TORONTO — The National Newspaper Awards were handed out in Toronto on Friday night. Here is the complete list of the winners and finalists:
Arts and Entertainment:
Winner: Matt Simmons, Cara McKenna and Marty Clemens, IndigiNews and The Narwhal, for their feature about the return of a stolen totem pole to Nisga’a Nation after almost a century.
Finalists: Marsha Lederman, Globe and Mail, for her stories on the Vancouver Art Gallery’s celebrated Group of Seven oil sketches that turned out to be fakes; Jon Wells, Hamilton Spectator, for his portfolio of stories on a hidden gem recording space in a former church, the time Pink Floyd played Hamilton, and the time Luciano Pavarotti almost did.
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Joan Hollobon Award for Beat Reporting:
Winner: Ariane Lacoursière, La Presse, for her work on the significant inequalities in health care in the 14 villages of Nunavik in northern Quebec.
Finalists: Danielle Bochove, Bloomberg, for her coverage of the Global Arctic, as the region takes on heightened economic, strategic and environmental significance; Alex Boyd, Toronto Star, for her authoritative work on the misinformation that is increasingly influencing our world.
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Stuart M. Robertson Award for Breaking News:
Winner: La Presse, for their coverage of the day a bus driver killed two children and injured six more when his vehicle crashed into a daycare centre in Laval.
Finalists: Canadian Press, for their comprehensive coverage of the McDougall Creek Wildfire in West Kelowna, the largest fire in the city’s history; Winnipeg Free Press and The Brandon Sun, for their combined coverage of the Trans-Canada Highway crash near Carberry last June that led to the death of 17 seniors.
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Business:
Winners: Sara Mojtehedzadeh and Rachel Mendleson, Toronto Star, for their series Work
Forced, which revealed the inner mechanics of labour exploitation and how Canada’s existing laws enable it to thrive.
Finalists: Joe Castaldo, Globe and Mail, for his months-long look into artificial intelligence and how it is reshaping society, not always for the best; Tavia Grant, Globe and Mail, for a year-long investigation into the lack of oversight of Canadian companies working in extractive industries abroad.
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Mary Ann Shadd Cary Award for Columns:
Winner: Max Fawcett, National Observer, for his columns on conservative attacks on the federal government’s climate policy, the federal Liberals’ carbon tax communication problems, and the war on expertise.
Finalists: Niigaan Sinclair, Winnipeg Free Press, for his columns on Manitoba politics, including an introduction to Premier Wab Kinew with an eye to Indigenous cultures and traditions and the significance of Kinew taking on the role of Indigenous Affairs minister; Adam Zivo, National Post, for commentary on controversial topics, including the problems with ‘straight Pride’ and with the Ontario NDP’s proposal to ban anti-LGBTQ+ protests within the vicinity of queer events.
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Editorial Cartooning:
Winner: Bruce MacKinnon, Halifax Chronicle Herald
Finalists: Michael de Adder, Halifax Chronicle Herald; Brian Gable, Globe and Mail
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Claude Ryan Award for Editorial Writing
Winner: Matt Goerzen, The Brandon Sun, for editorials on Brandon’s growth on LGBTQIA+ rights, the changes required after the deadly Carberry collision, and why deficit numbers can’t always be trusted.
Finalists: Chris Hannay, Globe and Mail, for editorials on the exploitation of temporary foreign workers and students, the diminished influence of labour unions, and why the federal government needs to act quickly on AI; Lauren Heuser, Canadian Affairs, for editorials on Pierre Poilievre’s documentary on Canada’s housing crisis, the federal dental-care initiative, and the need to increase awareness about cannabis risks.
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Explanatory Work
Winner: Marcus Gee, Globe and Mail, for his explanation of how fentanyl became the king of drugs, killing someone in Canada, on average, nearly every hour of every day.
Finalists: Amy Dempsey Raven, Toronto Star, for her look at how Toronto, over the last 100 years, became a haven for a large and bold raccoon population; Melissa Martin, Winnipeg Free Press, for an exploration of crime reduction that began by asking why people commit crimes — then sought to find out, by interviewing five people with an extensive history with the criminal justice system.
