A leading public intellectual, Michael Bliss has written prolifically for academic and popular audiences and taught at the University of Toronto from 1968 to 2006. Among his publications are a comprehensive history of the discovery of insulin, and major biographies of Frederick Banting, William Osler, and Harvey Cushing. The essays in this volume, each written by former doctoral students of Bliss, with a foreword by John Fraser and Elizabeth McCallum, do honour to his influence, and, at the same time, reflect upon the writing of history in Canada at the end of the twentieth century.

The opening essays discuss Bliss?s career, his impact on the study of history, and his academic record. Bliss himself contributes an autobiographical essay that strengthens our understanding of the business of scholarship, teaching, and writing. In the second section, the contributors interrogate public mythmaking in the relationship between politics and business in eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century Canada. Further sections investigate the relationship between fatherhood, religion, and historiography, as well as topics in health and public policy. A final section on ?Medical Science and Practice? deals with subjects ranging from early endocrinology, lobotomy, the mechanical heart, and medical biography as a genre. Going beyond a collection of dedicatory essays, this volume explores the wider subject of writing social and medical history in Canada in the late twentieth century.

E.A. Heaman is an associate professor in the Department of History at McGill University.

Alison Li is an independent scholar based in Toronto.

Shelley McKellar is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Western Ontario.

Table of Contents

Foreword by John Fraser and Elizabeth MacCallum

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Michael Bliss and the Delicate Balance of Individual and Society
E.A. HEAMAN

Appendix: Doctoral Dissertations Supervised by Michael Bliss

THE CAREER AND INFLUENCE OF MICHAEL BLISS

1. Growth, Progress, and the Quest for Salvation: Confessions of a Medical Historian
   MICHAEL BLISS
2. Inspiration as Instruction: Michael Bliss as a Graduate Adviser, 1989–1994
   RICHARD WHITE
3. Michael Bliss in the Media
   JOHN TURLEY-EWART

POLITICS AND BUSINESS

4. onstructing Ignorance: Epistemic and Military Failures in Britain and Canada during the Seven Years War
   E.A. HEAMAN
5. Common Knowledge: Theory, Concept, and the Prosaic in Making the Tariff of 1859
   BEN FORSTER
6. Business, Culture, and the History of News, 1870–1930: A Case Study of the ‘Political/Commercial’ Dichotomy
   GENE ALLEN

FAMILY AND RELIGION

7. ‘I thank God … that I am proud of my boy’: Fatherhood and Religion in the Gordon Family
   DAVID B. MARSHALL
8. Casual Fornicators, Delinquent Dads, Young Lovers, and Family Champions: Men in Canadian Adoption Circles
   VERONICA STRONG-BOAG
9. Writing Religion: Some Influences on Twentieth-Century Developments in Canadian Religious History
   BRIAN F. HOGAN

HEALTH AND PUBLIC POLICY

10. Personality, Politics, and Canadian Public Health: The Origins of Connaught Medical Research Laboratories, University of Toronto, 1888–1917
    CHRISTOPHER J. RUTTY
11. Defining Disability, Limiting Liability: The Care of Thalidomide Victims in Canada
    BARBARA CLOW
12. ‘Comfort, Security, Dignity’: Home Care for Canada’s Aging Veterans, 1977–2004
    JAMES STRUTHERS

MEDICAL SCIENCE AND PRACTICE

13. Wondrous Transformations: Endocrinology after Insulin
    ALISON LI
14. A History of Lobotomy in Ontario
    GEOFFREY REAUME
15. Limitations Exposed: Willem J. Kolff and His Contentious Pursuit of a Mechanical Heart
    SHELLEY MCKELLAR
16. History, Memory, and Twentieth-Century Medical Life Writing: Unpacking a Cape Breton Country Doctor’s Black Bag
    SASHA MULLALLY

Bibliography of Michael Bliss

Contributors