Steven High celebrates award win for his latest book

Department of History professor Steven High's latest book, Deindustrializing Montreal: Entangled Histories of Race, Residence, and Class (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022) has just won the Prix du livre politique au Québec from the National Assembly of Quebec.

His book examines the impact of deindustrialization in the working-class neighbourhoods of Montreal’s Sud Ouest borough, a bilingual and biracial area home to various immigrant populations, divided on both sides of the Lachine Canal.

The National Assembly Presidency Awards recognize the quality, relevance and originality of books dealing with Quebec politics that have been published over the past year. Scholarships totaling $10,500 are awarded to finalists. 

"My book invites us to think through the ways that race and class structure the lives of Montrealers not only in the past but the present. Little Burgundy and Point Saint-Charles offer us a point of entry into the global transformation of working-class and racialized communities,” says High.

“We are all delighted by the news. Steven's work  has long been at the forefront of scholarship into the effects of deindustrialization, and his stature as a public and oral historian in Canada is second to none. He is most deserving of this prize,” says department chair Alison Rowley.

This is only the second prize in the history of the awards to be given to an English publication.