John Eerkes-Medrano

Sue Lebrecht and Susan Noppe. Adventuring around Vancouver Island: Beachcombing to Bungy Jumping. Vancouver: Greystone Books, 1997.

Toronto, May 11, 1998—The Editors' Association of Canada (EAC) named John Eerkes-Medrano of Victoria, BC, as winner of the Tom Fairley Award for Editorial Excellence for 1997. The announcement was made at the Saturday night banquet for EAC's annual conference, held in Toronto this year. This is the 15th annual Fairley Award.

Eerkes-Medrano was given the award in recognition of his work on Adventuring around Vancouver Island, a guidebook by Sue Lebrecht and Susan Noppe, published by Greystone Books, a division of Douglas and McIntyre Ltd., Vancouver. The judges commented on the editor's close and consistent attention to detail and his extraordinary patience, tact, persistence and level-headedness in dealing with two authors in two cities and a manuscript that needed extensive cuts to meet the publisher's requirements.

Eerkes-Medrano -- who also won the 1984 Fairley Award for A Vast and Magnificent Land -- is well known in publishing circles both in Toronto, where he lived until 1993, and in his new home province of British Columbia. He has been working as a freelance editor since 1980, primarily on school textbooks and trade nonfiction. His speciality -- and favourite topic -- is history.

EAC also named two honourable mentions. Louis Majeau was cited for his work on a Web site, Profils de l'arctique canadien, the French-language version of an English-language site, Canadian Arctic Profiles, which was created by students and financed by the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The judges noted Majeau's skill in transforming a fragmented text into a readable electronic document.

Freya Godard was honoured for Misconceiving Canada: The Struggle for National Unity, a book by Kenneth McRoberts, published by Oxford University Press, Toronto. Godard's meticulous work, the judges said, was an excellent example of reworking prose to illuminate the meaning of the text.