William Stener Ferguson (born October 12, 1964) is a Canadian travel writer and novelist who won the Scotiabank Giller Prize for his novel 419. Ferguson was born fourth of six children in the former fur trading post of Fort Vermilion, Alberta, approximately north of Edmonton. His parents split up when he was six years old, during a brief interlude in Regina. At the age of 16, he quit school and moved to Saskatoon, Dauphin, and Red Deer. Ferguson is also an outspoken critic of the monarchy of Canada, both publicly and in his books, and has previously been quoted in the media during debates on Canada's monarchy. He also profiled Canadian secessionist and independence movements (such as the "Republic of Madawaska") in his book Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw (2004). Personal life Ferguson completed his high school education at Lindsay Thurber Comprehensive High School (L.T.C.H.S.) in Red Deer, and was awarded the Alexander Rutherford Scholarships in all available categories. He then joined the Canadian government funded programs Katimavik and Canada World Youth. The latter program sent him to Ecuador in South America, as described in his book Why I Hate Canadians. He studied film production and screenwriting at York University in Toronto, graduating with a B.F.A. (Special Honours) in 1990. He currently resides in Calgary, Alberta. His son Genki Ferguson is the author of the novel Satellite Love. His older brother, Ian Ferguson, won the Stephen Leacock Medal for his memoir Village of the Small Houses in 2004. Another brother, Sean Ferguson, is currently the dean of music at McGill University. Ferguson joined the JET Programme in the early 1990s, and lived in Kyushu, Japan, for five years teaching English. He married his wife, Terumi, in Kumamoto in 1995. After coming back from Japan, he experienced a severe reverse culture shock, which became the basis for his first book, Why I Hate Canadians. He details his experiences hitchhiking across Japan in Hokkaido Highway Blues, later retitled Hitching Rides with Buddha. Awards and honours Ferguson was a runner-up for the 1999 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction for I Was a Teenage Katima Victim: A Canadian Odyssey. Ferguson has won the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour three times: first for Generica (later renamed Happiness) in 2002, then for Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw in 2005 and for his travel memoir Beyond Belfast in 2010. Ferguson won the 2012 Giller Prize