McCrory up for Banff book award
October 03rd, 2024
Wayne McCrory’s book, The Wild Horses of the Chilcotin: Their History and Future (Harbour $39.95) has been shortlisted for the 2024 Banff Mountain Book Competition in the Environmental Literature category. The winners will be announced in mid-October, and the Grand Prize will be announced at the Festival on Thursday, October 31.
Complete with colour photos, McCrory’s book has been a mainstay on the BC Bestseller list throughout the winter, occupying the #1 spot for many weeks in a row. In it, the wildlife biologist draws upon two decades of research to make a case for the protection of the Chilcotin’s wild horses—a population that is seen by government policy as an intrusion, competing for range land with native species and domestic cattle. McCrory argues that the horses, known in Tŝilhqot’in culture as qiyus, are a resilient part of the area’s balanced prey-predator ecosystem. McCrory also chronicles the Chilcotin wild horses’ genetic history and significance to the Tŝilhqot’in, juxtaposing their efforts to protect qiyus against movements to cull them.
McCrory also won the 2024 Basil Stuart Stubbs Prize, he was the co-winner of the 2024 George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature and was shortlisted for the 2024 Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Book Prize at the BC & Yukon Book Prizes.
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ABOUT THE AWARD
The Banff Mountain Book Competition presents awards to winners in eight categories— Mountain Literature (non-fiction), Mountain Fiction and Poetry, Environmental Literature, Adventure Travel, Mountain Image, Guidebooks, Mountain Article, and Climbing Literature. Winners in each of the eight categories receive a $3,000 prize. Category winners in turn are eligible for the Grand Prize worth $5,000, which will be announced on October 31, 2024.
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