 The award came in the wake of the shooting attack on the magazine's Paris offices in January 2015.Ondaatje and several other hosts condemned the attack on the office of "Charlie Hebdo", but claimed that due to the magazine's history of anti-Islam content it should not have been honoured.Since the 1960s, Ondaatje has been involved with Toronto's Coach House Books, supporting the independent small press by working as a poetry editor.