Canada History Society Announces Winner of 2025 True North Book Prize
Vancouver/Ottawa Canada July 1, 2025 — The Canada History Society is proud to announce Patrice Dutil as the recipient of the 2025 True North Book Prize, awarded annually for an outstanding work of historical writing that deepens public understanding of Canada’s past. Dutil receives the honour for his groundbreaking book, Sir John A. Macdonald and the Apocalyptic Year 1885, published by Sutherland House.
The True North Book Prize, presented each year on Canada Day, celebrates excellence in Canadian historical scholarship, accessibility in writing, and the capacity to provoke thoughtful engagement with the national story. This year’s jury unanimously selected Dutil’s work for its “extraordinary synthesis of scholarship and storytelling” and its “courageous exploration of a fraught but foundational year in Canadian history.”
A Synopsis of the Prizewinning Work
In Sir John A. Macdonald and the Apocalyptic Year 1885, Patrice Dutil offers a powerful and richly layered examination of what he calls the most consequential year in the life of Canada’s first prime minister—and perhaps in the young Dominion’s early history. Through a masterful blend of political biography and national chronicle, Dutil situates 1885 as a crucible in which Sir John A. Macdonald’s leadership was tested by crisis after crisis: the Northwest Resistance and the trial and execution of Louis Riel, a smallpox outbreak in Montreal, the challenges of completing the Canadian Pacific Railway, and the political fissures threatening to divide Canada across language, region, and identity.
Dutil presents Macdonald not as a heroic caricature or a historical villain, but as a complex and deeply human figure confronting impossible choices. He brings to light Macdonald’s simultaneous strengths and blind spots, his vision for a transcontinental nation, and the grave moral consequences of decisions that have continued to echo through Canadian society—particularly his role in the suppression of Métis and Indigenous rights during the Northwest Resistance and in the execution of Riel, which left a lasting scar on French-English relations.
Amid the national upheaval, Dutil also chronicles the triumph of the Canadian Pacific Railway’s completion—a feat of political, economic, and technological determination that bound the country physically while revealing the fault lines within its social fabric. Through meticulous archival research and eloquent prose, Dutil argues that 1885 was nothing less than a reckoning for Macdonald’s Canada—one that required resilience, unity, and a brutal redefinition of what the country would become.
“This is history that does not flinch,” remarked one juror. “Dutil’s book compels Canadians to grapple with our foundational contradictions, our unfinished debates, and the legacy of a leader who shaped the nation at a tremendous cost.”
About the Author
Patrice Dutil is a respected historian, commentator, and professor at Toronto Metropolitan University. He has authored and edited numerous books on Canadian political history and is known for his commitment to public scholarship. Sir John A. Macdonald and the Apocalyptic Year 1885 is being hailed as his most impactful work to date—an essential addition to the Canadian historical canon.
About the Prize
Established in 2025, the True North Book Prize is awarded by the Canada History Society to the author of a recently published non-fiction book that makes an outstanding contribution to the understanding of Canada’s past. The prize comes with a $200 award and is presented each year on Canada Day, underscoring the Society’s commitment to reflection, education, and national dialogue.
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Greg Scott
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Canada History Society
Email: gscott@canadahistorysociety.ca
Phone: (803) 833-9488
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“The apocalyptic year of 1885 was not the end of Macdonald’s Canada, but a reckoning—a moment when the young nation was forced to confront its divisions and rediscover its resilience.”
— Patrice Dutil, Sir John A. Macdonald and the Apocalyptic Year 1885