Legion Founders Award Announced
EDMONTON, AB, June 16th 2014 – Mr. Joseph Boyden, an acclaimed author and lecturer is the Royal Canadian Legion’s second recipient of the Legion’s Founders Award. It was announced today at the Legion’s Convention in Edmonton.
The award, recently introduced, is given to an individual or an organization for extraordinary achievement in an area that exemplifies and advances the purposes and objects of the Legion in the spirit and vision of the Legion’s founders.
Of Irish, Scottish and Anishinaabe heritage, Boyden writes about First Nations heritage and culture. Three Day Road, his debut novel about two Cree soldiers serving in the Canadian military during World War I, was inspired by Ojibwa Francis Pegahmagabow, the legendary First World War sniper. His novel won the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize in 2006, and was a nominee for the 2005 Governor General’s Awards. It previously won the inaugural McNally Robinson Aboriginal Book of the Year Award. Finally, Three Day Road was chosen for inclusion in Canada Reads 2006.
He is currently a Lecturer with the UBC Creative Writing Program. He divides his time between Louisiana, where he and his wife, Amanda, are writers in residence, and Northern Ontario.
The award can be presented any time it is determined that an achievement warrants such recognition. The Legion chose this Dominion Convention for the announcement of this year’s award recipient but it can be bestowed at another significant Legion event or gathering.
For further information please contact Bruce Poulin at Dominion Command, at (613) 591-3335 ext. 241 or by cell at (613) 292-8760 or bruce.poulin@legion.ca.
