This is a list of Governor General's Award winners for English language non-fiction.

• 1936 - T. B. Robertson , collected newspaper articles
• 1937 - Stephen Leacock, My Discovery of the West
• 1938 - John Murray Gibbon , Canadian Mosaic
• 1939 - Laura G. Salverson, Confessions of an Immigrant's Daughter
• 1940 - J.F.C. Wright , Slava Bohu
• 1941 - Emily Carr, Klee Wyck
• 1942 - Bruce Hutchison , The Unknown Country and Edgar McInnes , The Unguarded Frontier
• 1943 - John D. Robins , The Incomplete Anglers and E.K. Brown , On Canadian Poetry
• 1944 - Dorothy Duncan , Partner in Three Worlds and Edgar McInnes , The War: Fourth Year
• 1945 - Evelyn M. Richardson , We Keep a Light and Ross Munro , Gauntlet to Overlord
• 1946 - Frederick Philip Grove , In Search of Myself and A.R.M. Lower , Colony to Nation
• 1947 - William Sclater , Haida and R. MacGregor Dawson , The Government of Canada
• 1948 - Thomas H. Raddall , Halifax, Warden of the North and C.P. Stacey , The Canadian Army, 1939-1945
• 1949 - Hugh MacLennan, Cross-country and R. MacGregor Dawson , Democratic Government in Canada
• 1950 - Marjorie Wilkins Campbell , The Saskatchewan and W.L. Morton, The Progressive Party in Canada
• 1951 - Josephine Phelan , The Ardent Exile and Frank MacKinnon , The Government of Prince Edward Island
• 1952 - Donald G. Creighton, John A. Macdonald, The Young Politician and Bruce Hutchison , The Incredible Canadian
• 1953 - J.M.S. Careless, Canada, A Story of Challenge and N.J. Berrill , Sex and the Nature of Things
• 1954 - Hugh MacLennan, Thirty and Three and A.R.M. Lower , This Most Famous Stream
• 1955 - N.J. Berrill , Man's Emerging Mind and Donald G. Creighton, John A. Macdonald, The Old Chieftain
• 1956 - Pierre Berton, The Mysterious North and Joseph Lister Rutledge , Century of Conflict
• 1957 - Thomas H. Raddall , The Path of Destiny and Bruce Hutchison , Canada: Tomorrow's Giant
• 1958 - Pierre Berton, Klondike and Joyce Hemlow , The History of Fanny Burney
• 1959 - (none), award temporarily discontinued
• 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, Cocksure and Hunting Tigers Under Glass
• 1969 - (none)
• 1971 - Pierre Berton, The Last Spike
• 1972 - (none)
• 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
• 1979 - Maria Tippett , Emily Carr
• 1980 - Jeffrey Simpson, Discipline of Power: The Conservative Interlude and the Liberal Restoration
• 1981 - George Calef , Caribou and the barren-lands
• 1982 - Christopher Moore , Louisbourg Portraits: Life in an Eighteenth- Century Garrison Town
• 1983 - Jeffery Williams , Byng of Vimy
• 1984 - Sandra Gwyn , The Private Capital: Ambition and Love in the Age of Macdonald and Laurier
• 1985 - Ramsay Cook, The Regenerators: Social Criticism in Late Victorian English Canada
• 1986 - Northrop Frye, Northrop Frye on Shakespeare
• 1987 - Michael Ignatieff, The Russian Album
• 1988 - Anne Collins , In the Sleep Room
• 1989 - Robert Calder, Willie-The Life of W. Somerset Maugham
• 1990 - Stephen Clarkson & Christina McCall , Trudeau and Our Times
• 1991 - Robert Hunter and Robert Calihoo , Occupied Canada: A Young White Man Discovers His Unsuspected Past
• 1992 - Maggie Siggins, Revenge of the Land: A Century of Greed, Tragedy and Murder on a Saskatchewan Farm
• 1993 - Karen Connelly, Touch the Dragon
• 1994 - John A. Livingston , Rogue Primate: An Exploration of Human Domestication
• 1995 - Rosemary Sullivan , Shadow Maker: The Life of Gwendolyn MacEwen
• 1996 - John Ralston Saul, The Unconscious Civilization
• 1997 - Rachel Manley , Drumblair - Memories of a Jamaican Childhood
• 1998 - David Adams Richards, Lines on the Water - A Fisherman's Life on the Miramichi
• 1999 - Marq de Villiers , Water
• 2000 - Nega Mezlekia , Notes from the Hyena's Belly
• 2001 - Thomas Homer-Dixon, The Ingenuity Gap
• 2002 - Andrew Nikiforuk , Saboteurs: Wiebo Ludwig's War Against Big Oil
• 2003 - Margaret Olwen MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World]]
• 2004 Lt.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire, Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda