Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize

The Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize, established in 1985, is awarded annually as the BC Book Prize for the best non-fiction book by a resident of British Columbia, Canada.^[1] The prize is named after the Canadian novelist Hubert Evans (1892-1986).

Winners and finalists

1980s

Year	Author	Titles	Result	Ref.
1985	David Ricardo Williams	Duff: A Life in the Law	Winner	[2]
	Michael Kluckner	Vancouver The Way It Was	Shortlist
	Daniel Raunet	Without Surrender, Without Consent
1986	Bruce Hutchison	The Unfinished Country	Winner
	Muriel Kitagawa	This Is My Own: Letters to Wes	Shortlist
	Reginald Roy	The Journal of Private Fraser
1987	Doris Shadbolt	Bill Reid	Winner	[3]
	Philip Croft	Nature Diary of a Quiet Pedestrian	Shortlist
	Sherrill MacLaren	Braehead
1988	P. K. Page	Brazilian Journal	Winner
	Sandra Djwa	The Politics of the Imagination	Shortlist
	Roy Minter	The White Pass
1989	Robin Ridington	Trail To Heaven	Winner
	Edith Iglauer	Fishing with John	Shortlist
	Paul Yee	Salt Water City

1990s

Year	Author	Titles	Result	Ref.
1990	Philip Marchand	Marshall McLuhan	Winner
	Stan Persky	Buddy's	Shortlist
	Patricia Roy	A White Man's Province
1991	Scott Watson	Jack Shadbolt	Winner
	Terry Glavin	A Death Feast in Dimlahamid	Shortlist
1992	Rosemary Neering	Down the Road	Winner
	Jean Barman	The West Beyond the West	Shortlist
	Robin Fisher	Duff Patullo of British Columbia
1993	Lynne Bowen	Muddling Through	Winner
	Irene Howard	The Struggle for Social Justice in B. C.	Shortlist
	Rolf Knight, Homer Stevens	Homer Stevens
1994	Sharon Brown'	Some Become Flowers	Winner
	Arthur Mayse	My Father, My Friend	Shortlist
	John Mills	Thank Your Mother for the Rabbits
1995	Lisa Hobbs Birnie	Uncommon Will: The Death and Life of Sue Rodrigues	Winner
	Denise Chong	The Concubine's Children	Shortlist
	Rick Ouston	Finding Family
1996	Claudia Cornwall	Letter From Vienna	Winner
	Bev Christiansen	Too Good to Be True: Alcan's Kemano Completion Project	Shortlist
	Sheryl Salloum	Underlying Vibrations: The Photography of John Vanderpont
1997	Catherine Lang	O-bon in Chimunesu	Winner
	Deanna Kawatski	Clara and Me	Shortlist
	Arthur J. Ray	I Have Lived Here Since the World Began
1998	Suzanne Fournier, Ernie Crey	Stolen from Our Embrace	Winner
	Richard Bocking	Mighty River	Shortlist
	Elizabeth Simpson	The Perfection of Hope
1999	Peter C. Newman	Titans: How the New Canadian Establishment Seized Power	Winner
	Eric Nicol	Anything for a Laugh: Memoirs	Shortlist
	Michael Poole	Romancing Mary Jane

