2022 Canadian Atheist Awards – Nominations

by | March 28, 2022

You may have been thinking the fifth annual Canadian Atheist Awards were cancelled. No such luck!

Canadian Atheist award statuette

However, the awards are going to be very different this year.

The awards will be limited this year

Due to an extreme lack of time available to me, and a seemingly never-ending series of catastrophes I have to respond to—as I write this, my father is in the hospital (he’s fine, I’m actually waiting for the call to go pick him up), and my other housemate has just been diagnosed with COVID… really not kidding about the “never-ending” thing here… also the lights in the bathroom just burnt out and I have to fix that, too, though I admit this is not as big a concern as the oth—

Ahem.

Due to stuff, I haven’t been able to do the awards the same way I have in previous years. In previous years, I did the awards in two phases: for each category, first I studied all the major stories and events of the previous year to select the nominees, then I researched each nominee in detail in order to decide on the winner.

This year, I managed to get the first phase done… very late, but it was done! Then I started to lay into the second phase. But these days, I have a serious lack of time available. One of my jobs happens to be at a company that services the hotel industry, and as the pandemic is “over”, and the industry is ramping up toward a recovery, we are absolutely swamped with work. I’m doing 6-day weeks, and we’re still doing jobs with a 2021 due date. Add to that the aforementioned stream of catastrophes, and I’ve been trying to do the awards research in bits and snatches of a half-hour here, twenty minutes there…. Turns out that’s not a very effective way to do research, and I started finding that I was re-researching things I’d already done, mixing up information from different people, and generally making a massive mess of things. Also, I was barely progressing, so it was garbage research, and it was still going to take months.

I doggedly kept at it, but eventually, I realized I had to give up the ghost and cut my losses. Rather than deliver a shitty awards season several months late, I decided to scale things back.

No nominees, just winners

So, the normal procedure is that today I would be announcing the categories, and the nominees in each category. Then, next week, I would wrong long blurbs about each nominee, and ultimately the winner.

This year, I will only be announcing the categories today. Not the nominees. In fact, there will be no “nominees”. Instead, next week, I will simply announce the winner in each category. And there will be no long blurbs.

I don’t intend for this to be a precedent. I hope that next year, things will have settled enough that I can return to the “standard” CA awards format. But at least by doing things this way, I can actually get the awards done this year.

But before we get into this year’s awards, let’s take a look back at last year.

The 2021 Canadian Atheist award winners

The 2021 Canadian Atheist awards had 2 categories.

In the category of Story of the year, awarded to the news or cultural story that captured the most interest or had the most impact among Canadian atheists in 2020… the winner was: the conversion therapy ban.

And in the category of Person of the year, awarded to the person who had greatest positive impact in Canadian secularism, humanism, atheism and freethought in 2020… the winner was: Teale Phelps Bondaroff.

The 2022 Canadian Atheist awards

This is where, in a normal year, I’d be announcing the nominees in each category. As explained above, that won’t be happening this year. I will, however, announce the categories.

The winners will be announced starting , one category per day, with a final summary post to wrap up the awards on .

The categories are:

Story of the Year
This award is for the news or cultural story that captured the most interest or had the most impact among Canadian atheists in 2021. Because the award goes to an abstract story, there won’t be any specific recipients.
Person of the Year
This award goes to the person who had greatest positive impact in Canadian secularism, humanism, atheism and freethought in 2021. The recipient won’t necessarily be Canadian, or atheist, but being Canadian and atheist will certainly help their chances.

Stay tuned for the winners!

As mentioned, winners will be announced starting , one category per day. Stay tuned!

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