John Ibbitson

Canadian journalist (born June 9, 1955)

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John Ibbitson

Born| 1955 (age 69-70)
Gravenhurst, Ontario, Canada[1]
Alma mater| University of Toronto (B.A.)
University of Western Ontario (M.A.)
Genre| Fiction, non-fiction
Subject| Canadian politics, Canadian history
Notable works| 1812
Promised Land
Loyal No More
The Polite Revolution
Open & Shut
The Big Shift (co-author)
Stephen Harper
Notable awards| Governor General's Award for English-language children's literature,
Trillium Book Award,
City of Toronto Book Award,
Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing

John Ibbitson (born 1955) is a Canadian journalist. Since 1999, he has been a political writer and columnist for The Globe and Mail.[2]

## Career

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Ibbitson graduated from the University of Toronto in 1979 with a B.A. in English.[1] After university, he pursued a career as a playwright, his most notable play being Mayonnaise,[1] which debuted in December 1980 at the Phoenix Theatre in Toronto, Ontario. The play went on to national production and was adapted to a TV broadcast in 1983.[1] In the mid-1980s, Ibbitson switched over to writing young adult fiction, including the science fiction novel Starcrosser (1990). He also wrote two full-length novels, 1812: Jeremy's War and The Night Hazel Came to Town. The Landing followed in 2008 - a winner of the 2008 Governor General's Award for English-language children's literature. Apart from the latter Ibbitson has been nominated for several awards for other works, including a Governor General's Award nomination for 1812.[1] Hazel received a nomination for the Trillium Book Award and the City of Toronto Book Award. His journalism has also been nominated for a National Newspaper Award.

Ibbitson entered the University of Western Ontario in 1987. Upon graduating with an M.A. in journalism one year later, he joined the Ottawa Citizen, where he worked as a city reporter and columnist. He covered Ontario politics from 1995 to 2001, working for the Ottawa Citizen, Southam News, the National Post and The Globe and Mail. In August 2001, Ibbitson accepted the post of Washington bureau chief at The Globe and Mail,[1] returning to Canada one year later to take up the post of political affairs columnist.[1] He moved back to Washington as a columnist in May 2007, returning to Ottawa as bureau chief in September 2009. In December 2010 he became the paper's chief political writer. In that role, he has also frequently appeared on Canadian television news programs as a pundit and political analyst. In 2015 he became writer-at-large.

In 2013, Ibbitson and Darrell Bricker co-authored the book The Big Shift: The Seismic Change in Canadian Politics, Business, and Culture and What It Means for Our Future.[3] In January 2014 Ibbitson began a one-year leave of absence from the Globe, to serve as a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and to work on a biography of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, which was published in August 2015. In 2016, the book won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.[4]

Ibbitson and Bricker co-authored the book "Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline", which was published separately in 2019 in the United States, Great Britain and Canada, and in Chinese, Spanish, Japanese and Korean.[5]

He is married to Grant Burke.[1]

## Publications

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### Non-fiction

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* Promised Land: Inside the Mike Harris Revolution (Prentice Hall, 1997)
* Loyal No More: Ontario's Struggle for a Separate Destiny (HarperCollins, 2001)
* The Polite Revolution: Perfecting the Canadian Dream (McClelland & Stewart, 2005)
* Open & Shut: Why America Has Barack Obama and Canada Has Stephen Harper (McClelland & Stewart, 2009)
* The Big Shift: The Seismic Change in Canadian Politics, Business, and Culture and What It Means for Our Future, with Darrell Bricker (HarperCollins, 2013)
* Stephen Harper, a biography of Canada's 22nd Prime Minister (McClelland & Stewart, (2015)
* Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline, with Bricker (McClelland & Stewart, 2019)
* The Duel: Diefenbaker, Pearson and the Making of Modern Canada. (Signal, 2023)

### Fiction

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* Jeremy's War: 1812 (Maxwell Macmillan, 1991)
* The Night Hazel Came to Town (Maxwell Macmillan, 1993)
* The Landing (KidsCan Press, 2008)

## References

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1. ^ a b c d e f g h "Being John Ibbitson". Ryerson Review of Journalism, Summer 2006.
2. ^ Doskoch, Bill (23 April 2004). "Election 2004". CTV. Archived from the original on March 6, 2005. Retrieved 28 February 2011.
3. ^ Comment, Full (2013-03-05). "Saying goodbye to the Canada we once knew | National Post". National Post. Retrieved 2019-12-30.
4. ^ "John Ibbitson's biography of Stephen Harper wins the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing". National Post, April 21, 2016.
5. ^ "The Population Bust: Demographic Decline and the End of Capitalism as We Know It". Foreign Affairs. September 2019.

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Winners of the Governor General's Award for young people's literature — text

1980s|

* Morgan Nyberg, Galahad Schwartz and the Cockroach Army (1987)
* Welwyn Wilton Katz, The Third Magic (1988)
* Diana Wieler, Bad Boy (1989)

1990s|

* Michael Bedard, Redwork (1990)
* Sarah Ellis, Pick-Up Sticks (1991)
* Julie Johnston, Hero of Lesser Causes (1992)
* Tim Wynne-Jones, Some of the Kinder Planets (1993)
* Julie Johnston, Adam and Eve and Pinch-Me (1994)
* Tim Wynne-Jones, The Maestro (1995)
* Paul Yee, Ghost Train (1996)
* Kit Pearson, Awake and Dreaming (1997)
* Janet Lunn, The Hollow Tree (1998)
* Rachna Gilmore, A Screaming Kind of Day (1999)

2000s|

* Deborah Ellis, Looking for X (2000)
* Arthur Slade, Dust (2001)
* Martha Brooks, True Confessions of a Heartless Girl (2002)
* Glen Huser, Stitches (2003)
* Kenneth Oppel, Airborn (2004)
* Pamela Porter, The Crazy Man (2005)
* William Gilkerson, Pirate's Passage (2006)
* Iain Lawrence, Gemini Summer (2007)
* John Ibbitson, The Landing (2008)
* Caroline Pignat, Greener Grass: The Famine Years (2009)

2010s|

* Wendy Phillips, Fishtailing (2010)
* Christopher Moore, From Then to Now: A Short History of the World (2011)
* Susin Nielsen, The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen (2012)
* Teresa Toten, The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B (2013)
* Raziel Reid, When Everything Feels Like the Movies (2014)
* Caroline Pignat, The Gospel Truth (2015)
* Martine Leavitt, Calvin (2016)
* Cherie Dimaline, The Marrow Thieves (2017)
* Jonathan Auxier, Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster (2018)
* Erin Bow, Stand on the Sky (2019)

2020s|

* Eric Walters, The King of Jam Sandwiches (2020)
* Philippa Dowding, Firefly (2021)
* Jen Ferguson, The Summer of Bitter and Sweet (2022)
* Sarah Everett, The Probability of Everything (2023)
* Li Charmaine Anne, Crash Landing (2024)

Authority control databases

International|

* ISNI
* VIAF
* WorldCat

National|

* Germany
* United States
* Czech Republic
* Netherlands

Other|

* IdRef
* SNAC
* Yale LUX

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