council for the Arts and a cash prize began to be granted to the winner.
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This entry incorporates text from “Governor General's Awards” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.