Ian Brown wins richest non-fiction book prize

Ian Brown has won Canada's richest non-fiction book prize for The Boy in the Moon: A Father’s Search for His Disabled Son. It is Brown's account of the struggle he and his wife Johanna Schneller have waged to deal with their son Walker's rare genetic syndrome.

British Columbia’s National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction,presented by the British Columbia Achievement Foundation, is now in its 6th year and provides a $40,000 award for the winner.

Brown is well known not only as a Globe and Mail feature writer and a TVO host but also as a frequent National Magazine Awards winner (he has won 7 gold and 5 silver medals and has been a finalist 27 times).

Another finalist was Maclean's publisher and editor-in-chief Kenneth Whyte for The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst. (Brown and Whyte's books are also shortlisted for next month's Charles Taylor Prize for non-fiction.)The other authors considered were Karen Connelly for Burmese Lessons: A Love Story and Eric Siblin for The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece. The jurors were  were Andreas Schroeder, Vicki Gabereau and Philip Marchand.