Longtime York University faculty member and esteemed poet, novelist and essayist Hédi Bouraoui has been recognized as a Member of the Order of Canada. Bouraoui is among the 105 new appointments to the Order of Canada announced on June 28 by Governor General of Canada Julie Payette.

The new member list includes three Companions (C.C.), 20 Officers (O.C.) and 82 Members (C.M.). There were nine individuals with connections to York University appointed to the Order of Canada. Recipients will be invited to accept their insignia at a ceremony to be held at a later date.

Bouraoui is currently the writer-in-residence in York University’s Department of French Studies in the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies (LA&PS). His first role with York University was the coordinator of French in the former Division of Literatures and Language Training. There, he there developed the Créaculture program, which was widely adopted in North America.

Bouraoui also served two terms (10 years) as master of Stong College, where he created the college identity of “transculturalism.” He then moved on to chair the French Department for five years. In 2002, he founded the Canada-Mediterranean Centre at York, which focuses on Maghrebian and Franco-Ontarian literatures. It is the only centre of its kind in Canada.

He is the recipient of numerous national and international honours. One of the most prestigious of these honours was when the French Government awarded him the title of Chevalier des Palmes Académiques in 1996. He was then promoted to Officier des Palmes Académiques in 2004

In 1997, he was elected a member of the Royal Society of Canada. In 1999, he received the Prix du Nouvel Ontario of the Nuit de l’Étang, Sudbury, for his contributions to Francophone arts and culture in Ontario. In 2003, he received an honorary degree from Laurentian University in Sudbury. In 2005, an international conference on his work was organized at York University, and the Proceedings, Perspectives Critiques sur l’oeuvre d’Hédi Bouraoui(edited by Professors Elizabeth Sabiston and Suzanne Crosta) was published in 2007.

He continues to do both library and field research for his books on the Mediterranean islands, south, north, east, and west Mediterranean – Kerkenna, Djerba, Sardinia, Sicily, Corsica, Crete, Majorca, Malta. His research of Maghrebian and Franco-Ontarian literatures and cultures, as well as French and Francophone, is also ongoing.