Filmmaker-actor Paul Gross wins Canada’s top history prize for Passchendaele

Randy Boswell/Canwest News Service

Canada’s top history prize, typically given to historians and other writers who popularize Canada’s past, will garner some celebrity limelight this year when the 2009 Pierre Berton Award is handed to actor-director Paul Gross for his First World War film epic Passchendaele.

The award, named for the late journalist and author whose bestselling books revived interest in Canadian history in the 1970s, will be presented Friday as part of a newly ramped up ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa, where a host of history prizes for scholars, teachers and students from across Canada will be given out by Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean.

Passchendaele was the big winner at this year’s Genie Awards, taking top honours in six categories, including best picture. Gross, who also wrote the screenplay, had spent 10 years working on the project, which was inspired by research into his own family’s experience of the war.

“We’re certainly delighted that the team behind the Passchendaele project nominated him,” Deborah Morrison, president of Canada’s National History Society, told Canwest News Service.

She said the fact that the former Due South and Slings and Arrows star devoted his formidable talents to telling a story from the pages of Canadian history — “exceptionally and beautifully” — was “something that should commended.”

The other Berton Award nominees this year were University of Western Ontario historian Jonathan Vance, documentary maker Holly Doan and the CBC Digital Archives.

Morrison said Friday’s ceremony will mark the first time that a host of national history awards — including the Governor General’s Teaching Awards, the Historica-Dominion Institute’s Great Canadian Questions essay prize, Kayak Kids’ Illustrated History Contest, and the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize for academic writing — will be presented at the same event.

“We wanted to bring all of these awards together under one roof to create that critical mass” of attention and networking for Canada’s history community.

The awards event has been supported through a $560,000 federal funding initiative to promote the study of Canadian history.

Heritage Minister James Moore said in a statement that “pride in our history and heritage will grow as we celebrate those who work so tirelessly to protect, commemorate and celebrate it.”