A Toronto priest has won a top literary prize for her book on the homelessness crisis

Rev. Canon Maggie Helwig stands amid structures as Toronto city workers prepare to clear the unhoused persons encampment at St. Stephen-in-the-Fields Church, in Toronto, on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

An Anglican priest has won a top literary prize for her book about Canada’s homelessness crisis.

Maggie Helwig received the $40,000 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing at a ceremony in Ottawa on Wednesday night.

She took home the award for “Encampment: Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community.”

The book follows Helwig’s fight to allow an encampment to remain in the yard beside the Anglican church in Toronto’s Kensington Market where she is the priest.

Helwig had to go up against various authorities who wanted to clear the churchyard, and the city ultimately tore the encampment down in October, five months after the book was published.

The judges call “Encampment” “a clear-eyed call to not look away, but to deepen understanding of the issue” of homelessness.

The book also won the 2025 Toronto Book Award.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 30, 2026.

Nicole Thompson, The Canadian Press