2022 Contest Winners
MRB Poetry Award Contest
Judged by Sheri Benning
First Prize:
Jody Baltessen
Winnipeg, MB"Mantario Trail Untethered"
Trail Notes caution: this trail is over 60 kilometres in length to reach the end tramp through deadfall and gorge, trip over clatters of glacial scree imprint the tread of your hiking boot into a geology of retreat it is intended for fully equipped, experienced backpackers find your iliac crest settle your pack on your ...
caution: this trail is over 60 kilometres in length
to reach the end
tramp through deadfall and gorge, trip over clatters of glacial scree
imprint the tread of your hiking boot into a geology of retreat
it is intended for fully equipped, experienced backpackers
find your iliac crest
settle your pack on your hips, hitch, loosen slightly before starting out, close the car door
know how to use navigational tools
legend – in the beginning; scale – awe
advise someone where you are going
magnetic north, northwestward, toward …
whom to contact in an emergency
if water fills your lungs, if fire leaps from tree to tree
if a dream bear swipes her paw across your face
if you are bushed
For full poem, check out our summer 2023 issue coming out in July 2023!
Jody Baltessen is a Winnipeg poet, writer and archivist. Her poetry, mostly focused on landscape, history, and the archive, has appeared in Hamilton Arts & Letters (HA&L), Grain, Pangyrus, Poetry Pause (League of Canadian Poets), Prairie Fire, and The New Quarterly (TNQ). The poem, "Blessing for Mushroom Picking," was awarded third place in the 2022 Short Grain Contest. Jody is a volunteer book reviewer for Prairie Fire.
READ MORE
Second Prize:
Suzanne Nussey
Ottawa, ON"To my right breast before surgery"
The left your twin scimitarred years past the scar hidden beneath its diminished crescent you tomorrow flayed and sliced east to west nipple to breast bone for the rest of life the surgeon promises the ditch cut deep and clean tissue stitched to clean incisions fade, she says, to ghost skin invisible to all. Heart ...
years past the scar hidden
beneath its diminished crescent
you tomorrow flayed and sliced
east to west nipple to breast
bone for the rest of life
the surgeon promises
the ditch cut deep and clean
tissue stitched to clean
incisions fade, she says, to ghost
skin invisible to all.
Heart sheath
my metaphor
in flesh that lately pleased
my infant and my spouse
and will again be altered
as my hidden self
whose only cure more loss
I am now used to
being carved away.
For full poem, check out our summer 2023 issue coming out in July 2023!
Suzanne Nussey has worked as an editor, writer, and workshop facilitator in Ottawa. Her poetry and creative non-fiction have appeared in The New Quarterly, EVENT, The Fiddlehead, and Prairie Fire, among others, and have won several national literary competitions. She recently completed her first book-length manuscript of poetry
READ MORE
Third Prize:
Danielle Hubbard
Kelowna, BC"My Sister Luna"
My sister Luna is a porcelain bowl filled past the meniscus. My sister Luna is a pleated grey skirt, a calculus textbook a C++ code for rendering matrices, and a mechanical pencil. My sister Luna is a hummingbird feeder strung from the backyard apple tree. My sister Luna is the memory of winter afternoons under ...
filled past the meniscus.
My sister Luna is a pleated grey skirt, a calculus textbook
a C++ code for rendering matrices, and a mechanical pencil.
My sister Luna is a hummingbird feeder
strung from the backyard apple tree.
My sister Luna is the memory of winter afternoons
under blanket forts, spring mornings chewing leeks
and rhubarb straight from the garden, summer evenings
at Elk Lake picking thimble berries
and stepping into each other’s laced hands to reach
the higher tangles. My sister Luna was once
my baby brother and I will never forget him.
For full poem, check out our summer 2023 issue coming out in July 2023!
In addition to poetry, Danielle Hubbard’s greatest joys include cycling, swimming, and long-distance running. She works as the CEO of the Okanagan Regional Library, and is eternally grateful to work with wonderful people in a beautiful land. Her poetry has appeared in several literary magazines, including Grain, Geist, The Malahat Review, and The Antigonish Review.
READ MORE
MRB Fiction Contest
Judged by David A. Robertson
First Prize:
John Van Rys
Dunnville, ON"Excavations"
Stinkin hot. That was Evan’s phrase for describing the weather that summer. He dropped it into daily conversations and typed it at the beginning of texts and emails (Still stinkin hot here). It surfaced in his mind first thing when he got up in the morning and felt the stickiness of the bottom sheet and ...
