In 1976 the CBA/ABC established a cash award “for the best oral presentation by a student of their own research, as a contributed paper at the Annual Meeting”. In 1978 the award was named in memory of Lionel Cinq-Mars (1919-1973), a charter member of CBA/ABC and a member (one of the Directors) of the first Executive (1965-66). He also served another term as a Director of CBA/ABC from 1967 to 1969.
Cinq-Mars obtained a B.A. from Laval (1940), a B.Sc.Agr. from the College d’agriculture at La Pocatie (1944), and a M.Sc. from Macdonald College (1949). He worked for several years (1948-62) as a plant pathologist for the Federal Department of Agriculture (his specialty was apple diseases). He was appointed Professor of Botany at Laval in 1962, and became popular as a teacher and researcher. In 1968 he was officially appointed Conservateur de l’Herbier Louis-Marie, although he had been responsible for the reorganization of the herbarium since his arrival at Laval. Cinq-Mars was an expert field botanist, amassing a personal herbarium of about 10,000 sheets. He was considered an expert on the genera Viola and Amelanchier. He led three field trips for the Montreal Botanical Congress (1959) and headed the organizing committee for the 1970 CBA/ABC Annual Meeting at Laval.
Any student enrolled at a Canadian institution of higher learning is eligible, as well as Canadian students at foreign institutions, both undergraduate and graduate. Abstracts must be submitted for the Annual Meeting at which the student will compete for the Award. To ensure that each student in the competition has a fair evaluation, the award has two sub-categories depending on the research stage that students are at:
Proposal-stage. Value: $250. Rewards the best plan for future research outlining its rationale and significance; the questions/objectives/hypotheses adopted and the methodology that will be used. If some preliminary results are available, they should be presented in the context of “what is next”. Both undergraduate and graduate students are welcome to apply, but the latter must be in their first year of studies.
Results-stage. Value: $500. Rewards research that was completed (or nearly-completed); focusses on the results obtained, their discussion and importance.
Students who wish to compete must indicate this by checking the appropriate box on the abstract form, including the stage of research subcategory: proposal or results. Oral presentations will be evaluated by a panel of judges (at least one from each of the sections of CBA) which is chaired by the President-Elect. For details about submission deadlines see the Annual Meeting Website.