A protestor holding up a sign saying 'Scotiabank funds genocide' is escorted off the stage during the Scotiabank Giller Prize in Toronto, on Nov. 13, 2023.Rob Gillies/The Associated Press
The Scotiabank Giller Prize has been reckoning with pushback since last November, when demonstrators were arrested for disrupting its annual award gala to draw attention to a subsidiary of its title sponsor’s stake in Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems.
Filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission show Bank of Nova Scotia’s 1832 Asset Management held a 2.5-per-cent stake in Elbit at the end of March. Artists have objected to Scotiabank sponsorships across the arts, including the Contact Photography Festival and the Hot Docs documentary festival, since the start of Israel’s war with Hamas, which Gaza’s health authorities say has killed more than 38,000 Palestinians.
More than 1,500 members of the Canadian literary community signed a letter in support of the Giller gala protesters, and some authors have since withdrawn from Giller-related events.
Scotiabank became the Gillers’ title sponsor in 2005, helping boost the award’s grand prize to $40,000 and later to $100,000. Earlier this week, Giller jurist and Ethiopian-American novelist Dinaw Mengestu told The Globe and Mail the award was imperilled by the bank’s Elbit stake.
Executive director Elana Rabinovitch, the daughter of late prize founder Jack Rabinovitch, said Tuesday that the Giller Foundation’s board of directors would meet this week to discuss the award’s future. “We ask that people not construe our silence for endorsement of the status quo. Systems take time to dismantle,” she said in a statement.
The Globe canvassed past Giller winners for their views on Scotiabank’s sponsorship and the prize’s future.
MG Vassanji, inaugural winner in 1994 for The Book of Secrets and in 2003 for The In-Between World of Vikram Lall
The Giller Prize, when it was founded, was an exciting literary prize, with modest but not small prize money. Now, with more money thrown at it, it has become what in the Indian languages would be called a tamasha – a circus. No doubt it’s fun, it’s rich, it sells (some) books, but it’s a circus. I would like to see it regain its original spirit, that of a serious literary prize. I don’t think it has retained that respect. I also believe that its vision should not be hampered by the factionalism and divisions that seem so much a character of the cultural climate of this country today. And finally, as we have seen recently, the glitter of gold can easily hide the blood it’s been reaped from.
Vincent Lam, winner in 2006 for Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures
The Giller Prize has always stood proudly for Canadian books, writers and the generosity of the Rabinovitch family. It has changed my career as a writer and my life, in wonderful ways. I would like to see this great prize have an endowment, which can be invested in ways that align with the values of the literary community and whose investment returns can sustain the prize sustainably and independently. This will allow the prize to focus its full attention, and that of the public, on the great books that are written in Canada.
Linden MacIntyre, winner in 2009 for The Bishop’s Man
The Giller Prize won its prestige without corporate support and will retain that prestige if and when a sponsor goes away. The conflict that surfaced in 2023 should send a message to all arts groups: Corporate sponsorship is always risky because of the inherent vulnerability of dependence on a single wealthy patron whose interest in “the arts” is to a great extent mercenary.
Johanna Skibsrud, winner in 2010 for The Sentimentalists
I’m happy to learn that the Rabinovitch family has been looking for an ethical way of supporting the Giller Prize – and not surprised. The effort to recognize systemic imbalances and injustices and to elaborate new relationships and spheres of possibility within and against the “status quo” is very much in keeping with the project of the prize. We could look to the Giller archive – to the content of the books the prize has celebrated from its beginnings – for ways of understanding the dilemma the prize (and the world) finds itself in, as well as for possible solutions.
Lynn Coady, winner in 2013 for Hell Going
I’m in full agreement with Dinaw Mengestu’s remarks, but also heartened by Elana Rabinovitch’s recent statement and have faith that Giller officials will endeavour to do the right thing in response to these legitimate concerns. That’s really all I want to see – a genuine good faith effort, whatever that ends up looking like in terms of sponsorship alternatives. The Giller Prize has brought incredible benefit to Canada’s writing and publishing community, and I hope it will endure as a cultural institution we can all be proud of.
Sean Michaels, winner in 2014 for Us Conductors
Arts organizations like the Giller Prize must not give silent cover to organizations that support the machinery of war, including Israel’s decades-long war on Palestinians. But the bigger point isn’t that the Giller Prize should be severed from Scotiabank – it’s that companies such as Scotiabank should divest from weapons companies like Elbit Systems. I want the foundation to show enough courage to call for that change – as well as to immediately ask prosecutors to drop charges against last year’s gala protesters.
Madeleine Thien, winner in 2016 for Do Not Say We Have Nothing
I want to see the Giller Prize separate from Scotiabank. The legacy of the Giller Prize, the meaning of it, comes from the labour of love given by Elana Rabinovitch and her family, and the labour of love given by writers who respond, through novels and stories, to this world. The irreplaceable part of this equation is not Scotiabank. What’s the meaning of a literary prize if the sponsor must be protected from criticism – and protected from writers? It’s in the nature of art to face what is difficult and to find our capacities for change.
These statements have been edited and condensed.