Emceed by Susan Musgrave, the 20th annual B.C. Book Prizes were hosted by The Honourable Lieutenant Governor Iona Campagnolo at Government House in Victoria, May 1st, 2004. Few speeches rose to the occasion but the grandeur of the venue was a compensation for those who attended. It marked the third time in 20 years that the event was held in Victoria.

Accepting her second Ethel Wilson Prize, Caroline Adderson praised her publishing house for its attentiveness ("They might be a cult as well as publisher";) and she thanked the six women with spinal cord injuries who helped with her research for the novel. "It's an honour to be nominated with my fellow writers,"; she said. "That's the prize. The award is secondary.";

Scott McIntyre praised his author Samuel Bawlf's "ten years of passion"; that led to their Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Award and he thanked the Hon. Iona Campagnolo for her respectfulness, adding the B.C. book industry "has earned its way the hard way."; Bawlf said, "It's been a long time since I've been this nervous. I accept this award with deepest thanks.";

"Wow. I'm really, really surprised to have won this award,"; said First Nations' poet Philip Kevin Paul, who praised his 'poetry parents' Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane and described his Livesay Prize-winning collection as "an elegy to Saanich and also an elegy to my parents and to my mentor.";

P.K. Page confessed that when she received a phone call from the Lt. Governor, her first reaction was, "Good Lord, what on earth could I have done!"; She said she was particularly pleased the first recipient of the new award for literary excellence is a poet. "Poetry, in a race with prose, always trails the field,"; she said.

Lt. Governor Campagnolo was praised for being the first Lieutenant Governor in Canada to sponsor a literary prize. In fact, the Lieutenant Governor's office in British Columbia has supported the annual literary medal and citations for B.C. historical writing, in conjunction with the B.C. Historical Society, since 1983. The evening marked the third time in 20 years that the gala was held in Victoria. It has been held 14 times in Vancouver and once in Penticton, in 1993.

Maria Tippett, Dennis Foon and Donald Luxon were not in attendance to receive their prizes. Tippett was in Cambridge; Foon was in Ontario. Luxton was in Vancouver accepting another prize. Compiled and edited by Luxton, Building the West: The Early Architects of British Columbia (Talonbooks) had previously won the Mark Madoff Award for Outstanding Publication by the Hallmark Society, as well as a City of Vancouver Heritage Award of Honour.