Michael Bliss

John William Michael Bliss, OC FRSC (born January 18, 1941) is a Canadian historian and award-winning author. Though his early works focused on business and political history, he has written several important medical biographies, including of Sir William Osler. Bliss is also a frequent commentator on political events and issues. He is a member of the Order of Canada.

Bliss was born in Leamington, Ontario. His father was a physician who encouraged him to enter the medical field. In an autobiographical essay, Bliss explained that his aspirations were shattered when watching his father suture a drunk's face.:

[T]here was a Sunday afternoon when Dad’s and my Scrabble game was interrupted by the appearance at the office door of a policeman with a drunk in tow, the drunk having been in a fight and suffering a badly slashed face. Dad had to sew him up, suturing both inside and outside the cheek, and invited me to watch what would be a demonstration of his surgical skill [...] with blood and alcohol fumes everywhere, reflecting on my own complete disinterest in and lack of manual skills, I decided that this was not what I wanted to do in life. And that was the end of my ambition to be a doctor.

Bliss entered the University of Toronto in 1958, and received his BA, MA, and Ph.D. degrees there. He was appointed to the faculty in 1968 and by the time of his retirement in 2006 had attained the elite rank of University Professor.

His doctoral dissertation, which was supervised by Ramsay Cook, was a social history of Canadian business, an analysis of the "thoughts and dreams" of businessmen in Canada during the National Policy years. It was published under the title A Living Profit. In 1978 he published a major biography of Sir Joseph Flavelle, "A Canadian Millionaire", and in 1987 the first history of business in Canada, "Northern Enterprise."

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