[1] The award was administered and presented by the Canadian Library Association (CLA)[1] until the organization disbanded in 2016.
It was inaugurated in 1947 by an award to Roderick Haig-Brown for Starbuck Valley Winter[a] and it was be presented to one book every year without exception from 1963 to 2016.
[1] The companion CLA Young Adult Book Award was presented annually from 1981.
[3] Corresponding criteria for the YA Book Award are "[appeal] to young adults between the ages of 13 and 18" and "fiction (novel, collection of short stories, or graphic novel)".
The writers and CLA award dates were Richard S. Lambert 1950, Farley Mowat 1958, Kevin Major 1979, Cora Taylor 1986, Janet Lunn 1987, Michael Bedard 1991, Tim Wynne-Jones 1994, Pamela Porter 2006, Susin Nielsen 2013.