The Tyee is happy to announce that contributing editor Christopher Pollon’s book The Peace in Peril: The Real Cost of the Site C Dam has been longlisted for this year’s George Ryga Award for Social Awareness.
The award is presented to a B.C. writer “who has achieved an outstanding degree of social awareness in a new book published in the preceding calendar year.”
“This was my first real stab at writing a book, so to see it on a list beside authors I admire, like Wade Davis, feels pretty amazing,” Pollon said.
The Peace in Peril, published by Harbour, documents the Peace River paddling journey of Pollon and photographer Ben Nelms along the section of the river that will be destroyed to create the Site C dam.
Along the way, they capture the history and stories of the people who live along the river — part of a wider region that has been home to people for over 11,000 years. You can read an excerpt here.
Pollon has been a Tyee contributing editor for over seven years, and is currently a reporter on The Tyee’s Housing Fix project.
If Pollon wins, it would keep the Ryga Award in the Tyee family for the second year in a row. Last year’s winner was Tyee legislative bureau chief Andrew MacLeod, for his book A Better Place on Earth: The Search for Fairness in Super Unequal British Columbia.
Other writers on the 2017 longlist include Wade Davis and occasional Tyee freelancer Marc Edge, for his book The News We Deserve: The Transformation of Canada’s Media Landscape, published by New Star Books. The full longlist is below.
The $2,500 award is administered by the Pacific BookWorld News Society and is supported by Yosef Wosk and the Vancouver Public Library.
A shortlist for the awards will be announced later this spring.
LONGLIST:
Once in Blockadia, Stephen Collis (TalonBooks)
Tomboy Survival Guide, Ivan Coyote (Arsenal Pulp)
Wade Davis: Photographs, Wade Davis (D&M)
The News We Deserve: The Transformation of Canada’s Media Landscape, Marc Edge (New Star)
I’m Right and You’re an Idiot: The Toxic State of Public Discourse and How to Clean It Up, James Hoggan with Grania Litwin (New Society)
The Native Voice: The Story of How Maisie Hurley and Canada's First Aboriginal Newspaper Changed a Nation, Eric Jamieson (Caitlin)
Remembered in Bronze and Stone: Canada’s Great War Memorial Statuary, Alan Livingstone MacLeod (Heritage House)
The Peace in Peril: The Real Cost of the Site C Dam, Christopher Pollon (Harbour)
Dysconnected: Humans Isolated by their Personal Technology, Anton Scamvougeras (AJKS Publishing)
The Defiant Mind: Living Inside a Stroke, Ron Smith (Ronsdale Press)
Tyee Commenting Guidelines
Comments that violate guidelines risk being deleted, and violations may result in a temporary or permanent user ban. Maintain the spirit of good conversation to stay in the discussion.
*Please note The Tyee is not a forum for spreading misinformation about COVID-19, denying its existence or minimizing its risk to public health.
Do:
Do not: