Trent Prof's Take on Mackenzie King Exposé Honoured as 2018 Canada Prize Finalist
Dr. Christopher Dummitt's book on secret life of Mackenzie King in running for top humanities and social science prize
After the death of William Lyon MacKenzie King, people were talking. The executors of his estate had released private diaries that Mackenzie King had kept for most of his life that revealed King as a spiritualist and as a possessor of other “weird” qualities. These revelations, the public reaction and the ensuing historical outfall are examined in Dr. Christopher Dummitt’s book, Unbuttoned: A History of Mackenzie King’s Secret Life, which was recently announced as a finalist for the 2018 Canada Prize and the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing award.
The Canada Prize is annually awarded by the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences in recognition of books that “make an exception contribution to scholarship, are engagingly written, and enrich the social, cultural, and intellectual life of Canada.”
Professor Dummitt’s book looks at the secrets held by Mackenzie King and how they became fodder for public gossip years after he was prime minister due to revelations of this private diaries. Prof. Dummitt is an associate professor of History at Trent and will also be the guest speaker at the upcoming Peterborough Historical Society AGM on March 20th 2018. See Trentu.ca/events for more details on that event.
The winners of the Canada Prize will be announced April 9, 2018.