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Feature Photo:
Winner: Tim Smith, The Brandon Sun, for his colourful photo of women on a forklift washing windows at the CanAm Hutterite Colony.
Finalists: Darren Calabrese, Canadian Press, for his photo of a woman waving goodbye to her husband while HMCS Montreal readies for departure in Halifax; Leah Hennel, Reuters, for her photo of a woman in a mask walking her dogs on a smoky day in Calgary, when 90 wildfires were active in Alberta.
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Norman Webster Award for International Reporting:
Winner: Doug Saunders, Globe and Mail, who spent weeks on each of the world’s most important and contested crisis migration routes to take a deeper look at the world’s migration crisis.
Finalists: Isabelle Hachey, La Presse, for her reports from Ukraine: the killings, the stolen children, the attempts to destroy the identity of the nation; Katharine Lake Berz, Toronto Star, for her series of articles on the Ukrainian women and children who survived Russian war-crime violence.
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George Brown Award for Investigations:
Winners: Darryl Greer, Canadian Press, for a months-long investigation into rape, stalking and bullying at one of Canada’s most secretive organizations: the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
Finalists: Bill Curry, Globe and Mail, for his investigation into federal government IT procurement processes, which triggered Parliamentary hearings, public servant suspensions, and prompted the federal government to cut off contractors; Tristan Péloquin, La Presse, for dissecting the environmental fallout of an illegal dump in the Mohawk territory of Kanesatake, including water contaminated by a toxic spill.
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E. Cora Hind Award for Local Reporting:
Winner: Tyler Olsen, Fraser Valley Current, for his exploration of how the promised rebuild of Lytton, B.C. — almost two years after the fire that destroyed it — has gone so wrong.
Finalists: Randy Richmond, Calvi Leon, Rachel Gilbert and Brice Hall, London Free Press, for their project The Boy With Two Names: One Indigenous family's journey through the Sixties Scoop; Sabrina Bedford, Brockville Recorder and Times, for her exhaustive coverage of an OPP officer convicted of multiple crimes, including raping an unconscious woman and recording it on his cell phone.
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William Southam Award for Long Feature:
Winner: Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun/The Province, for his thought-provoking look at B.C.’s mental health system and whether his dad — who was institutionalized for 20 years — would have survived it.
Finalists: Lindsay Jones, Globe and Mail, for her touching feature on two men — one of Indigenous ethnicity, the other non-Indigenous — who recently discovered they had been switched at birth at a small rural hospital north of Winnipeg in 1955;
Tom Rachman, Globe and Mail, for his well-researched feature on the quest to understand — and find — happiness.
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News Photo:
Winner: Goran Tomasevic, Globe and Mail, for his photo of the family of an accused ISIS operative, taken during a counter-terrorism night raid by Syrian Democratic Forces in Deir ez-Zor.
Finalists: Ashley Fraser, Ottawa Citizen/Ottawa Sun, for capturing the raw emotions of police officers standing guard as the casket of slain OPP Sgt. Eric Mueller is taken to a funeral home; Jesse Winter, Globe and Mail, for his image of a firefighter using a drip torch to set a planned ignition on a wildfire burning near a highway outside Vanderhoof, B.C.
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Photo Story:
Winner: Steve Russell, Toronto Star, for his story on a retired couple in their late 80s — one with dementia; the other caring for — in the final chapter of their lives.
Finalists: Martin Tremblay, La Presse, for documenting the fighting and the fate of inhabitants living in the streets of Bakhmut, Ukraine; Jesse Winter, freelance, for his harrowing images from the frontlines of the worst wildfire season in B.C. history.
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John Wesley Dafoe Award for Politics:
Winner: Robert Fife and Steven Chase, Globe and Mail, for their months-long investigation into Chinese interference in the 2021 federal election.
Finalists: Charlie Pinkerton, Jack Hauen and Jessica Smith Cross, The Trillium, for their reporting on the influence of land developers in Ontario politics; Althia Raj, Toronto Star, for her series of podcasts on a range of topics, including the housing crisis, Canada and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how social media is changing politics.
