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The Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction is a Canadian literary award that annually recognizes one Canadian writer for a non-fiction book written in English. Since 1987[1] it is one of fourteen Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit, seven each for creators of English- and French-language books. Originally presented by the Canadian Authors Association,[clarification needed] the Governor General's Awards program became a project of the Canada Council for the Arts in 1959.[2]
The program was created in 1937 and inaugurated that November for 1936 publications in two English-language categories, conventionally called the 1936 Governor General's Awards.[1] Beginning in 1942 there were two winners annually, with separate awards presented for creative non-fiction and academic non-fiction;[3] however, this was discontinued after the 1958 awards, and then returned to a single non-fiction category.
The winners alone were announced until 1979, when Canada Council released in advance a shortlist of three nominees. Since then, the advance shortlist has numbered three to five.
1930s
| Year | Author | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 1936 | Thomas Beattie Roberton | TBR: Newspaper Pieces |
| 1937 | Stephen Leacock | My Discovery of the West |
| 1938 | John Murray Gibbon | Canadian Mosaic |
| 1939 | Laura Salverson | Confessions of an Immigrant's Daughter |
1940s
| Year | Author | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 1940 | J. F. C. Wright | Slava Bohu |
| 1941 | Emily Carr | Klee Wyck |
| 1942 | Bruce Hutchison | The Unknown Country |
| Edgar McInnis | The Unguarded Frontier | |
| 1943 | E. K. Brown | On Canadian Poetry |
| John D. Robins | The Incomplete Anglers | |
| 1944 | Dorothy Duncan | Partner in Three Worlds |
| Edgar McInnis | The War: Fourth Year | |
| 1945 | Ross Munro | Gauntlet to Overlord |
| Evelyn M. Richardson | We Keep a Light | |
| 1946 | Frederick Philip Grove | In Search of Myself |
| Arthur R. M. Lower | Colony to Nation | |
| 1947 | William Sclater | Haida |
| R. MacGregor Dawson | The Government of Canada | |
| 1948 | Thomas H. Raddall | Halifax, Warden of the North |
| C. P. Stacey | The Canadian Army, 1939-1945 | |
| 1949 | Hugh MacLennan | Cross-country |
| R. MacGregor Dawson | Democratic Government in Canada |
1950s
| Year | Author | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 1950 | Marjorie Wilkins Campbell | The Saskatchewan |
| W. L. Morton | The Progressive Party in Canada | |
| 1951 | Frank MacKinnon | The Government of Prince Edward Island |
| Josephine Phelan | The Ardent Exile | |
| 1952 | Donald G. Creighton | John A. Macdonald, The Young Politician |
| Bruce Hutchison | The Incredible Canadian | |
| 1953 | J. M. S. Careless | Canada, A Story of Challenge |
| N. J. Berrill | Sex and the Nature of Things | |
| 1954 | Hugh MacLennan | Thirty and Three |
| Arthur R. M. Lower | This Most Famous Stream | |
| 1955 | N. J. Berrill | Man's Emerging Mind |
| Donald G. Creighton | John A. Macdonald, The Old Chieftain | |
| 1956 | Pierre Berton | The Mysterious North |
| Joseph Lister Rutledge | Century of Conflict | |
| 1957 | Thomas H. Raddall | The Path of Destiny |
| Bruce Hutchison | Canada: Tomorrow's Giant | |
| 1958 | Pierre Berton | Klondike |
| Joyce Hemlow | The History of Fanny Burney | |
| 1959 | No award presented | |
1960s
| Year | Author | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 1960 | Frank H. Underhill | In Search of Canadian Liberalism |
| 1961 | T. A. Goudge | The Ascent of Life |
| 1962 | Marshall McLuhan | The Gutenberg Galaxy |
| 1963 | J.M.S. Careless | Brown of the Globe |
| 1964 | Phyllis Grosskurth | John Addington Symonds |
| 1965 | James Eayrs | In Defence of Canada |
| 1966 | George Woodcock | The Crystal Spirit: A Study of George Orwell |
| 1967 | Norah Story | The Oxford Companion to Canadian History and Literature |
| 1968 | Mordecai Richler | Hunting Tigers Under Glass |
