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The Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize was established by WFNS and the Writers’ Development Trust (now the Writers’ Trust of Canada) in 1990. The Federation was profoundly honoured that Thomas Head Raddall honoured this first Atlantic Fiction Prize with his name. The initial prize was $1,000 but anonymous contributions from the author increased the value to $2,000 in 1992 and began the establishment of an endowment for the prize. After Tom’s death in 1994, the continued vision and the enormous generosity of the Raddall family has seen this endowment grow to the point where it now provides $15,000 to the winning author. The award recognizes the best work of fiction written by a native or resident Atlantic Canadian published in the previous calendar year. Last year, Don Hannah won for his novel Ragged Islands. The first award was made in 1991 to Wayne Johnston for The Divine Ryans. Subsequent awards have gone to: Linda Little Herb Curtis, John Steffler, David Adams Richards, Bernice Morgan, M. T. Dohaney, Alfred Silver, Donna Morrissey and Shree Ghatage, among others. Born in Hythe, England in 1903, Thomas Head Raddall moved to Halifax with his family in 1913. When his father was killed at Amiens in 1918, he began to support himself – Mrs. Raddall's small army pension did not provide for children over fifteen. He went to the Canadian School of Telegraphy, spent two years at sea and then was posted to Sable Island, where he absorbed the background for The Nymph and the Lamp. The scarcity of jobs eventually obliged him to accept a backwoods post at a pulp and paper company in Milton. In his spare time, he explored his surroundings, becoming a woodsman and making friends with local Mi’kmaq guides. Thomas Raddall was a remarkable person, self-taught and sturdily independent. The kind of man who would carefully save enough money to provide for his family so that he could, in the middle of the Depression, quit his dependable accounting job at the mill to write. His first book was a collection of stories, The Pied Piper of Dipper Creek (1939). Over the next forty years, he published twenty-five books, dozens of articles on a wide variety of subjects, more than seventy short stories, and an autobiography – selling a remarkable 2.5 million copies in a dozen languages; made radio and television appearances; became increasingly called upon as a guest speaker by various historical and literary societies; and in 1968 was asked to become Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia, an offer he declined. He received honourary degrees from King's College, Dalhousie, St. Mary's and St. Francis Xavier Universities, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In his long journey from pioneer to patriarch of Canadian literature, Tom Raddall spent much of his married life in a sound-proof room labouring to perfect his craft. “I had to shut myself off,” he explained, “literally shut myself off. I built a study…and I would shut myself in there and live the lives of the people in my books. Often I didn’t know whether it was Christmas or Easter as far as the actual world was concerned. The result was I was in many ways a stranger to my children, although I tried to give them time.” It is this extraordinary gift of time that Tom Raddall, and his son Tom, have given, in perpetuity, to a new generation of writers. Click HERE for submission guidelines. |
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