Why I won’t be attending the Giller Prize gala this year

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/11/2024 (665 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

My family is Mennonite, and one of the tenets of the Mennonite faith is pacifism.

Signing up for the army, joining the police force, owning a gun — these were all forbidden.

As a boy, it was required that I memorize certain passages from the Bible. The Sermon on the Mount was one: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you… whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.”

My grandfather chose to be a conscientious objector in the First World War, and my father made the same choice in the Second World War.

This is the world I come from, and non-violent resistance is one of the remaining vestiges of my education.

Like most people, when the protests took place at last year’s Scotiabank Giller gala, I had not known that Scotiabank was heavily invested in Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer.

Nor, as I learned later, that their sponsor Indigo Books is owned by the principal funders of the HESEG Foundation, who give grants to foreigners who enlist in the Israeli military.

Doing what I do, I wrote a letter to Scott Thompson, the president of Scotiabank. I received a response, written by a minion, the tone of which was like Pablum.

As the slaughter of Gazans continued, and the number of dead grew, I pulled out of participating in the Giller Book Club.

I subsequently joined a collective of writers, called CanLit Responds, that is boycotting the Giller Foundation until it cuts all ties to sponsors invested in Israel’s occupation of Palestine and siege on its people. Among the writers in this collective are many young, first-time novelists, who refused to submit their books to the Giller Prize. I admire the young — they so often put the old to shame.

My connections to the Giller Prize run very deep.

In 2005 I won the prize. In many ways, this changed my life as an author. I sold more books, I was fêted, I thought I was hot stuff. In subsequent years, I had more novels both longlisted and shortlisted. Curiously, three of those novels dealt with war and its aftermath.

The Giller’s influence on the Canadian literary scene has been huge, which is why its ethical collapse around its decisions is vast.

How can I celebrate literary excellence at a gala that’s financially tied to the destruction of a small strip of land where most books have been burned and destroyed?

My sister-in-law lived in the West Bank for seven years doing humanitarian work with Palestinians in Gaza. One of the friends she made back then, “A.,” speaks to her every day.

He runs — to avoid the bombs, to elude the snipers, to hunt for food, to find an internet connection. He reports that a sack of flour costs US$100 and will feed his extended family of 16 for four days. There is no canned fruit or vegetables. Men buy a single cigarette for US$32 and share it. Why not have a $32 cigarette when you could be dead tomorrow? It’s cold these days. Rainy. My sister-in-law waits for the day when A. will not call.

After last year’s Giller prize disruption, over 2,500 Canadian authors signed a letter asking the Giller Foundation to call for charges against the protesters at the event to be dropped. But it was only when 40 authors refused to participate in the prize and its programming that the Giller was forced to respond.

Novelists are split. We do not write op-eds. We do not proclaim.

And yet, given the destruction of humanity in Gaza, and the deaths of thousands of children, and the connections that the Giller has to the army that is committing those atrocities, we must not only speak, but act.

David Bergen is an award-winning Canadian writer based in Winnipeg.