| 1969 | No award presented | |
1970s
| Year | Author | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 1970 | No award presented | |
| 1971 | Pierre Berton | The Last Spike |
| 1972 | No award presented | |
| 1973 | Michael Bell | Painters in a New Land |
| 1974 | Charles Ritchie | The Siren Years |
| 1975 | Marion MacRae and Anthony Adamson | Hallowed Walls |
| 1976 | Carl Berger | The Writing of Canadian History |
| 1977 | Frank Scott | Essays on the Constitution |
| 1978 | Roger Caron | Go-Boy! Memories of a Life Behind Bars |
| 1979 | Maria Tippett | Emily Carr |
| Robert Bothwell and William Kilbourn | C.D. Howe | |
| Larry Pratt and John Richards | Prairie Capitalism | |
1980s
| Year | Author | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 1980 | Jeffrey Simpson | Discipline of Power: The Conservative Interlude and the Liberal Restoration |
| John Fraser | The Chinese: Portrait of a People | |
| Donald MacKay | Scotland Farewell: The People of the Hector | |
| 1981 | George Calef | Caribou and the Barren-Lands |
| Claude Bissell | The Young Vincent Massey | |
| Elspeth Cameron | Hugh MacLennan: A Writer's Life | |
| 1982 | Christopher Moore | Louisbourg Portraits: Life in an Eighteenth- Century Garrison Town |
| Northrop Frye | The Great Code: The Bible and Literature | |
| Christina McCall-Newman | Grits: An Intimate Portrait of The Liberal Party | |
| 1983 | Jeffery Williams | Byng of Vimy: General and Governor General |
| Ken Dryden | The Game | |
| H S Ferns | Reading from Left to Right: One Man's Political History | |
| 1984 | Sandra Gwyn | The Private Capital: Ambition and Love in the Age of Macdonald and Laurier |
| Bob Beal and Rod Macleod | Prairie Fire: The 1885 North-West Rebellion | |
| Graham Fraser | P.Q.: René Lévesque and the Parti Québécois in Power | |
| 1985 | Ramsay Cook | The Regenerators: Social Criticism in Late Victorian English Canada |
| Michael D. Behiels | Prelude to Quebec's Quiet Revolution: Liberalism versus Neo-nationalism | |
| John Herd Thompson | Canada 1922-1939: Decades of Discord | |
| P. B. Waite | The Man from Halifax: Sir John Thompson, Prime Minister | |
| 1986 | Northrop Frye | Northrop Frye on Shakespeare |
| Claude Bissell | The Imperial Canadian | |
| Phyllis Grosskurth | Melanie Klein | |
| Witold Rybczynski | Home | |
| 1987 | Michael Ignatieff | The Russian Album |
| Janice Kulyk Keefer | Under Eastern Eyes | |
| P. K. Page | Brazilian Journal | |
| 1988 | Anne Collins | In the Sleep Room |
| Pierre Berton | The Arctic Grail | |
| Alan Borovoy | When Freedoms Collide | |
| Edith Iglauer | Fishing with John | |
| 1989 | Robert Calder | Willie: The Life of W. Somerset Maugham |
| Janice Boddy | Wombs and Alien Spirits | |
| Robert MacNeil | Wordstruck | |
| Dale A. Russell | An Odyssey in Time: The Dinosaurs of North America |
1990s
| Year | Author | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 1990 | Stephen Clarkson and Christina McCall | Trudeau and Our Times |
| Timothy Findley | Inside Memory: Pages from a Writer's Workbook | |
| Eugene Forsey | A Life on the Fringe: The Memoirs of Eugene Forsey | |
| Ron Graham | God's Dominion: A Sceptic's Quest | |
| James King | The Last Modern: A Life of Herbert Read | |
| 1991 | Robert Hunter and Robert Calihoo | Occupied Canada: A Young White Man Discovers His Unsuspected Past |
| Northrop Frye | Words With Power | |
| Kristjana Gunnars | Zero Hour | |
| D. L. MacDonald | Poor Polidori: A Critical Biography of the Author of "The Vampyre" | |
| Rosemary Sullivan | By Heart: Elizabeth Smart, A Life | |
| 1992 | Maggie Siggins | Revenge of the Land: A Century of Greed, Tragedy and Murder on a Saskatchewan Farm |
| Michael Bliss | Plague: A Story of Smallpox in Montreal | |
| Ken Cuthbertson | Inside: The Biography of John Gunther | |
| Michael R. Marrus | Mr. Sam: The Life and Times of Samuel Bronfman | |
| 1993 | Karen Connelly | Touch the Dragon |
| Marq de Villiers | The Heartbreak Grape: A Journey in Search of the Perfect Pinot Noir | |
