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AWARD

ACJS Louis Rosenberg Distinguished Service Award 2009
Prix d'excellence Louis Rosenberg en études canadiennes juives 2009

The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies is delighted to announce that Professor SEYMOUR MAYNE of Ottawa is the 2009 recipient of the Louis Rosenberg Canadian Jewish Studies Distinguished Service Award. The ACJS is proud to recognize Professor Mayne's lifetime achievement in literary scholarship, poetry and translation as well as his central role in the founding and directing of the Vered Program in Canadian Jewish Studies at the University of Ottawa. Please see below for more information on Seymour Mayne's achievements.

The Louis Rosenberg Award was established in 2001 to recognize an individual, group or institution, who has made significant contribution(s) to Canadian Jewish Studies in one or more fields. Professor Mayne joins a distinguished list of writers, scholars and community leaders who have received this award in the past. This list includes Miriam Waddington, Rabbi Gunther Plaut, Ruth Goldbloom, Abraham Arnold, Professor Gerald Tulchinsky, Professor Irving Abella, Cyril Leonoff and Seymour Levitan.

The executive of the ACJS wishes a hearty congratulations to Professor Mayne and looks forward to presenting this award to him on the evening of Sunday May 24, 2009 in Ottawa as part of our annual conference.

Dr. Randal F. Schnoor
President, Association for Canadian Jewish Studies

Professor Seymour Mayne is one of Jewish Canada's foremost poets and literary scholars. He has been active for close to four decades as a published poet, and has enjoyed a long and illustrious academic career in the University of Ottawa's English Department. He is author, editor or translator of more than fifty books and monographs, and his poetry has been widely translated into French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, and Yiddish. Moreover, he has organized countless forums to promote Canadian letters in the Ottawa region, including reading groups, journals, anthologies, and literary events. Professor Mayne has also been instrumental in the promotion of Jewish Canadian Studies. After many years of rallying, he oversaw the establishment of the Vered Jewish Canadian Studies Program in 2006. The Vered Program, which was created to promote an understanding of Jewish life, culture, language, literature, and history in a Canadian context, offers an array of interdisciplinary courses in both English and French, as well as a minor. Prof. Mayne continues to serve as the program's director and most ardent promoter.

The Louis Rosenberg Canadian Jewish Studies Distinguished Service Award

Annually or from time to time, as may be appropriate, the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies presents an award honouring an individual, group or institution, who has made significant contribution(s) to Canadian Jewish Studies in one or more fields.

Award Winners

• 2001 - Miriam Waddington (Vancouver)
• 2002 - Rabbi Gunther Plaut (Toronto)
• 2003 - Ruth Goldbloom (Halifax)
• 2004 - Abraham Arnold (Winnipeg)
• 2005 - Professor Gerald Tulchinsky (Kingston) -
              award received in Toronto
• 2006 - Professor Irving Abella (Toronto)
• 2007 - Cyril E. Leonoff (Vancouver) - award received in Saskatoon
• 2008 - Seymour Levitan (Vancouver)
• 2009 - Professor Seymour Mayne (Ottawa)

In tribute to the scholarship of Louis Rosenberg, as of 2008 the award will be known as the “Louis Rosenberg Canadian Jewish Studies Distinguished Service Award.”

Louis Rosenberg was a pioneer in the social scientific study of Canada’s Jews. Born in Poland in 1893, he moved with his family to England and studied at Leeds University (B.A., 1914). In 1915 he moved to Canada and, served as the director of settlement of the Jewish Colonization Association between 1919 and 1940. While in Saskatchewan he became active in the CCF and published, under the pseudonym Watt Hugh McCollum, a study of the concentration of wealth in Canada entitled Who Owns Canada? (1935, 1947). In 1939, he published his magnum opus on Canadian Jewry, Canada’s Jews (reprinted, 1993). Using the census data in a comprehensive and profound fashion, Rosenberg had few peers in the area of the study of Canadian demography. In 1945, Rosenberg was appointed to serve as “National Research Director” (and only employee) of the Bureau of Social and Economic Research at Canadian Jewish Congress, and he moved to Montreal. He produced a steady stream of social studies of Canada’s Jews, continuing to use the Canadian census material, but also conducting his own surveys. He wrote the several works of Jewish history, occasionally transcribing long primary sources in the process. His archives are located in both Ottawa (LAC) and Montreal (CJCCC). He died in 1987.

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