Canada’s top literary award has ended its relationship with its lead sponsor of 20 years, following two consecutive ceremonies at which the event has been actively protested—in part due to a Scotiabank subsidiary holding a stake in an Israeli arms manufacturer.
The Giller Prize was founded by Jack Rabinovitch in honour of his wife, literary journalist Doris Giller, in the year following her death in 1993. Jack passed away in 2017; his daughter Elana Rabinovitch has continued to serve as the Giller Foundation’s executive director.
Title sponsorship from Scotiabank, whose contract was set to expire at the end of 2025, allowed the annual winner to receive $100,000—an upgrade from the $25,000 award of its first decade—while other shortlisted authors scored $10,000 each.
Elana Rabinovitch said in a written statement on Feb. 3 that the partnership, which spanned most of her own two decades of working full-time with the foundation, had been “instrumental in elevating Canadian fiction and supporting authors across the country” by expanding the reach and scope of the event.
The organization was moving onto “the next stage of its journey… celebrating and promoting Canadian literature,” she wrote, and said the foundation would “explore new opportunities and collaborations that continue to support and inspire both emerging and established authors.”
Protests of the Giller Prize for its sponsor ties to Israel gained wider traction in November 2023 when demonstrators, who posed as event staff and photographers, disrupted the televised gala shouting and rushing the stage with signs that read “Scotiabank Funds Genocide.”
BREAKING: Anti-Israeli protesters interrupt the live ceremony of tonight's @GillerPrize, which honours the best in Canadian literature. Audience boos in response and police escorted protesters out. pic.twitter.com/13tBtunqk0
— Neil Herland (@NEWSneil) November 14, 2023
Several protesters were arrested and charged in connection with the demonstration. Sarah Bernstein, the 2023 Giller winner for her novel Study for Obedience, was among a reported 1,800 authors who subsequently signed an open letter for the charges over the gala disruptions to be dropped. Charges against at least four of the protesters were withdrawn a year later, reported the Toronto Star.
Scotiabank subsidiary 1832 Asset Management was the largest international investor, in 2023, in Elbit Systems Ltd., an Israeli publicly traded arms company, according to a report in The Globe and Mail published Feb. 3 on the Giller-Scotiabank move. The following year, 1832 reduced its stake, but it still retained shares.
While it continued its funding, Scotiabank branding was dropped from the Gillers last year. At the time, Elana Rabinovitch said it was to ensure “the focus remains solely on the prize and the art itself.”
The executive director gave an interview to Toronto Life ahead of the gala, that detractors scrutinized online and alleged she changed her story on her involvement in having the previous year’s gala protesters arrested.
https://t.co/2uIkHMkmcd pic.twitter.com/TlQCANK9hU
— Elana Rabinovitch (@ElyRobbins) November 1, 2024
“You cannot achieve peace in the Middle East by destroying a literary arts organization,” she told Toronto Life.
Elana Rabinovitch has not claimed antisemitism to be the overriding motivation of the pressure campaign directed at the Gillers over the sponsorships, and pointed to “the role of literature in situations like this, which is to interrogate hate and certitude and ideas that people are conflicted about.”
Comics artist and illustrator Michael DeForge’s social media critique of the interview then led the magazine website to publish an interview with him.
The Giller Prize has cut ties with lead sponsor Scotiabank. In November, comics artist and illustrator Michael DeForge broke down why authors have been boycotting the award https://t.co/muYDC7BZQb
— Toronto Life (@torontolife) February 3, 2025
Further protests followed outside the 2024 gala at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Toronto—where the program was broadcast on CBC with a tape delay to avoid any surprises. More than 30 authors had withdrawn their books from the competition, earlier that year, and the two non-Canadian members of last year’s jury panel also stepped down.
A protest has formed outside the Hyatt in Toronto as attendees arrive to the Giller Prize Ceremony. pic.twitter.com/RXTpX6LFED
— Abby O'Brien (@abbyjobrien) November 18, 2024
Anne Michaels, who ultimately won the $100,000 award for her novel Held, talked about literature’s role in shaping moral values in her acceptance speech at the gala in November. But she was criticized for not specifically acknowledging the protests.
“Everything I write is against futility. There’s no moral righteousness. There is only morality,” said Michaels upon accepting the award on Nov. 18.