As it did this particular Saturday. The mid-afternoon sun baked the earth once again, as it had now for several weeks. The heat radiated off the ground where he stood on the brown, flattened grass off the side porch. Here, the soil was thinnest over a vein of rock running past his and Mae’s old farmhouse. He looked closely at the ground and saw cracks zigzagging through the dirt, creating tiny Grand Canyons. He sometimes wondered if the builders had had to blow up some of the rock vein in order to make space for the stone foundation and basement. He’s pretty sure dynamite was invented around then—1867, when the oldest part of their house rose from the ground—but he imagines a crew of workers going at the rock with pick-axes, chisels, and shovels.
He was heading to the barn to give the animals water. He’d have to throw out some hay for the horses, given the state of the pasture. In all their summers living on this little acreage, he’d never had to supplement pasture grass with hay, but it had been a summer like no other, day after day of unrelenting blue sky, punctuated with the occasional overcast day that promised but then withheld rain, the clouds offering just a brief reprieve from the solar glare.
Check out the full story in our summer issue, out in July 2023!
John Van Rys lives on a hobby farm outside Dunnville, Ontario, with his wife April, dogs, cats, horses, free-run egg-laying hens, and his mother-in-law. He’s had stories published in The New Quarterly, The Dalhousie Review, Agnes and True, Blank Spaces, and Solum Literary Journal. His first book-length collection, the story cycle Moonshine Promises, was published in 2021 by Wipf and Stock. “Excavations” is part of the collection he’s currently working on, tentatively titled "The Healing Arts." You can find out more about John’s writing by visiting his website at http://johnvanrys.com/.
READ MORE
Second Prize:
Alexandra G. McKay
East York, ON"Everything Belongs"
New Yorkers never cook. Their kitchens go unused because the city has everything they need. A New Yorker’s life revolves around being outside the home—out at bodegas buying aspirin, at bars clinking cocktails. Their apartments are smaller. The city is their home. And why wouldn’t it be? Poppyseed bagel, American cheese, ham, egg scrambled soft, ...
Poppyseed bagel, American cheese, ham, egg scrambled soft, extra butter on both sides. After living here for coming up on a year, I know to order quickly. I know my eggs will likely be overcooked to my taste, but I try anyways. The process goes like this: get in line, don’t ask questions, know your order, and tip Ronaldo on the way out. That’s how you know you won’t be given the side eye for grabbing the extra napkins tucked beside the cash register. Also, don’t look at Leno if you see him.
An abrupt door closing behind me and I’m back inside every morning prior, in a rush to get my coffee and breakfast sandwich back to the office. In the first few months, the hard shut of the door slamming behind me felt like the city shut me out with it. I couldn’t tell the difference between a poorly maintained door hinge— rusty, tight on its retraction—and the feeling of unbelonging that comes with a city that, by necessity, insists on anonymity. My no-name face was unfitting amidst the other no-name faces. I hesitated when ordering a medium or large coffee. I asked too many questions. I was from Wisconsin.
Check out the full story in our summer issue, out in July 2023!
Alexandra G. McKay is a freelance writer living in Toronto. She has written for both editorial and commercial audiences, and has been published in The Globe & Mail, Canadian Living, MTV, and Flare. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Book & Media Studies from the University of Toronto and is currently polishing her first novel inspired by her experiences working in Canadian advertising.
READ MORE
Third Prize:
Margaret Watson
Toronto, ON"The Roommates"
There were a lot of young men around in those years: Nicki’s men. Men who ebbed and flowed, dropped in and dropped off. Under-graduate and graduate and law students. Intellectuals and dilettantes, Catholics and Protestants, anglophones and francophones. All with New Testament names and all keen on Nicki. There were those men and then there ...
There were those men and then there was Thomas, Nicki’s boyfriend. One of the first things Nicki told me was that she and Thomas weren’t exclusive. I don’t remember asking for much of an explanation; I didn’t need one. I was a philosophy student and captivated. at the time, by the French existentialists with their ideas about good faith and authenticity. And it struck me as very sophisticated that two people would ignore society’s norms—“reject bourgeois expectations” was how I would have put it then—and made their own rules.
