{"id":16186,"date":"2017-05-09T10:50:36","date_gmt":"2017-05-09T14:50:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/?p=16186"},"modified":"2024-07-03T19:52:29","modified_gmt":"2024-07-03T23:52:29","slug":"professor-norman-hillmer-wins-stacey-prize-2015-magisterial-biography-o-d-skelton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/2017\/professor-norman-hillmer-wins-stacey-prize-2015-magisterial-biography-o-d-skelton\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor Norman Hillmer wins Stacey Prize 2015 for \u201cmagisterial biography\u201d of O.D. Skelton"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Professor Norman Hillmer wins Stacey Prize 2015 for \u201cmagisterial biography\u201d of O.D. Skelton\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n
\"book<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Department of History is pleased to announce that Professor Norman Hillmer has won the 2015 Stacey Prize for the best book written in that year in the broad area of conflict and society in Canada with O.D. Skelton: A Portrait of Canadian Ambition.<\/em> In awarding the prize the judges commended the book for \u201clively energetic prose,\u201d and note that the \u201cfinely crafted judgements marshal a lifetime of globe-trotting scholarship.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCharles Stacey was my teacher and more than anyone else is responsible for my academic career,\u201d Hillmer noted. \u201cI could not be more pleased to be given an award named for him.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Stacey prize is awarded by the Canadian Commission for Military History and the Canadian Committee for the History of the Second World War. The judges commended the book as a landmark in understanding how Canada engaged a world torn by the great conflicts of the twentieth century and described it as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Skelton, professor, public intellectual, and civil service leader, laid the intellectual foundations of Canadian foreign and defence policy in the interwar period. As professional head of the Department of External Affairs from 1925 until his death in 1941, father of Canada\u2019s modern Foreign Service, and principal advisor to two prime ministers and Cabinet, he did much to create the machinery for guiding Canada on the world stage. Norman Hillmer\u2019s magisterial biography demonstrates that at the heart of these endeavours was Skelton\u2019s intense engagement with the great questions of national and collective security arising from the world wars that bracketed Skelton\u2019s career. His decision to enter government was triggered by the grave divisions in Canada caused by the imposition of military conscription in 1917-18. That crisis, as Skelton saw it, was the result of Canada\u2019s ties to Great Britain that had brought automatic participation in the First World War and an unfettered pursuit of victory no matter the cost. His campaign for Canadian independence was central to the creation of the modern Commonwealth, and his advice shaped a much more national military effort when Canada again went to war \u2013 this time after a decision by Parliament in Ottawa \u2013 in September 1939. Norman Hillmer relates Skelton\u2019s odyssey in telling personal detail, seamlessly interwoven with analysis that reveals the national and international significance of his career. The lively, engaging prose is deceptive: finely crafted judgements marshal a life-time of globe-trotting scholarship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Department of History is pleased to announce that Professor Norman Hillmer has won the 2015 Stacey Prize for the best book written in that year in the broad area of conflict and society in Canada with O.D. Skelton: A Portrait of Canadian Ambition. In awarding the prize the judges commended the book for \u201clively […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[56,43,1,105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","category-history","category-news","category-publications"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16186"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16189,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16186\/revisions\/16189"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}