Wayne McCrory has won the Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize for outstanding Scholarly Book on British Columbia for his book The Wild Horses of the Chilcotin: Their History and Future. The $3,500 prize, given by UBC Library and the Pacific BookWorld News Society, will be awarded at a reception to be held in May.
Published by Harbour Publishing, McCrory’s book is a richly illustrated story about his intellectual and emotional journey in the country of the Tŝilhqot’in people of the Xeni/Tŝilhqot’in in the Brittany Triangle section of the Chilcotin Plateau of southern British Columbia. Through his engagement in Tŝilhqot’in oral histories and legends, and his ongoing field research, McCrory came to appreciate the central place the local wild horses, known as ‘cayuse’ or ‘qiyus’, occupied in the lives and cultural traditions of the Tŝilhqot’in.
“Having grown up in a mining town in the West Kootenays, since I was a teenager I always took the time to interview old-timers including trappers, miners, and prospectors for their bush stories, which I recorded in notebooks. Out of this grew an infectious love of history and nature. After I graduated from UBC in Honours Zoology and learned to write polished scientific reports and papers for my wildlife research, I still felt frustrated with a desire to write more popular narratives and even tried writing fiction for a while—but gave up as I felt stuck in a rut of being a polished technical writer,” says McCrory. “I never imaged when I first went up to the West Chilcotin in 2001, much later in my career, to study grizzly bears that I would become so intrigued by the beauty, ecology, behaviour, origins and bloodlines of the wild horses, as well as the rich Tsilhqot’in relationship to the horse, that two decades later I would publish a popular award-wining book on the wild horses.”
“McCrory’s book combines masterful storytelling with in-depth biological research into the wild horse culture of the Tŝilhqot’in people,” says Dr. Susan E. Parker, UBC’s University Librarian. “We are pleased to award Wayne McCrory with the Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize.”
McCrory is a registered professional biologist specializing in the study of wild horses, bears and western toads. He has published more than ninety scientific reports on wildlife and conservation, including two technical reports on wild horses in BC and Alberta and, with horse genetics expert Dr. Gus Cothran, two reports on the genetics of wild horses in the Chilcotin. McCrory lives on a small farm in Hills, BC, with his wife, conservationist and journalist Lorna Visser.
This book is available to read through UBC Library.
Shortlisted titles for the prize are:
Sheltering in the Backrush, Jeanette Taylor. (Harbour Publishing).
The Notorious Georges, Jonathan Swainger. (UBC Press).
About the Prize
The Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize for Outstanding Book on British Columbia, sponsored by UBC Library and the Pacific BookWorld News Society, recognizes the best scholarly book published by a Canadian author on a B.C. subject. The book prize was established in memory of Basil Stuart-Stubbs, a bibliophile, scholar and librarian who passed away in 2012. Stuart-Stubbs’s many accomplishments included serving as the University Librarian at UBC Library and as the Director of UBC’s School of Library, Archival and Information Studies. Stuart-Stubbs had a leadership role in many national and regional library and publishing activities. During his exceptional career, he took particular interest in the production and distribution of Canadian books and was associated with several initiatives beneficial to authors and their readers, and to Canadian publishing.
Donations to support the Prize are gratefully accepted through The Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Book on British Columbia Endowment.