Nicki and I met when we were in second-year university and both taking an intro to epistemology. Lacroix, who taught the course, was a Jesuit. Not a Jesuit in the way some teachers are Socratic, but a real Jesuit who wore a black turtleneck as though it were a clerical collar. Ottawa U had been a Catholic university and some thought it still was, Lacroix among them. When he lectured about the difference between belief and knowledge, he always made a case for the existence of God.
“All the proofs, from Aquinas to Aquinas,” I quipped at the end of one session to no one in particular and certainly not for the professor to hear. Nicki was nearby, stuffing her books into a bag. She heard me and chuckled, said that Lacroix reminded her of one of the priests who used to visit her high school on occasion to lead an assembly or teach a class. Sacred Heart was its name, or Our Lady of Mercy, I can’t recall, but a name like that. It was an all-girls’ school with those uniforms you still see, the tartan kilt, matching pull-over sweater and navy jacket, the school’s crest proudly displayed. Nicki told me about bare legs and knee socks long into North Bay’s frigid winters.
Check out the full story in our summer issue, out in July 2023!
Margaret Watson grew up on a family farm in southwestern Ontario and lives in Toronto. Her stories have appeared in paperplates, FreeFall, Hamilton Arts & Letters, Writer Advice, Streetlight Magazine and The New Quarterly. She is currently pulling these (and other) stories together into a collection focused on memory and belonging.
READ MORE
MRB CREATIVE NON-FICTION CONTEST
Judged by Gillian Sze
First Prize:
Judith Wright
Val Marie, SK"The Pain Scale"
We came through the winter thinking we knew what was essential. I watched the rancher’s cattle scrounge for grass on the wintering grounds. The cattle face east this morning, where the tractor or the quad will appear. They stand perfectly still—vigilant, to a creature—waiting for the rancher to come. Even the new calves, their bellies ...
I called my brother in the city last night to ask about Matty. A few days ago, my niece Matty had her foot amputated, the result of an old injury. At the time I spoke to my brother, he was walking his dogs in the park near his place. I thought you might be asleep, he said. As we talked, I watched the light from the rancher’s tractor bore holes through the darkness.
It was a tough winter, and not just for my brother’s family. The whole country was in the doldrums. November and December saw floods and landslides on the West Coast; in January anti-covid-mandate protests paralyzed the nation. February brought news of war in the Ukraine. By March the world felt the bite of inflation. Here, on the prairies, far removed from the headlines, we were caught up in our own crisis. The ranchers who didn’t cull their herds last fall began the winter with hay shortages. Then came a long cold-spell when the cattle needed more feed. In January, a truck blockade stopped hay transport from the States. And now, a prolonged spring is upon us, with a savage wind and no rain. Round hay-bales are selling for triple the price two springs ago—and there are none to buy.
Daily, the ranchers scour the southwest for feed. This part of the country, my adopted home, shows its bones in spring time. The earth is glacial till, with the thinnest membrane of vegetation. The coulees draw the mist of morning over their contours. Ancient and composed, the hills are at one with scarcity.
Check out our summer issue for the full story, out in July 2023!
Judith Wright is a Canadian writer and retired public health epidemiologist. She first published literary fiction in the 1990’s in Grain, Prairie Fire, and The Fiddlehead, and a novel, The Magpie Summer (Polestar Press). In 2018, Judith self-published a book called Dogwise; What We Learn From Dogs, an exploration of the dog world, based on interviews with handlers of working dogs. Her creative non-fiction stories have appeared in Prairies North Magazine, The Gardener, the Western Producer, and Harrowsmith. A general theme to her writing is exploration of the past or some little-known occupation of the present that shows how people find meaning through experience, and experience the wider world.
READ MORE
Second Prize:
Tanya Bellehumeur-Allatt
Canton de Hatley, QC"5972, 12th Avenue, Rosemont"
July, 1983 When my family came back from Beirut, we took a taxi to 5972 12th Avenue, Rosemont: the one fixed point in the ever-changing landscape of my childhood. Now that my father’s peacekeeping mission was over, Grandmaman and Grandpapa’s brownstone was where we planned to spend the rest of the summer before moving on ...
When my family came back from Beirut, we took a taxi to 5972 12th Avenue, Rosemont: the one fixed point in the ever-changing landscape of my childhood. Now that my father’s peacekeeping mission was over, Grandmaman and Grandpapa’s brownstone was where we planned to spend the rest of the summer before moving on to our next military posting.
