And, the winner is ....

There was a standing ovation for Ian Brown at the Charles Taylor Prize banquet last night.  I am so happy that his book "The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Search for his Disabled Son" (which I enjoyed so much and wrote about here on January 11th) won the coveted and highly prestigious Charles Taylor award for Literary Non-Fiction.

His book had very strong competition, since the other three finalist nominees were acclaimed biographies of popular political giants Pierre Trudeau and Rene Levesque, plus famed media baron William Randolph Hearst, and I feared they would dominate over the memoir of a humble father living with his severely disabled son.  But, they didn't, and that proves encouraging for our humanity!

The National Post reported:
"To explain why they chose his book The Boy in the Moon as this year’s grand prize winner, the jury lauded The Globe and Mail writer for his sensitive exploration of “a netherworld where medicine and morality meet” and for telling the story of his disabled son “with artless candour, quirky humour and unsparing detail.”

Exactly! 

Hurray for Ian Brown, and for parents everywhere trying to cope with a disabled child on the limited resources available from our government!