By World BEYOND War, February 5, 2025
On Monday the Giller Prize, Canada’s biggest literary award, announced that it had ended its relationship with its lead sponsor, Scotiabank (which invests in Israeli weapons companies), after a multifaceted year-long boycott and divestment campaign. World BEYOND War was proud to support our allies in the No Arms in the Arts coalition in their campaign to divest the literary and arts world from the arms industry and we congratulate them on this stunning victory. Here is the statement put out by the campaign in response to this win:
One sponsor down. Two to go: Giller Foundation ends its decades-long partnership with Scotiabank, following boycotts and activist protests.
The Giller Prize has severed ties with its lead sponsor, Scotiabank. This was the result of over a year of pressure from the public and the literary community, including the nearly 400 bookworkers who pledged to boycott the Giller Prize until it dropped Scotiabank, Indigo Books, and the Azrieli Foundation as sponsors. Just last week, 2025 Giller prize jurors Jordan Abel and Aaron Tucker withdrew from judging this year’s prize. The Giller has now met one of our three demands. The boycott still stands.
The Giller Prize may try to recuperate its image via the end of its sponsorship with Scotiabank, and return to its “benign,” “neutral” status as kingmaker in the Canadian book world. But since the 2023 gala disruption that sparked the launch of CanLit Responds and the No Arms in the Arts campaign, the Giller has:
- Pushed for criminal charges against Giller demonstrators
- Told 2023 winner Sarah Bernstein that questions around Gaza would be censored during her book club talk
- Sent threatening e-mails to publishers demanding authors get in line
- Allowed its Executive Director Elana Rabinovitch to harass past Giller winners in private e-mails, and smear other authors in public through bizarre social media meltdowns
The Giller Prize can’t undo this harm. The Giller’s actions have caused a significant number of Canadian authors to disengage from the prize, and they can no longer claim to represent the “best of Canadian fiction.” Until they are held accountable, why should our tax dollars fund its CBC partnership?
One sponsor down. Two to go:
- The Azrieli Foundation retains a substantial stake in Leumi Bank, which finances illegal West Bank settlements. It has donated to far-right fascist groups like Im Tirtzu within Israel, and anti-Palestinian hate groups like HonestReporting in Canada. The latter’s assistant director was recently criminally charged for spraypainting “Fuck Gaza” across a Toronto neighbourhood.
- Indigo Books is owned by its CEO Heather Reisman and Gerald Schwartz. Between 2019 and 2023, Reisman and Schwartz have provided non-Israeli mercenaries who join the IOF with $43 million, through their “charitable” HESEG Foundation. While Indigo advertises its new “indie bookstore” marketing pivot in the press, Reisman and Schwartz have maxed out donations to Pierre Poilievre’s election campaign, and set precedents against political speech by colluding with Toronto’s chief of police on the Indigo 11 arrests, and suing the political campaign Indigo Kills Kids.
A boycott isn’t just a letter. It’s a form of direct action that relies on the participation of a broad collective. Collective action has won us the gains we’ve made thus far, and ensures that backlash doesn’t solely fall on those who have suffered direct loss from the Israeli genocide and occupation of the Palestinian people. As boycotting novelist David Bergen noted, the Giller only responded to criticism after forty 2024 Prize-eligible authors originally refused to submit their work or participate in Giller programming. Hundreds more have joined those ranks since. One down. Two to go.
CanLit Responds is a group of authors and cultural workers that formed in November 2023 in support of the protestors who disrupted the Giller Prize gala. CanLit Responds is a member of No Arms in the Arts, a broad coalition of cultural workers including Writers Against the War on Gaza (Toronto), Artists Against Artwashing, Filmworkers for Palestine and Toronto Coalition of Artists for Palestine, among others, who refuse to lend our art to launder the image of war profiteers, both here and abroad.