I was the first one out of the taxi and into my grandmother’s downy embrace. She ran her hands over my braids and called me belle enfant and mon amour. I pressed my face into her dress, breathing in the lilac and mint of her face cream and talcum powder while she thanked la Sainte Vièrge, the angels in Heaven and le Bon Dieu.
Her ample bosom heaved, and she made choking, gasping sounds. I wasn’t sure what to do. I’d never seen an adult cry like that. Part of me wished I could do it too. I craved the emotional release, but I felt nothing but numbness. It was as if I had turned into one of the life-size figures in the Montreal wax museum we’d visited the summer before, for my twelfth birthday. Only eleven months had gone by, but it felt like years. I nestled deeper into Grandmaman, letting her tears take the place of my own.
My grandparents were safe and unchanging, their brownstone like a walled fortress. Nothing bad could happen to me here, surrounded by their love.
Grandpapa pressed a cotton handkerchief into Grandmaman’s hand while reaching to embrace my mother. “For a while there, we thought we might not see you again.” He cradled my mother’s face as if she were a child and traced her cheekbones with his fingers.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Maman kissed Grandmaman on both cheeks. “I told you we were fine. The government always takes good care of us. Let’s go inside.” She seemed keen to get off the porch and into the house. Etienne, my fourteen-year-old brother, slipped behind her, leaving my father and grandfather to deal with the luggage.
For full story, check out our summer issue, out in July, 2023!
Tanya Bellehumeur-Allatt is the author of the critically acclaimed Peacekeeper’s Daughter: A Middle East Memoir (Thistledown, 2021), which was a finalist for the Quebec Writer’s Federation Mavis Gallant Award for Nonfiction. Her debut poetry collection Chaos Theories of Goodness was released with Shoreline Press in June 2022. Read more about Tanya’s writing at https://tanyaallattbellehumeur.com/
READ MORE
Third Prize:
Kate Bird
Vancouver, BC"St. Lawrence"
The first time I was ever on the St. Lawrence River was with my father. He would load my mother, my older sister, and me, into his motorboat and navigate from the Verdun Yacht Club to one of the river’s many offshore islands for a picnic. In one of my favourite photographs, taken on the ...
My father’s lifelong passion for the stretch of the St. Lawrence River between the Island of Montreal and the south shore, from the Port of Montreal to Lachine and beyond, became the backdrop against which our lives played out. The locus of our family geography, the river was an ever-changing constant that flowed through our lives, sometimes even past our front door. How the river looked and smelled and sounded, in every season of the year, was an elemental force that drew us and held us and shaped us. The living, watery story of the river, and my early life living near it, flowed into me.
*
It’s easy for Montrealers to forget that they live on an island. The Island of Montreal— Île de Montréal in French or Kawenote Teiontiakon in Kanien’kéha or Mohawk—is formed by the confluence of the Ottawa River to the north and the St. Lawrence River to the south. After the rivers merge, the St. Lawrence—fleuve Saint-Laurent or Ken’tarókwen— flows northeastward to the sea. The river was named in 1535 by French explorer Jacques Cartier, who sailed up the river on the feast day of St. Lawrence, the patron saint of archivists and librarians, like me.
Montrealers frequently orient themselves to Mount Royal, an iconic visual landmark topped by a thirty-metre illuminated cross that is visible for miles, and the river, with its limited direct public access, was largely neglected and unappreciated. In The Seven Rivers of Canada, author Hugh MacLennan wrote, “yet the St. Lawrence is more than a river, more even than a system of waters. It has made nations. It has been the moulder of the lives of millions—perhaps by now hundreds of millions—in a multitude of different ways. At some point in my middle years, I realized that I myself belonged to the people whose lives the river has affected.”
Our family also belonged to the St. Lawrence River.
For full story, check out our summer issue, out in July, 2023!
In 2022, Kate Bird’s work was published in the February and April issues of The Sun Magazine, the spring issues of The Phare and Tangled Locks Journal, and featured on Writers Radio. Her essays were longlisted for the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize and the 2022 Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest, and shortlisted for The Malahat Review’s 2021 Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Prize and The Phare’s WriteWords 2022 contest. She is the author of of the bestselling book Vancouver in the Seventies: Photos from A Decade That Changed the City, as well as City On Edge: A Rebellious Century of Vancouver Protests, Riots and Strikes, and Magic Moments in BC Sports.
READ MORE