Mark Bourrie (photo courtesy Canada’s National History Society)

Author Mark Bourrie has been named the winner of the 2025 Governor General’s History Award for Popular Media.

The $5,000 Pierre Berton Award, as it is also known, is administered by Canada’s National History Society. It honours someone whose work has made Canadian history engaging and broadly accessible.

Bourrie is one of 11 recipients being honoured by this year’s history awards, which recognize excellence in five categories: teaching, museums, scholarly research, community programming, and popular media. The 2025 laureates will receive their awards from Governor General Mary Simon at an upcoming ceremony in Ottawa.

Bourrie is a journalist, lawyer, and author who has written 14 nonfiction books, including Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson, published by Biblioasis, which won the final RBC Taylor Prize. Crosses in the Sky: Jean de Brébeuf and the Destruction of Huronia, also published by Biblioasis, was a finalist for the J.W. Dafoe Prize. His most recent book, Ripper: The Making of Pierre Poilievre, was published last year in advance of the federal election.

“Mark Bourrie makes our country’s history as vivid as anything happening today,” Melony Ward, president and CEO of Canada’s History Society, said in a press release. “He embraces the complexity of the past to create works that brim with conflict, struggle, and larger-than-life characters, all firmly grounded in research.”

Previous winners of the award include Murray Sinclair, Adam Bunch, and 2024’s winner, Stephen R. Bown.