2000s

Year	Author	Titles	Result	Ref.
2000	Rita Moir	Buffalo Jump: A Woman's Travels	Winner
	Douglas Cole	Franz Boas: The Early Years, 1858-1906	Shortlist
	James P. Delgado	Across the Top of the World: The Quest for the Northwest Passage
	Margaret Horsfield	Cougar Annie's Garden
	Andrea Lebowitz, Gillian Milton	Gilean Douglas: Writing Nature, Finding Home
2001	Terry Glavin	The Last Great Sea	Winner
	Hugh Brody	The Other Side of Eden	Shortlist
	Rosemary Neering	Wild West Women
	Harold Rhenisch	Tom Thomson's Shack
	Patricia Van Tighem	The Bear's Embrace
2002	Susan Crean	The Laughing One: A Journey to Emily Carr	Winner
	Bart Campbell	The Door is Open	Shortlist
	Stephen Hume	Off the Map
	Ross A. Laird	Grain of Truth
	Heather Pringle	The Mummy Congress
2003	Sandra Shields, David Campion	Where Fire Speaks: A Visit With the Himba	Winner
	Thomas Berger	One Man's Justice	Shortlist
	Keath Fraser	The Voice Gallery: Travels with a Glass Throat
	Cole Harris	Making Native Space: Colonialism, Resistance and Reserves in British Columbia
	Derek Lundy	The Way of the Ship
2004	Maria Tippett	Bill Reid: The Making of an Indian	Winner
	Maria Coffey	Where the Mountain Casts Its Shadow: The Dark Side of Extreme Adventure	Shortlist
	Pat Wastell Norris	High Boats: A Century of Salmon Remembered
	Peter Steele	The Man Who Mapped the Arctic
	Mark Zuehlke	The Gothic Line: Canada’s Month of Hell in World War II Italy
2005	Charles Montgomery	The Last Heathen	Winner
	Katherine Palmer Gordon	The Slocan: Portrait of a Valley	Shortlist
	Patrick Lane	There Is a Season
	Alan Twigg	First Invaders: The Literary Origins of British Columbia
	Rex Weyler	Greenpeace: How a Group of Ecologists, Journalists and Visionaries Changed the World
2006	Stan Persky	The Short Version: An ABC Book	Winner
	Michael Kluckner	Vanishing British Columbia	Shortlist
	J. B. MacKinnon	Dead Man in Paradise
	Rita Moir	Windshift Line
	John Vaillant	The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed
2007	Heather Pringle	The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust	Winner
	Karsten Heuer	Being Caribou: Five Months on Foot with an Arctic Herd	Shortlist
	Eric Miller	The Reservoir
	Harold Rhenisch	The Wolves at Evelyn: Journeys Through a Dark Century
	Dan Zuberi	Differences That Matter: Social Policy and the Working Poor in the United States and Canada
2008	Robert Bringhurst	Everywhere Being is Dancing	Winner
	J.B. MacKinnon, Alisa Smith	The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating	Shortlist
	Don Gayton	Interwoven Wild: An Ecologist Loose in the Garden
	Theresa Kishkan	Phantom Limb
	Patricia E. Roy	The Triumph of Citizenship: The Japanese and Chinese in Canada, 1941-67
2009	Gabor Maté	In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction	Winner
	Tim Lilburn	Going Home: Essays	Shortlist
	Rex Weyler	The Jesus Sayings: The Quest for His Authentic Message
	Chris Wood	Dry Spring: The Coming Water Crisis of North America
	Ronald Wright	What Is America? A Short History of the New World Order