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Presentation/Design:
Winners: Jeremy Agius, Globe and Mail, for his portfolio of work on migration routes, the electric vehicle battery business and Inuit survivors of tuberculosis.
Finalists: Susan Kao, McKenna Hart and Tania Pereira, Toronto Star, for their whimsical presentation of Toronto’s century-old raccoon problem; The Narwhal, for a portfolio of work on Ontario’s proposed Highway 413, the Ontario Greenbelt and a bird’s eye view of Alberta’s oilsands.
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John Honderich Award for Project of the Year:
Winner: Globe and Mail, for Secret Canada, an investigation into Canada’s problematic access to information system and the creation of an online database to house completed access requests from across the country.
Finalists: La Presse, for their work on the affordable housing crisis in Quebec, where the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation says almost 1.2 million homes need to be built by the end of the decade; St. John's Telegram, for their investigation into the shocking living conditions at Her Majesty’s Penitentiary: rodent infestations, health-threatening mould, cells with broken toilets and no running water, and a shortage of staff and programs.
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Bob Levin Award for Short Feature:
Winner: Jane Sims, London Free Press, for her story on Salman Afzaal, who along with his family was killed by a white nationalist, and how the Afzaals touched so many lives in different ways.
Finalists: Hiren Mansukhani, Calgary Herald/Calgary Sun, for his short feature highlighting the challenges faced by two families forced to flee the wildfires in Yellowknife; Grant Robertson, Globe and Mail, for his story on a small Ottawa church that began distributing naloxone to its congregation — and started saving lives.
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Special Topic: Journalism in a Language other than French or English:
Winners: Sing Tao, for their four-part series Embracing Canada, on the challenges faced by the second wave of immigrants from Hong Kong.
Finalists: David Venn, Nunatsiaq News, for his four-part series from the Kivalliq region, examining the old Government of the Northwest Territories’ Homeownership Assistance Program. Stories translated by Maaki Kakkik; Joe Volpe, Francesco Veronesi and Mariella Policheni, Corriere Canadese, for a portfolio of work, including the harrowing story of a Toronto couple across a series of hospitals after their baby was born.
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Sports:
Winners: Alexandre Pratt, La Presse, for columns on: a group of Laurentian hockey moms who played in front of hundreds in France, Quebec hockey players appearing on stamps around the world without their knowledge, and a call for colleges and universities to organize a major event around women’s sports.
Finalists: Rachel Brady, Globe and Mail, for a trio of stories on under-reported aspects of sports, including blind hockey, competing while menstruating, and dealing with cancer as an athlete; Nancy Macdonald, Globe and Mail, for her profile of teen surfing prodigy Erin Brooks, a Texas-born phenom with Quebec roots who trains in Hawaii and competes for Canada.
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Sports Photo:
Winners: Melissa Tait, Globe and Mail, for her euphoric photo from the sparkly, high-energy world of competitive cheer.
Finalists: Andrew Lahodynskyj, Canadian Press, for his photo of Adam Hadwin being tackled at the Canadian Open as Nick Taylor celebrated his historic victory; John Woods, Winnipeg Free Press, for his photo of Dawn Neal after she won the Manitoba Marathon women’s division as a competitor dropped behind her.
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Sustained News Coverage:
Winners: Toronto Star and The Narwhal, for their joint efforts in exposing crucial details about the Ontario government’s plans to develop the Greenbelt, including connections between the premier and developers.
Finalists: Lori Culbert, Katie DeRosa and Dan Fumano, Vancouver Sun/The Province, for their work on the affordable housing crisis, which now impacts every facet of the housing sector in B.C.; Robert Fife, Steven Chase, Andrew Coyne, James Griffiths and Patrick Brethour, Globe and Mail, for their year-long commitment to exposing foreign interference by China and other countries.
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Journalist of the Year
Winner: Doug Saunders, Globe and Mail
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Special Recognition Citation:
Climate Disaster Project, for their teaching newsroom based out of the University of Victoria, their investigations into climate disasters, and their first-person accounts of survivors.
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This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 26, 2024.
The Canadian Press