| Marian Fowler | In a Gilded Cage | |
| Jane Jacobs | Systems of Survival | |
| Noel Mostert | Frontiers | |
| 1994 | John A. Livingston | Rogue Primate: An Exploration of Human Domestication |
| Sharon Butala | The Perfection of the Morning: An Apprenticeship in Nature | |
| Denise Chong | The Concubine's Children: Portrait of a Family | |
| Joan Haggerty | The Invitation: A Memoir of Family Love and Reconciliation | |
| Peter Larisey | Light for a Cold Land: Lawren Harris's Work and Life-An Interpretation | |
| 1995 | Rosemary Sullivan | Shadow Maker: The Life of Gwendolyn MacEwen |
| Charles Foran | The Last House of Ulster: A Family in Belfast | |
| Linda McQuaig | Shooting the Hippo | |
| Sid Marty | Leaning on the Wind | |
| 1996 | John Ralston Saul | The Unconscious Civilization |
| Roy MacGregor | The Home Team: Fathers, Sons & Hockey | |
| T. F. Rigelhof | A Blue Boy in a Black Dress | |
| Lake Sagaris | After the First Death: A Journey Through Chile, Time, Mind | |
| Merilyn Simonds | The Convict Lover: A True Story | |
| 1997 | Rachel Manley | Drumblair: Memories of a Jamaican Childhood |
| Wade Davis | One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest | |
| Catherine Dunphy | Morgentaler: A Difficult Hero | |
| Terry Glavin | This Ragged Place: Travels Across the Landscape | |
| Blair Stonechild and Bill Waiser | Loyal Till Death: Indians and the North-West Rebellion | |
| 1998 | David Adams Richards | Lines on the Water: A Fisherman's Life on the Miramichi |
| Wayne Grady | The Quiet Limit of the World: A Journey to the North Pole to Investigate Global Warming | |
| Charlotte Gray | Mrs. King: The Life and Times of Isabel Mackenzie King | |
| Judy Schultz | Mamie's Children: Three Generations of Prairie Women | |
| Rudy Wiebe and Yvonne Johnson | Stolen Life: The Journey of a Cree Woman | |
| 1999 | Marq de Villiers | Water |
| Donald Harman Akenson | Surpassing Wonder | |
| Michael Bliss | William Osler | |
| Wayson Choy | Paper Shadows: A Chinatown Childhood | |
| Wayne Johnston | Baltimore's Mansion |
2000s
| Year | Author | Title | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | Nega Mezlekia | Notes from the Hyena's Belly | |
| Robert Bringhurst | A Story as Sharp as a Knife | ||
| Trevor Herriot | River in a Dry Land | ||
| A. B. McKillop | The Spinster and the Prophet | ||
| 2001 | Thomas Homer-Dixon | The Ingenuity Gap | |
| Susan Crean | The Laughing One: A Journey to Emily Carr | ||
| Ross A. Laird | Grain of Truth: The Ancient Lessons of Craft | ||
| Alberto Manguel | Reading Pictures: A History of Love and Hate | ||
| Jack Todd | The Taste of Metal: A Deserter's Story | ||
| 2002 | Andrew Nikiforuk | Saboteurs: Wiebo Ludwig's War Against Big Oil | |
| Carolyn Abraham | Possessing Genius: The Bizarre Odyssey of Einstein's Brain | ||
| Jill Frayne | Starting Out in the Afternoon: A Mid-Life Journey into Wild Land | ||
| Stephen Henighan | When Words Deny the World: The Reshaping of Canadian Writing | ||
| Don McKay | Vis à Vis: Field Notes on Poetry & Wilderness | ||
| 2003 | Margaret MacMillan | Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World | |
| Andrew Clark | A Keen Soldier: The Execution of Second World War Private Harold Pringle | ||
| Andrew Cohen | While Canada Slept: How We Lost Our Place in the World | ||
| Maggie de Vries | Vancouver, for Missing Sarah: A Vancouver Woman Remembers Her Vanished Sister | ||
| Ross King | Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling | ||
| 2004 | Roméo Dallaire | Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda | |
| Anne Coleman | I'll Tell You a Secret: A Memory of Seven Summers | ||
| Christopher Dewdney | Acquainted With the Night: Excursions Through the World After Dark | ||
| Jane Jacobs | Dark Age Ahead | ||
| Jan Zwicky | Wisdom & Metaphor | ||
| 2005 | John Vaillant | The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed | [5] |
| Ted Bishop | Riding with Rilke: Reflections on Motorcycles and Books | ||
