Marq de Villiers

South African-Canadian writer and journalist

Marq de Villiers, CM is a South African-Canadian writer and journalist. He now chiefly writes non-fiction books on scientific topics. In the past he also worked as a magazine editor and foreign correspondent.^[1]

Biography

Marq de Villiers was born in 1940 in Bloemfontein, South Africa. In 1989 he became the first recipient of the prestigious Alan Paton Award for White Tribe Dreaming.^[2] He and his wife, the writer Sheila Hirtle, live in Middle LaHave, Nova Scotia.^[3] They often collaborate on books.

In 2010, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada.^[3] In 2011 his book, Our Way Out was published, dealing with the problems surrounding climate change, and possible solutions.

Bibliography

Book	Award
Marq de Villiers (1989). White Tribe Dreaming: Apartheid's bitter roots: notes of an eighth-generation Afrikaner. Penguin. pp. 420. ISBN 0-67081-794-5. OCLC 16754886.	Alan Paton Award
Marq de Villiers (1993). The Heartbreak Grape: A Search for the Perfect Pinot Noir. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06258-523-1. OCLC 28376089.
Marq de Villiers (1991). Down the Volga in a Time of Troubles: A Journey Through Post-Perestroika Russia. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-67084-353-9. OCLC 26264690.
Garth Drabinsky (1992). Closer to the Sun (An Autobiography). with Marq de Villiers. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. pp. 512. ISBN 0-77105650-8. OCLC 31781016.
Marq de Villiers; Sheila Hirtle (1996). Blood Traitors: A True Saga of the American Revolution. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-00255424-0. OCLC 35939333.
Marq de Villiers; Sheila Hirtle (1997). Into Africa: A Journey Through the Ancient Empires. Key Porter. ISBN 1-55013-884-7. OCLC 37369547.
Marq de Villiers (1999). Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource. McClelland & Stewart. ISBN 0-77102641-2. OCLC 43365804., revised 2003	Governor General's Award (1999)
Marq de Villiers (2001). America's Outdoors: Eastern Canada. National Geographic Society. ISBN 0-79227753-8. OCLC 46975165.
Marq de Villiers; Sheila Hirtle (2003). Sahara: The Life of the Great Desert. McClelland & Stewart, and Walker and Co. ISBN 0-7710-2639-0.
Marq de Villiers; Sheila Hirtle (2004). A Dune Adrift: The Strange Origins and Curious History of Sable Island. McClelland & Stewart. ISBN 0-7710-2642-0.	Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-fiction
Marq de Villiers (2006). Windswept: The Story of Wind and Weather. McClelland & Stewart. ISBN 0-7710-2644-7. OCLC 62535616.
Marq de Villiers (2007). Witch in the Wind: The True Story of the Legendary Bluenose. Thomas Allen and Co. ISBN 978-0-88762-224-3. OCLC 76870763.	Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-fiction, Dartmouth Book Award for Non-fiction
Marq de Villiers (2007). Timbuktu: The Sahara's Fabled City of Gold. McClelland & Stewart. ISBN 978-0-7710-2646-1. OCLC 84989578.
Marq de Villiers (2008). Dangerous World. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-67006568-4. OCLC 185022675. US edition: Marq de Villiers (2008). The end : natural disasters, manmade catastrophes, and the future of human survival. Thomas Dunne-St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-31236569-1. OCLC 223885730.
Marq de Villiers (2011). Our Way Out: First Principles for a Post-Apocalyptic World. McClelland and Stewart. ISBN 978-0-7710-2648-5. OCLC 565924393.
Back to the Well: Rethinking the future of water Goose Lane Editions ISBN 978-1773100463
Hell and Damnation: A sinner’s guide to eternal torment March 2019 University of Regina Press ISBN 978-0889775848
The Longbow, the schooner, and the violin: Wood and human achievement Sutherland House Books ISBN 978-1989555590

References

^ "Marq de Villiers". Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia.
^ Allan, Jani. Afrikaner pride and passion mix with fun and laughter Sunday Times (South Africa). 9 July 1989
^ ^a ^b "Order of Canada citation". 11 June 2018.

External links

WorldCat Identities page
Author's website

Winners of the Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction

1930s

Thomas Beattie Roberton, TBR: Newspaper Pieces (1936)
Stephen Leacock, My Discovery of the West (1937)
John Murray Gibbon, Canadian Mosaic (1938)
Laura Salverson, Confessions of an Immigrant's Daughter (1939)

1940s

J. F. C. Wright, Slava Bohu (1940)
Emily Carr, Klee Wyck (1941)
Bruce Hutchison, The Unknown Country (1942)
Edgar McInnis, The Unguarded Frontier (1942)
E. K. Brown, On Canadian Poetry (1943)
John Robins, The Incomplete Anglers (1943)
Dorothy Duncan, Partner in Three Worlds (1944)
Edgar McInnis, The War: Fourth Year (1944)
Ross Munro, Gauntlet to Overlord (1945)
Evelyn M. Richardson, We Keep a Light (1945)
Frederick Phillip Grove, In Search of Myself (1946)
Arthur R. M. Lower, Colony to Nation (1946)
William Sclater, Haida (1947)
Robert MacGregor Dawson, The Government of Canada (1947)
Thomas Head Raddall, Halifax, Warden of the North (1948)
C. P. Stacey, The Canadian Army, 1939-1945 (1948)
Hugh MacLennan, Cross-country (1949)
Robert MacGregor Dawson, Democratic Government in Canada (1949)

