Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction

The Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction is a Canadian literary award, presented annually by the Writers' Trust of Canada to the best work of non-fiction by a Canadian writer.

Canada's richest non-fiction prize, the winner receives a prize of CA$60,000 and all finalists receive CA$5,000.

Sponsorship history

First established in 1997, the award's original corporate sponsor was Viacom. Pearson Canada, an educational book publishing company, took over the award in 1999, and Nereus Financial, a stock brokerage, became the sponsor from 2006 to 2008. After Nereus dropped its sponsorship, the award had no corporate sponsor until 2011, when philanthropist and former Lieutenant Governor of Ontario Hilary Weston was announced as the award's new sponsor.

Prior to Weston's patronage of the award, the prize was CA$15,000 for the winner and CA$2,000 for the finalists.

Nominees and winners

Year	Winner	Nominated
1997	Ernest Hillen, Small Mercies: A Boy After War	Charlotte Gray, Mrs. King: The Life and Times of Isabel Mackenzie King John Bentley Mays, Power in the Blood: Land, Memory, and a Southern Family Ruth Teichroeb, Flowers on My Grave Eileen Whitfield, Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood
1998	Rudy Wiebe and Yvonne Johnson, Stolen Life: The Journey of a Cree Woman	Michael Ignatieff, Isaiah Berlin: A Life David Manicom, Progeny of Ghosts: Travels in Russia and the Old Empire Linda Spalding, The Follow Charles Wilkins, The Circus at the Edge of the Earth
1999	Modris Eksteins, Walking Since Daybreak: A Story of Eastern Europe, World War II and the Heart of our Century	Robert Bringhurst, A Story as Sharp as a Knife: The Classical Haida Mythtellers and Their World Jacalyn Duffin, History of Medicine: A Scandalously Short Introduction Moira Farr, After Daniel: A Suicide Survivor’s Tale Wayne Johnston, Baltimore’s Mansion: A Memoir
2000	Erna Paris, Long Shadows: Truth, Lies and History	Donald Harman Akenson, Saint Saul: A Skeleton Key to the Historical Jesus Hugh Brody, The Other Side of Eden: Hunters, Farmers and the Shaping of the World Taras Grescoe, Sacré Blues: An Unsentimental Journey Through Quebec John Stackhouse, Out of Poverty: And into Something More Comfortable
2001	Clark Blaise, Time Lord	Kevin Major, As Near to Heaven by Sea Heather Pringle, The Mummy Congress Carol Shields, Jane Austen Jack Todd, The Taste of Metal: A Deserter’s Story
2002	Jake MacDonald, Houseboat Chronicles: Notes from a Life in Shield Country	Katherine Ashenburg, The Mourner’s Dance: What We Do When People Die Andrew Clark, A Keen Soldier: The Execution of Second World War Private Harold Pringle Marni Jackson, Pain: The Fifth Vital Sign Lorie Miseck, A Promise of Salt
2003	Brian Fawcett, Virtual Clearcut, or The Way Things Are in My Hometown	Mark Abley, Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages J. Edward Chamberlin, If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground Taras Grescoe, The End of Elsewhere: Travels Among the Tourists Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle, Sahara: A Natural History
2004	Elaine Dewar, The Second Tree: Of Clones, Chimeras, and Quests for Immortality	Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall, Down to This: Squalor and Splendour in a Big-City Shantytown Trevor Herriot, Jacob’s Wound: A Search for the Spirit of Wildness Patrick Lane, There is a Season: A Memoir in a Garden Charles Montgomery, The Last Heathen: Encounters With Ghosts and Ancestors in Melanesia
2005	John Vaillant, The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed	Rebecca Godfrey, Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk Stephen Lewis, Race Against Time: Searching for Hope in AIDS-Ravaged Africa J.B. MacKinnon, Dead Man in Paradise
2006	Dragan Todorovic, The Book of Revenge	Charlotte Gray, Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell Barbara Kingscote, Ride the Rising Wind: One Woman’s Journey Across Canada Noah Richler, This is My Country, What’s Yours? A Literary Atlas of Canada Rudy Wiebe, Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest
2007	Anna Porter, Kasztner's Train: The True Story of Rezso Kasztner, Unknown Hero of the Holocaust	Katherine Ashenburg, The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History Tim Bowling, The Lost Coast: Salmon, Memory and the Death of Wild Culture Barry Gough, Fortune’s a River: The Collision of Empires in Northwest America Douglas Hunter, God’s Mercies: Rivalry, Betrayal and the Dream of Discovery
2008	Taras Grescoe, Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood	Carl Honoré, Under Pressure: Rescuing Childhood from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting Mark Kingwell, Concrete Reveries: Consciousness and the City Margaret Visser, The Gift of Thanks: The Roots, Persistence and Paradoxical Meanings of a Social Ritual Russell Wangersky, Burning Down the House: Fighting Fires and Losing Myself
2009	Brian Brett, Trauma Farm: A Rebel History of Rural Life	Wade Davis, The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World Trevor Herriot, Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the World of Grassland Birds Erika Ritter, The Dog by the Cradle, the Serpent Beneath: Some Paradoxes of Human-Animal Relationships Eric Siblin, The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece
2010	James FitzGerald, What Disturbs Our Blood: A Son's Quest to Redeem the Past	Ross King, Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven Sarah Leavitt, Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer's, My Mother and Me John Theberge and Mary Theberge, The Ptarmigan's Dilemma: An Exploration into How Life Organizes and Supports Itself Merrily Weisbord, The Love Queen of Malabar: Memoir of a Friendship with Kamala Das
2011	Charles Foran, Mordecai: The Life & Times	Charlotte Gill, Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe Richard Gwyn, Nation Maker: Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times; Volume Two: 1867-1891 Grant Lawrence, Adventures in Solitude: What Not to Wear to a Nudist Potluck and Other Stories from Desolation Sound Ray Robertson, Why Not? Fifteen Reasons to Live
2012	Candace Savage, A Geography of Blood: Unearthing Memory from a Prairie Landscape	Kamal Al-Solaylee, Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes Modris Eksteins, Solar Dance: Genius, Forgery, and the Crisis of Truth in the Modern Age Taras Grescoe, Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile JJ Lee, The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit
2013	Graeme Smith, The Dogs Are Eating Them Now: Our War in Afghanistan	Thomas King, The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America J.B. MacKinnon, The Once and Future World: Nature As It Was, As It Is, As It Could Be Andrew Steinmetz, This Great Escape: The Case of Michael Paryla Priscila Uppal, Projection: Encounters with My Runaway Mother
2014	Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate	Susan Delacourt, Shopping for Votes: How Politicians Choose Us and We Choose Them Charles Montgomery, Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design Paula Todd, Extreme Mean: Trolls, Bullies, and Predators Online Kathleen Winter, Boundless: Tracing Land and Dream in a New Northwest Passage
2015	Rosemary Sullivan, Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva	Eliott Behar, Tell it to the World: International Justice and the Secret Campaign to Hide Mass Murder in Kosovo Douglas Coupland, Kitten Clone: Inside Alcatel-Lucent Dean Jobb, Empire of Deception: From Chicago to Nova Scotia – The Incredible Story of a Master Swindler Who Seduced a City and Captivated the Nation Lynette Loeppky, Cease: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Desire

External links

• Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction