CBC

The Cirque du Soleil studios in Montreal and York University's Schulich School of Business have earned their designers the Governor General's Award for Architecture. The Canada Council for the Arts announced12 winners of the award, given to honour outstanding achievement on recent architectural projects, on Monday. Eight of the winning projects were in Quebec, two in Toronto and the others in Winnipeg and Naramata, B.C. Yves Gosselin, president of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, said there were a high number of winners in Quebec because of the architectural competition policy in the province, which is helping create "superior buildings." Quebec holds a design competition on all public projects, a process that has tended to encourage creative design, Gosselin said.