Historians publish their research results in several forms : learned journals, research collections, and monographs. In research funded through the Montreal History Group, members, past and present, have contributed in major ways to understandings of the Canadian past. These include innovative interpretations of the history of the family, of the history of time and of conceptions of risk, of hospital institutions and public health issues including infantile mortality, tobacco use, automobile pollution, and Catholic private charities, of the history of race, refugees, and humanitarianism in Montreal, and of the history of prostitution and of feminist leaders.

The importance of this research has been consistently recognized by the major Canadian (SSHRC) and Quebec (FQRSC) funding agencies, peers, and national and international award committees. Among prizes won by MHG members for works funded in part by grants awarded to the Group over the last two decades, the François-Garneau medal, awarded every five years for outstanding contribution to historical research, was awarded (2015) to our colleague Bettina Bradbury for her book Wife to Widow: Lives, Laws, and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Montreal (University of British-Columbia Press, 2011). In 1994, Bettina Bradbury also won the Sir John A. Macdonald prize for the best book in Canadian history for Working Families: Age, Gender, and Daily Survival in Industrializing Montreal (McClelland and Stewart, 1993). Over the years, eight other group members have been finalists in this competition for a total of nine different books, some receiving honorable mention:

  • 2004, Honorable Mention : Suzanne Morton, At Odds : Gambling and Canadians, 1919-1969(University of Toronto Press, 2003).
  • 2004 : Mary Anne Poutanen (with Rod Macloed), A Meeting of the People. : School Boards and Prostestant Communities in Quebec, 1810-1998(McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005).
  • 2005 : Denyse Baillargeon, Un Québec en mal d’enfants. La médicalisation de la maternité, 1910-1970(Éditions du remue-ménage, 2004).
  • 2006 : Magda Fahrni, Household Politics: Montreal Families and Postwar Reconstruction(University of Toronto Press, 2005).
  • 2007, Honorable Mention: Donald Fyson, Magistrates, Police, and People. Everyday Criminal Justice in Quebec and Lower Canada, 1764-1837(University of Toronto Press/The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, 2006).
  • 2011, Honorable Mention: Sean Mills The Empire Within; Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal(McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010).
  • 2015 : Nicolas Kenny, The Feel of the City: Experiences of Urban Transformation(University of Toronto Press, 2014).
  • 2015 : Brian Young, Patrician Families and the Making of Quebec The Taschereaus and McCords(McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014).
  • 2017 : Sean Mills, A Place in the Sun : Haiti, Haitians, and the Remaking of Quebec(McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016).

The Clio-Québec Prize, presented annually by the Canadian Historical Association for exceptional contributions to regional history, has, since 2005, been awarded seven times to group members:

  • 2005 : Denyse Baillargeon, Un Québec en mal d’enfants. La médicalisation de la maternité, 1910-1970(Éditions du remue-ménage, 2004).
  • 2006 : Magda Fahrni, Household Politics: Montreal Families and Postwar Reconstruction(University of Toronto Press, 2005).
  • 2007 : Donald Fyson, Magistrates, Police, and People: Everyday Criminal Justice in Quebec and Lower Canada, 1764-1837(University of Toronto Press/The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, 2006).
  • 2011 : Andrée Lévesque, Éva Circé-Côté : libre-penseuse, 1871-1949(Éditions du remue-ménage, 2010).
  • 2012 : Bettina Bradbury, Wife to Widow: Lives, Laws, and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Montreal(University of British-Columbia Press, 2011).
  • 2016 : Amélie Bourbeau, Techniciens de l’organisation sociale. La réorganisation de l’assistance catholique privée à Montréal (1930-1974)(McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015).
  • 2017 : Sean Mills, A Place in the Sun : Haiti, Haitians, and the Remaking of Quebec (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016).

Four members of the group have received prizes awarded by the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences for the best scholarly works in English and in French in Canada published in the humanities or social sciences.

  • Bettina Bradbury was awarded the Harold Adams Innis prize in 1994 for the best book in English in the social sciences for Working Families: Age, Gender, and Daily Survival in Industrializing Montreal(McClelland and Stewart, 1993).
  • In 2006, Denyse Baillargeon received the Jean-Charles Falardeau prize for the best book in Canada in French in the social sciences for Un Québec en mal d’enfants. La médicalisation de la maternité, 1910-1970(Éditions du remue-ménage, 2004).
  • For his part, Brian Young received the Canada Prize (2016) for the best book in the humanities published in English for Patrician Families and the Making of Quebec The Taschereaus and McCords (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014).
  • In 2017, Sean Mills was finalist for the best book in the humanities and social sciences in English for A Place in the Sun Haiti, Haitians, and the Remaking of Quebec(McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016).