2010s

Year	Author	Titles	Result	Ref.
2010	Lorna Crozier	Small Beneath the Sky: A Prairie Memoir	Winner
	Ehor Boyanowsky	Savage Gods, Silver Ghosts: In the Wild with Ted Hughes	Shortlist
	Brian Brett	Trauma Farm: A Rebel History of Rural Life
	Charles Demers	Vancouver Special
	Brian Payton	The Ice Passage: A True Story of Ambition, Disaster, and Endurance in the Arctic Wilderness
2011	John Vaillant	The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival	Winner
	Morris Bates, Jim Brown	Morris as Elvis: Take a Chance on Life	Shortlist
	Douglas Coupland	Marshall McLuhan
	Sarah Leavitt	Tangles: A Story about Alzheimer's, My Mother, and Me
	Derek Lundy	Borderlands: Riding the Edge of America
2012	Charlotte Gill	Eating Dirt	Winner
	Carmen Aguirre	Something Fierce	Shortlist
	Gary Geddes	Drink the Bitter Root
	Theresa Kishkan	Mnemonic: A Book of Trees
	JJ Lee	The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit
2013	Geoff Meggs, Rod Mickleburgh	The Art of the Impossible: Dave Barrett and the NDP in Power, 1972-1975	Winner	[4]
	Luanne Armstrong	The Light Through the Trees: Reflections on Land and Farming	Shortlist
	George Bowering	Pinboy
	Sandra Djwa	Journey with No Maps: A Life of P.K. Page
	Carol Shaben	Into the Abyss: How a Deadly Plane Crash Changes the Lives of a Pilot, a Politician, a Criminal and a Cop
2014	David Stouck	Arthur Erickson: An Architect’s Life	Winner	[5]
	Arno Kopecky	The Oil Man and the Sea: Navigating the Northern Gateway	Shortlist
	J.B. MacKinnon	The Once and Future World: Nature As It Was, As It Is, As It Could Be
	Bev Sellars	They Called Me Number One: Secrets and Survival at an Indian Residential School
	Jane Silcott	Everything Rustles
2015	Eve Joseph	In the Slender Margin: The Intimate Strangeness of Death and Dying	Winner	[6]
	Julie Angus	Olive Odyssey: Searching for the Secrets of the Fruit That Seduced the World	Shortlist
	Kevin Chong	Northern Dancer: The Legendary Horse That Inspired a Nation
	Barry M. Gough	The Elusive Mr. Pond: The Soldier, Fur Trader and Explorer Who Opened the Northwest
	Nancy Turner	Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge: Ethnobotany and Ecological Wisdom of Indigenous Peoples of Northwestern North America
2016	Brian Brett	Tuco: The Parrot, the Others, and A Scattershot World	Winner	[7]
	Briony Penn	The Real Thing: The Natural History of Ian McTaggart Cowan	Shortlist
	Lorimer Shenher	That Lonely Section of Hell: The Botched Investigation of a Serial Killer Who Almost Got Away
	Maria Tippett	Made in British Columbia: Eight Ways of Making Culture
	Emily Urquhart	Beyond the Pale: Folklore, Family and the Mystery of Our Hidden Genes
2017	Deborah Campbell	A Disappearance in Damascus: A Story of Friendship and Survival in the Shadow of War	Winner	[8]
	Carmen Aguirre	Mexican Hooker #1: And My Other Roles Since the Revolution	Shortlist
	Mohamed Fahmy, Carol Shaben	The Marriott Cell: An Epic Journey from Cairo’s Scorpion Prison to Freedom
	Joy Kogawa	Gently to Nagasaki
	Mark Leiren-Young	The Killer Whale Who Changed the World
2018	Arthur Manuel, Ronald Derrickson	The Reconciliation Manifesto: Recovering the Land, Rebuilding the Economy	Winner	[9]
	Carys Cragg	Dead Reckoning: How I Came to Meet the Man Who Murdered My Father	Shortlist
	Theresa Kishkan	Euclid’s Orchard & Other Essays
	Andrew Struthers	The Sacred Herb / The Devil’s Weed
	Paul Watson	Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition
2019	Lindsay Wong	The Woo Woo	Winner
	Bill Gaston	Just Let Me Look at You	Shortlist
	Ian Hampton	Jan in 35 Pieces: A Memoir in Music
	Kate Harris	Land of Lost Borders: Out of Bounds on the Silk Road
	Rob Shaw, Richard Zussman	A Matter of Confidence: The Inside Story of the Political Battle for BC

2020s

Year	Author	Titles	Result	Ref.
2020	Alejandro Frid	Changing Tides: An Ecologist’s Journey to Make Peace with the Anthropocene	Winner	[10]
	Ivan Coyote	Rebent Sinner	Shortlist	[11]
	Helen Knott	In My Own Moccasins: A Memoir of Resilience
	Jonathan Manthorpe	Claws of the Panda: Beijing’s Campaign of Influence and Intimidation in Canada
	Jessica McDiarmid	Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference, and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls
2021	Billy-Ray Belcourt	A History of My Brief Body	Winner	[12]
	Eva Holland	Nerve: A Personal Journey Through the Science of Fear	Shortlist	[13]
	Liz Levine	Nobody Talks About Anything But the End
	Benjamin Perrin	Overdose: Heartbreak and Hope in Canada's Opioid Crisis
	Seth Klein	A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency
2022	Jordan Abel	NISHGA	Winner	[14]
	Danielle Geller	Dog Flowers	Shortlist	[15]
	Darrel J. McLeod	Peyakow: Reclaiming Cree Dignity
	Suzanne Simard	Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest
	Ian Williams	Disorientation: Being Black in the World
2023	Karen Bakker	The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants	Winner	[16]
	Lyndsie Bourgon	Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods	Shortlist	[17]
	Michael J. Hathaway	What a Mushroom Lives For: Matsutake and the Worlds They Make
	Harrison Mooney	Invisible Boy: A Memoir of Self-Discovery
	Jody Wilson-Raybould	True Reconciliation: How to Be a Force for Change
2024	John Vaillant	Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast	Winner	[18]
	Colleen Brown	If you lie down in a field, she will find you there	Shortlist	[19]
	Naomi Klein	Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
	Helen Knott	Becoming a Matriarch
	Emelia Symington-Fedy	Skid Dogs