“A book, especially this book, is nothing if it does not listen. Every book bears witness, every book its own form of resistance and assertion. I’m here tonight in solidarity with that purpose, in solidarity with the longlisted and shortlisted writers and every writer inside and outside this room.”
Following the parting of ways between Scotiabank and the Giller Foundation, other benefactors of the award have become the stated targets of the boycott campaign. CanLit Responds, a coalition of cultural and literary groups behind the boycotts, is highlighting the support the event receives from the Azrieli Foundation and Indigo Books.
Campaigns against Indigo—a previous boycott target under greater scrutiny since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel and subsequent Gaza war—became headline news with activists splashing red paint and pasting fake posters with founder Heather Reisman’s image, and a fake quote, on the chain’s flagship downtown Toronto store on Nov. 9, 2023.
Court cases are ongoing for seven of the accused after charges were dropped for four of the 11 charged in the 2023 mischief case that Toronto police deemed a hate-motivated incident—which happened to occur on the anniversary of Kristallnacht.
Boycotts over Indigo target Reisman and her husband Gerald Schwartz’s support for Canadian charity HESEG Fund, which funds scholarships for Israeli soldiers from abroad, to stay following their military service. (Soldiers without family to stay with in Israel are often referred to as “lone soldiers.”)
In response to another boycott campaign targeting Indigo, the retailer won a two-year court injunction in October regarding a website disparaging the company, including images and text closely imitating Indigo’s visual branding. The copyright and trademark infringement lawsuit—against unnamed defendants—compelled Canadian internet providers to block the associated web domains. (Indigo has declined interview requests from The CJN.)
Judge orders branded websites accusing the Indigo bookstore chain of ‘killing kids’ to remain offline for two years https://t.co/nxvI8OTB5Y
— The Canadian Jewish News (@TheCJN) October 28, 2024
The Azrieli Foundation, which supports a wide range of Jewish Canadian cultural organizations and published dozens of memoirs by Holocaust survivors, has come under fire for its links to the Azrieli Group, the Israeli real estate company, which in turn has holdings with Bank Leumi. The United Nations Human Rights Office has included Bank Leumi on a list of businesses involved in activities relating to settlements in the West Bank.
The Azrieli Foundation told The CJN on Feb. 4 that its “strategic and impactful giving” remains dedicated, as it has for more than 30 years, to “strengthening communities” and improving peoples’ lives.
“We are immensely proud of the work we do, which is guided by Jewish values, and our contributions to communities in Canada and Israel support initiatives across many sectors, including the arts,” read the statement issued by spokesperson Heather Sherman.
“The Azrieli Foundation is independent, transparent and apolitical, and we remain steadfast in our commitment to peaceful coexistence. We will continue to support initiatives that empower individuals regardless of their faith or background and organizations that enrich society and foster positive change.
“We will not be deterred by those using false accusations, hate and deliberate misrepresentations to undermine our charitable work and that of our partners.”
Protesters disrupted remarks by Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow at the Mayor’s Evening for the Arts on Nov. 20, at the Carlu, with one demonstrator interrupting Chow onstage while she spoke. Protest groups also entered the offices of the Toronto Arts Foundation (TAF), the charitable arts organization which hosts the annual event, on Jan. 7, with a signed petition calling to end Azrieli Foundation’s financial support for TAF, as the Carlu demonstrators had done.
Dear @GillerPrize please stop lurching leftward to try and accommodate the ideologically captured, censorious, illiberal literary-activists. Nothing makes them stop, you will never be pure enough. Every sponsor is suspect. They are destroying the Canadian arts. Stand up to them. https://t.co/A2OGe8tiZk
— hal niedzviecki (@halpen) February 4, 2025
The Giller Prize announced five new jurors of the 2025 award on Jan. 15. About two weeks ahead of the public announcement about the Scotiabank sponsorship coming to an end, Canadian authors Jordan Abel and Aaron Tucker had already stepped down for what they described as ethical reasons, reported The Canadian Press.
Dionne Irving, Loghan Paylor and Deepa Rajagopalan—all of them recent Giller finalists—remain slated to judge the annual crop of submitted fiction.
Hey, publishers! Don’t forget to add the 2025 #GillerPrize submission deadlines to your calendar. https://t.co/UsuBfcwQhy #CravingCanLit #CanLit #canadianliterature #fictionprize pic.twitter.com/1rkh1mska9
— The Giller Prize (@GillerPrize) January 20, 2025
