Paul Wells wins Dafoe Prize for The Longer I’m Prime Minister

Maclean’s political editor picks up another award for his acclaimed book on Stephen Harper

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Maclean’s Political Editor Paul Wells has been awarded the Dafoe Prize for his book The Longer I’m Prime Minister: Stephen Harper and Canada, 2006-.

The $10,000 Dafoe Prize is awarded annually to the best book on Canada, Canadians and/or Canada’s place in the world.

Wells’s book examines Harper’s years as Prime Minister and his carefully crafted image, an image meant to deliberately keep a low profile and, most importantly, an image that is made to last.

The jury described The Longer I’m Prime Minister as a “lively, witty and perceptive insider, political portrait of Stephen Harper as a calculating, incremental politician, who set out to fundamentally change how Canadians see themselves and their place in the world.”

Earlier this month, Wells was awarded the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for the same book at the annual Politics and the Pen gala in Ottawa.

He will collect this most recent award at the J.W. Dafoe Foundation’s Annual Book Prize Dinner in May. The prize is named for John Wesley Dafoe, former editor of the Manitoba Free Press (now the Winnipeg Free Press).

Read an excerpt from The Longer I’m Prime Minister here.