1950s

Marjorie Wilkins Campbell, The Saskatchewan (1950)
W. L. Morton, The Progressive Party in Canada (1950)
Frank MacKinnon, The Progressive Party in Canada (1951)
Josephine Phelan, The Ardent Exile (1951)
Donald G. Creighton, John A. Macdonald, The Young Politician (1952)
Bruce Hutchison, The Incredible Canadian (1952)
J. M. S. Careless, Canada, A Story of Challenge (1953)
N. J. Berrill, Sex and the Nature of Things (1953)
Hugh MacLennan, Thirty and Three (1954)
Arthur R. M. Lower, This Most Famous Stream (1954)
N. J. Berrill, Man's Emerging Mind (1955)
Donald G. Creighton, John A. Macdonald, The Old Chieftain (1955)
Pierre Berton, The Mysterious North (1956)
Joseph Lister Rutledge, Century of Conflict (1956)
Thomas H. Raddall, The Path of Destiny (1957)
Bruce Hutchison, Canada: Tomorrow's Giant (1957)
Pierre Berton, Klondike (1958)
Joyce Hemlow, The History of Fanny Burney (1958)
[No award] (1959)

1960s

Frank Underhill, In Search of Canadian Liberalism (1960)
T. A. Goudge, The Ascent of Life (1961)
Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962)
J.M.S. Careless, Brown of the Globe (1963)
Phyllis Grosskurth, John Addington Symonds (1964)
James Eayrs, In Defence of Canada (1965)
George Woodcock, The Crystal Spirit: A Study of George Orwell (1966)
Norah Story, The Oxford Companion to Canadian History and Literature (1967)
Mordecai Richler, Hunting Tigers Under Glass (1968)
[No award] (1969)

1970s

[No award] (1970)
Pierre Berton, The Last Spike (1971)
[No award] (1972)
Michael Bell, Painters in a New Land (1973)
Charles Ritchie, The Siren Years (1974)
Marion MacRae and Anthony Adamson, Hallowed Walls (1975)
Carl Berger, The Writing of Canadian History (1976)
F. R. Scott, Essays on the Constitution (1977)
Roger Caron, Go-Boy! Memories of a Life Behind Bars (1978)
Maria Tippett, Emily Carr (1979)
Robert Bothwell and William Kilbourn, C.D. Howe (1979)
Larry Pratt and John Richards, Prairie Capitalism (1979)

1980s

Jeffrey Simpson, Discipline of Power: The Conservative Interlude and the Liberal Restoration (1980)
George Calef, Caribou and the Barren-Land (1981)
Christopher Moore, Louisbourg Portraits: Life in an Eighteenth- Century Garrison Town (1982)
Jeffery Williams, Byng of Vimy: General and Governor General (1983)
Sandra Gwyn, The Private Capital: Ambition and Love in the Age of Macdonald and Laurier (1984)
Ramsay Cook, The Regenerators: Social Criticism in Late Victorian English Canada (1985)
Northrop Frye, Northrop Frye on Shakespeare (1986)
Michael Ignatieff, The Russian Album (1987)
Anne Collins, In the Sleep Room (1988)
Robert Calder, Willie: The Life of W. Somerset Maugham (1989)

1990s

Stephen Clarkson and Christina McCall, Trudeau and Our Times (1990)
Robert Hunter and Robert Calihoo, Occupied Canada: A Young White Man Discovers His Unsuspected Past (1991)
Maggie Siggins, Revenge of the Land: A Century of Greed, Tragedy and Murder on a Saskatchewan Farm (1992)
Karen Connelly, Touch the Dragon (1993)
John Livingston, Rogue Primate: An Exploration of Human Domestication (1994)
Rosemary Sullivan, Shadow Maker: The Life of Gwendolyn MacEwen (1995)
John Ralston Saul, The Unconscious Civilization (1996)
Rachel Manley, Drumblair: Memories of a Jamaican Childhood (1997)
David Adams Richards, Lines on the Water: A Fisherman's Life on the Miramichi (1998)
Marq de Villiers, Water (1999)

2000s

Nega Mezlekia, Notes from the Hyena's Belly (2000)
Thomas Homer-Dixon, The Ingenuity Gap (2001)
Andrew Nikiforuk, Saboteurs: Wiebo Ludwig's War Against Big Oil (2002)
Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (2003)
Roméo Dallaire, Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda (2004)
John Vaillant, The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed (2005)
Ross King, The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism (2006)
Karolyn Smardz Frost, I've Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad (2007)
Christie Blatchford, Fifteen Days: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army (2008)
M. G. Vassanji, A Place Within: Rediscovering India (2009)

2010s

Allan Casey, Lakeland: Journeys into the Soul of Canada (2010)
Charles Foran, Mordecai: The Life and Times (2011)
Ross King, Leonardo and the Last Supper (2012)
Sandra Djwa, Journey with No Maps: A Life of P.K. Page (2013)
Michael John Harris, The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection (2014)
Mark L. Winston, Bee Time: Lessons from the Hive (2015)
Bill Waiser, A World We Have Lost: Saskatchewan Before 1905 (2016)
Graeme Wood, The Way of the Strangers: Encounters with the Islamic State (2017)
Darrel J. McLeod, Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age' (2018)
Don Gillmor, To the River: Losing My Brother (2019)