| Michael Mitchell | The Molly Fire | ||
| Edward Shorter | Written in the Flesh: A History of Desire | ||
| Jessica Warner | The Incendiary: The Misadventures of John the Painter, First Modern Terrorist | ||
| 2006 | Ross King | The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism | |
| Afua Cooper | The Hanging of Angélique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montréal | ||
| Susanne Reber and Robert Renaud | Starlight Tour: The Last, Lonely Night of Neil Stonechild | ||
| Michael Strangelove | The Empire of Mind: Digital Piracy and the Anti-Capitalist Movement | ||
| Christine Wiesenthal | The Half-Lives of Pat Lowther | ||
| 2007 | Karolyn Smardz Frost | I've Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad | |
| Rodrigo Bascunan and Christian Pearce | Enter the Babylon System: Unpacking Gun Culture from Samuel Colt to 50 Cent | ||
| John English | Citizen of the World: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Volume One: 1919-1968 | ||
| Stephanie Nolen | 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa | ||
| Bridget Stutchbury | Silence of the Songbirds: How We Are Losing the World's Songbirds and What We Can Do to Save Them | ||
| 2008 | Christie Blatchford | Fifteen Days: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army | [6] |
| Douglas Hunter | God’s Mercies: Rivalry, Betrayal and the Dream of Discovery | ||
| Sid Marty | The Black Grizzly of Whiskey Creek | ||
| James Orbinski | An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action in the Twenty-first Century | ||
| Chris Turner | The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need | ||
| 2009 | M. G. Vassanji | A Place Within: Rediscovering India | [7] |
| Randall Hansen | Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942-45 | ||
| Trevor Herriot | Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the World of Grassland Birds | ||
| Eric Margolis | American Raj: Liberation or Domination? (Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World) | ||
| Eric Siblin | The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece |
2010s
| Year | Author | Title | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | Allan Casey | Lakeland: Journeys into the Soul of Canada | |
| Elizabeth Abbott | A History of Marriage | ||
| Ian Brown | The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Search for His Disabled Son | ||
| Karen Connelly | Burmese Lessons: A Love Story | ||
| John English | Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 1968-2000 | ||
| 2011 | Charles Foran | Mordecai: The Life and Times | |
| Nathan M. Greenfield | The Damned: The Canadians at the Battle of Hong Kong and the POW Experience, 1941-45 | ||
| Richard Gwyn | Nation Maker: Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times, Volume Two: 1867-1891 | ||
| JJ Lee | The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit | ||
| Andrew Nikiforuk | Empire of the Beetle: How Human Folly and a Tiny Bug Are Killing North America's Great Forests | ||
| 2012 | Ross King | Leonardo and the Last Supper | [8] |
| Nahlah Ayed | A Thousand Farewells: A Reporter's Journey from Refugee Camp to the Arab Spring | ||
| Carol Bishop-Gwyn | The Pursuit of Perfection: A Life of Celia Franca | ||
| Wade Davis | Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest | ||
| Noah Richler | What We Talk About When We Talk About War | ||
| 2013 | Sandra Djwa | Journey with No Maps: A Life of P.K. Page | [9] |
| Carolyn Abraham | The Juggler's Children: A Journey into Family, Legend and the Genes that Bind Us | ||
| Nina Munk | The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty | ||
| Allen Smutylo | The Memory of Water | ||
| Priscila Uppal | Projection: Encounters with My Runaway Mother | ||
| 2014 | Michael Harris | The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection | [10] |
| Arno Kopecky | The Oil Man and the Sea: Navigating the Northern Gateway | ||
