Rush's Moving Pictures is one of the forty Canadian albums from the '60s through the first half of the '00s to have been nominated for the 2nd annual Slaight Family Polaris Heritage Prize. The list was revealed earlier this week at the Polaris Music Prize gala in Toronto. From Billboard.com:

... Ten albums are honored in four time periods, 1960-1975; 1976-1985; 1986-1995; and 1996-2005. The prize was launched last year to recognize albums that may have made the short-list for the Polaris Music Prize were it in existence then.

Like the Polaris Music Prize, albums are selected based on artistic merit without regards to sales or affiliations. "This award is Polaris' version of the Hall of Fame, intended to recognize classic Canadian albums released before 2006, the year the original Polaris Prize started," said Derrick Ross of Slaight Music onstage at the Carlu.

The list of albums has been increased to 10 titles (from last year's five) for each time period, selected by four separate juries of music critics, journalists, broadcasters and programmers from across Canada. Another change for 2016 is two albums from each era will win, one selected by a jury, the other by public vote.

"I liked the idea of the critics picking one of those records," Polaris Music Prize founder Steve Jordan told Billboard backstage. "We do want to get fan engagement and the public engagement, but we don't want artists who are less popular and don't have that ability to mobilize a fan-base not to get the recognition."

He says it will not be possible for the same album to be picked by the fans and jury. "No, we'll just go down the list." ...

Voting is now open to the public at the Polaris Music Prize website here. Winners will be announced on October 24th. Moving Pictures was also nominated last year but lost to The Trinity Session by the Cowboy Junkies.