November 12, 2009 – Canada’s top literary award for fiction, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, has gone to journalist Linden MacIntyre for his novel about corruption in the Catholic Church, the jury announced Wednesday.
The 66-year-old veteran investigative reporter and co-host of public broadcaster CBC’s news magazine “The Fifth Estate” beat four highly esteemed literary titles in a surprise upset.
His book, “The Bishop’s Man,” chronicles a priest’s crisis of conscience after he is assigned to keep a lid on church sex scandals involving the abuse of children in a small town on Canada’s Atlantic coast.
“The Bishop’s Man” is his second novel and fourth book.
The son of a teacher and miner, MacIntyre has won acclaim for his coverage of the US campaign to win support for the first Gulf War, acid rain, the psychological abuse of a child by his parents, US policy in Iran, false sex abuse allegations in Saskatchewan and Canada’s Airbus affair.
The Giller Prize, which comes with a cash award of 50,000 Canadian dollars (47,800 US dollars), was founded in 1994 by a Toronto businessman in honour of his late wife, literary journalist Doris Giller. It is financed by Scotiabank.