The monographs of three group members have won prizes awarded by diverse Canadian associations. In 2006, Mary Anne Poutanen (with co-author Rod MacLeod) won the Canadian History of Education Association’s ‘Book Award’ for A Meeting of the People: School Boards and Protestant Communities in Quebec, 1801-1998 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005). In 2007, Donald Fyson was awarded the ‘Best Book’ prize by the Canadian Law and Society Association for Magistrates, Police, and People: Everyday Criminal Justice in Quebec and Lower Canada, 1764-1837 (University of Toronto Press/The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, 2006). For her part, Andrée Lévesque won the Robert S. Kenny prize (2008) established in the memory of this communist militant to recognize works treating the labour movement for Red Travellers. Jeanne Corbin and her Comrades. Trad. Y. Klein. (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006; translation of Scènes de la vie en rouge. L’époque de Jeanne Corbin (1906-1944).

Two group members, Denyse Baillargeon (2005) and Tamara Myers (2008), won the Marion Dewar prize in women’s history awarded by the National Capital Committee on the Scholarship, Preseration and Dissemination of Women’s History.

Within Quebec, Brian Young was awarded the Gérard-Parizeau prize in 2003, for the value and originality of the ensemble of his work as an historian.

In 2010, the ‘First Book Prize’ for all works published in English in Quebec was awarded by the Quebec Writers’ Federation to Sean Mills for The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal (McGill-Queen’s University Press (Studies in the History of Quebec Series), 2010). Sean Mills also won the Prix de la présidence de l’Assemblée nationale du Québec (2017) for A Place in the Sun Haiti, Haitians, and the Remaking of Quebec (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016).

The Lionel Groulx prize, awarded annually by the Institut d’histoire de l’Amérique française for the best work on French America has been won six times by group members: Brian Young was twice awarded this prize:

  • 1987 : Brian Young, In its Corporate Capacity: The Seminary of Montreal as a Business Institution, 1816-1876 (McGill-Queen!s University Press, 1986).
  • 2005 : Denyse Baillargeon, Un Québec en mal d’enfants. La médicalisation de la maternité, 1910-1970(Éditions du remue-ménage, 2004).
  • 2007 : Donald Fyson, Magistrates, Police and People. Everyday Criminal Justice in Quebec and Lower Canada, 1764-1837(University of Toronto Press/The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, 2006).
  • 2012 : Bettina Bradbury, Wife to Widow. Lives, Laws and Politics in 19th century Montreal(University of British-Columbia Press, 2011).
  • 2015 : Brian Young, Patrician Families and the Making of Quebec The Taschereaus and McCords(McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014).
  • 2016 : Mary Anne Poutanen, Beyond Brutal Passions. Prostitution in Early Nineteenth-Century Montreal(McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015).

Group members have also won prizes awarded by academic journals specializing in the History of Quebec and of Canada. The prize for the best article published in the Canadian Historical Review has been won twice by group members :

  • 2012 : Jarrett Rudy, « Do You Have the Time? Modernity, Democracy, and the Beginnings of Daylight Saving Time in Montreal, 1907–1928 », Canadian Historical Review, 93, 4 (2012), p. 531-54.
  • 2013 : Sean Mills, « Quebec, Haiti, and the Deportation Crisis of 1974 », Canadian Historical Review, 94, 3, (2013), p. 405-435.

Three other group members have won the Prix Guy-et-Lilianne Frégault awarded by the la Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française:

  • 1997 : Denyse Baillargeon, « Fréquenter les Gouttes de lait. L’expérience des mères montréalaises, 1910-1965 », Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française, 50, 1 (1996), p. 29-68.
  • 2006 : Sylvie Taschereau « Échapper à Shylock : la Hebrew Free Loan Association of Montreal entre antisémitisme et intégration, 1911-1913 », Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française, 59, 4 (2006), p. 451-80.
  • 2011 : Maude-Emmanuelle Lambert, « Québécoises et Ontariennes en voiture! L’expérience culturelle et spatiale de l’automobile au féminin (1910-1945) », Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française, 63, 2-3 (2009-2010), p. 305-3

In 2014, the ‘best article’ prize offered by Histoire sociale/Social History was won by Brian Gettler for « Money and the Changing Nature of Colonial Space in Northern Quebec: Fur Trade Monopolies, the State, and Aboriginal Peoples during the Nineteenth Century », Histoire sociale/Social History, 46, 92 (2013), p. 271-293.