| Edmund Metatawabin and Alexandra Shimo | Up Ghost River: A Chief’s Journey Through the Turbulent Waters of Native History | ||
| Maria Mutch | Know the Night: A Memoir of Survival in the Small Hours | ||
| 2015 | Mark L. Winston | Bee Time: Lessons from the Hive | [11] |
| Ted Bishop | The Social Life of Ink: Culture, Wonder, and Our Relationship with the Written Word | ||
| David Halton | Dispatches from the Front: Matthew Halton, Canada's Voice at War | ||
| Michael Harris | Party of One: Stephen Harper and Canada's Radical Makeover | ||
| Armand Garnet Ruffo | Norval Morrisseau: Man Changing into Thunderbird | ||
| 2016 | Bill Waiser | A World We Have Lost: Saskatchewan Before 1905 | |
| Kamal Al-Solaylee | Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (To Everyone) | ||
| Teva Harrison | In-Between Days: A Memoir about Living with Cancer | [12] | |
| Harold R. Johnson | Firewater: How Alcohol is Killing My People (and Yours) | ||
| Marc Raboy | Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World | ||
| 2017 | Graeme Wood | The Way of the Strangers: Encounters with the Islamic State | |
| Sharon Butala | Where I Live Now: A Journey through Love and Loss to Healing and Hope | ||
| Sarah de Leeuw | Where It Hurts | ||
| Elaine Dewar | The Handover: How Bigwigs and Bureaucrats Transferred Canada's Best Publisher and the Best Part of our Literary Heritage to a Foreign Multinational | ||
| Carol Off | All We Leave Behind: A Reporter's Journey into the Lives of Others | ||
| 2018 | Darrel J. McLeod | Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age | [13] |
| Carys Cragg | Dead Reckoning: How I Came To Meet the Man Who Murdered My Father | ||
| Aida Edemariam | The Wife’s Tale: A Personal History | ||
| Terese Marie Mailhot | Heart Berries | ||
| Abu Bakr Al-Rabeeah and Winnie Yeung | Homes: A Refugee Story | ||
| 2019 | Don Gillmor | To the River: Losing My Brother | [14] |
| Brian Harvey | Sea Trial: Sailing After My Father | ||
| Naomi K. Lewis | Tiny Lights for Travellers | ||
| Alan Walker | Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times | ||
| Dan Werb | City of Omens: A Search for the Missing Women of the Borderlands |
2020s
| Year | Author | Title | Ref |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Madhur Anand | This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart | [15] |
| Billy-Ray Belcourt | A History of My Brief Body | [16] | |
| Ivan Coyote | Rebent Sinner | ||
| Amanda Leduc | Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability and Making Space | ||
| Tessa McWatt | Shame on Me | ||
| 2021 | Sadiqa de Meijer | alfabet/alphabet: a memoir of a first language | [17] |
| Larry Audlaluk | What I Remember, What I Know: The Life of a High Arctic Exile | [18] | |
| Jenna Butler | Revery: A Year of Bees | ||
| Ivan Coyote | Care of: Letters, Connections, and Cures | ||
| J. B. MacKinnon | The Day the World Stops Shopping | ||
| 2022 | Eli Baxter | Aki-wayn-zih: A Person as Worthy as the Earth | [19] |
| Rebecca Donner | All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler | [20] | |
| Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson | Rehearsals for Living | ||
| Rowan McCandless | Persephoneʼs Children: A Life in Fragments | ||
| Britt Wray | Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis | ||
| 2023 | Kyo Maclear | Unearthing | [21] |
| Holly Hogan | Message in a Bottle | [22] | |
| Monia Mazigh | Gendered Islamophobia: My Journey with a Scar(f) | ||
| Harrison Mooney | Invisible Boy | ||
| Angela Sterritt | Unbroken: My Fight for Survival, Hope, and Justice for Indigenous Women and Girls | ||
| 2024 | Helen Knott | Becoming a Matriarch | [23] |
| Petra Molnar | The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence | ||
| Danny Ramadan | Crooked Teeth: A Queer Syrian Refugee Memoir | ||
| Niigaan Sinclair | Wînipêk: Visions of Canada from an Indigenous Centre | ||
| Astra Taylor | The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart |
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