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This prize was established to honour the legacy of UVic professor emeritus John Money, fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Born in Coventry, UK to Hany and Dorothy Money née Poole, he was educated at Uppingham and, after national service in the Royal Navy, he went to Cambridge in 1960 to study history. The result in 1967 was a PhD thesis, the first of its kind which sought to break new ground by looking at the social history of ideas in the Provinces, specifically the West Midlands, instead of London. John came to the University of Victoria in 1967 and remained there till his retirement in 2004. During that time he served as chair of the history department, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science, and was a long serving member of the senate. He very much enjoyed being involved in the beginnings of a university, which is now one of the leading schools in Canada.

John was a voracious reader and researcher. His first book, Experience and Identity: Birmingham and the West Midlands 1760-1793 (which discussed the cultural history of the Industrial Revolution) is still acknowledged as a pioneering work in the field. John had wide ranging interests and contributed to prestigious journals in the areas of the commercial marketing of knowledge, the evolution and influence of free masonry, the emergence of a "middle class" mentality and the interactions of science, technology and dissent in the English Provinces. One of these articles, appearing in the Cambridge Historical Journal, is distinguished by being one of the ten most cited by other historians. More recently, John devoted himself to producing an edition (with commentary) of the diarist John Cannon, a self-taught Somerset farmer's son. This was seen as a work of lasting value as it documented the writer's growing awareness of himself and his times, again largely in the Provinces outside of London.