Several group members have won prizes awarded by professional associations and academic journals.

  • For her article « Glimpsing Working-Class Childhood through the Laurier Palace Fire of 1927: The Ordinary, the Tragic, and the Historian’s Gaze », Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, 8, 3 (2015), p. 426-50, Magda Fahrni was awarded the bi-annual Neil Sutherland ‘Best Article Prize’, the Canadian Committee on Labor History’s ‘Best Article Prize’ (2016), and prize for the best article in the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth (2016).
  • The ‘Best Article Prize’ of the Society for the History of Children and Youth was won by Tamara Myers in 2007 for her article « Embodying Delinquency: Boys’ Bodies, Sexuality, and Juvenile Justice History in Early Twentieth-Century Quebec», Journal of the History of Sexuality, 14: 4 (October 2005), 383-414. This article was also awarded the ‘Best Article Prize’ by the Canadian Committee on the History of Sexuality (2008).

The ‘Hilda Neatby Article Prize’ offered by the Canadian Committee on Women’s History for the best article in Women’s and Gender History, was awarded to Denyse Baillargeon for her article written in collaboration with Josette Brun and Estelle Lebel  « J’vois pas pourquoi j’travaillerais pas » : le travail salarié des femmes mariées à l’émission télévisée Femme d’aujourd’hui (Société Radio-Canada, 1965-1982), Recherches féministes 30, 2 (2018): 39-57, and for her article « Fréquenter les gouttes de lait. L’expérience des mères montréalaises, 1910-1965 », Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française, 50, 1 (1996), 29-68 (1998). Maude-Emmanuelle Lambert was also awarded the Hilda Neatby Article Prize for « Québécoises et Ontariennes en voiture ! L’expérience culturelle et spatiale de l’automobile au féminin (1910-1945) », Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française, 63, 2-3 (2009-2010), p. 305-30 (2011).

In 2019, Paul-Étienne Rainville won the best article prize awarded by the Political History Group for his article, « Au nom de l’ordre ou de la liberté ? Le Congrès juif canadien face à la répression des libertés civiles et des droits des minorités religieuses au Québec (1945-1954) », Canadian Historical Review 99, 2 (2018) : 196-224.

For his article, « Quebec, Haiti, and the Deportation Crisis of 1974 », The Canadian Historical Review, 94, 3, (2013), p. 405-435, Sean Mills won ‘best article prize’ awarded by the Political History Group (2014), as well as that of the Canadian Committee on Migration, Ethnicity and Transnationalism (2014), two groups associated with the Canadian Historical Association.

In 2015, Nicolas Kenny won the Arnold Hirsch Prize for the best article submitted to the Urban History Association, a group associated with the American Historical Association for ‘City Glow: Streetlights, Emotions and Nocturnal Life, 1880s-1910s’, Journal of Urban History, 43,1 (2017), p. 91-114.

In 2018,  Laura Madokoro won the ‘Best Book Prize’ in social sciences awarded by the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) for her book Elusive Refuge: Chinese Migrants and the Cold War (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2016)

Finally, three of our members won the John Bullen Prize, awarded annually by the Canadian Historical Association for an outstanding Ph.D thesis on a historical topic:

  • Sean Mills, « The Empire Within: Montreal, the Sixties, and the Forging of a Radical Imagination » (2009).
  • Amélie Bourbeau, « La réorganisation de l’assistance chez les catholiques montréalais: la Fédération des Œuvres de charité canadiennes-françaises et la Federation of Catholic Charities, 1930-1972 » (2010).
  • Isabelle Bouchard, “Political Systems in Search of Legitimacy: Seigniorial Lands,” Local Authorities and Powers in Aboriginal Communities in the St. Lawrence Valley ( 1760-1860) ” (2017).

Sean Mills’ thesis was also awarded the Eugene Forsey Prize awarded by the Canadian Commitee on Labour History (2008).

Isabelle Bouchard’s thesis was also awarded the Jean-Charles Bonenfant Foundation Prize (2018).

Paul-Étienne Rainville’s thesis « De l’universel au particulier : les luttes en faveur des droits humains au Québec, de l’après-guerre à la Révolution tranquille », was finalist in the 2019 edition of National Assembly Political Book Prize.