Essays in Honour of Michael Bliss


Book Description

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.




The Discovery of Insulin


Book Description

This special centenary edition of The Discovery of Insulin celebrates a path-breaking medical discovery that has changed lives around the world.




Collecting the World


Book Description

In 1759 the British Museum opened its doors to the public—the first free national museum in the world. James Delbourgo recounts the story behind its creation through the life of Hans Sloane, a controversial luminary with an insatiable ambition to pit universal knowledge against superstition and few curbs on his passion for collecting the world.




Writing History


Book Description

One of Canada’s best-known and most-honoured biographers turns to the raw material of his own life in Writing History. A university professor, prolific scholar, public intellectual, and frank critic of the world he has known, Michael Bliss draws on extensive personal diaries to describe a life that has taken him from small-town Ontario in the 1950s to international recognition for his books in Canadian and medical history. His memoir ranges remarkably widely: it encompasses social history, family tragedy, a critical insider’s view of university life, Canadian national politics, and, above all, a rare glimpse into the craftsmanship that goes into the research and writing of history in our time. Whether writing about pigs and millionaires, the discovery of insulin, sleazy Canadian politicians, or the founders of modern medicine and brain surgery, Michael Bliss is noted for the clarity of his prose, the honesty of his opinions, and the breadth of his literary interests.




A Time Such as There Never Was Before


Book Description

Ottawa Book Award 2015 — Shortlisted Between 1918 and 1921 a great storm blew through Canada and raised the expectations of a new world in which all things would be possible.| The years after World War I were among the most tumultuous in Canadian history: a period of unremitting change, drama, and conflict. They were, in the words of Stephen Leacock, “a time such as there never was before.” The war had been a great crusade, promising a world made new. But it had cost Canada sixty thousand dead and many more wounded, and it had widened the many fault lines in a young, diverse country. In a nation struggling to define itself and its place in the world, labour, farmers, businessmen, churches, social reformers, and minorities had extravagant hopes, irrational fears, and contradictory demands. What had this sacrifice achieved? Whose hopes would be realized and whose dreams would end in disillusionment? Which changes would prove permanent and which would be transitory? A Time Such As There Never Was Before describes how this exciting period laid the foundation of the Canada we know today.




A Town Called Asbestos


Book Description

For decades, manufacturers from around the world relied on asbestos to produce a multitude of fire-retardant products. As use of the mineral became more widespread, medical professionals discovered it had harmful effects on human health. Mining and manufacturing companies downplayed the risks to workers and the general public, but eventually, as the devastating nature of asbestos-related deaths became common knowledge, the industry suffered terminal decline. A Town Called Asbestos looks at how the people of Asbestos, Quebec, worked and lived alongside the largest chrysotile asbestos mine in the world. Dependent on this deadly industry for their community’s survival, they developed a unique, place-based understanding of their local environment; the risks they faced living next to the giant opencast mine; and their place within the global resource trade. This book unearths the local-global tensions that defined Asbestos’s proud history and reveals the challenges similar resource communities have faced – and continue to face today.




Three Plays of Maureen Hunter


Book Description

Book is clean and tight. No writing in text. Like New




Canadian Churches and the First World War


Book Description

Most accounts of Canada and the First World War either ignore or merely mention in passing the churches' experience. Canadian Churches and the First World War addresses this surprising neglect, exploring the marked relationship between Canada's 'Great War' and Canadian churches in intricate detail. The authors of this volume provide a detailed summary of various Christian traditions and the war, both synthesising and furthering previous research. In addition to examining the experience of Roman Catholics (English and French speaking), Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Lutherans, Mennonites, and Quakers, there are chapters on precedents formed during the South African War, the work of military chaplains, and the roles of church women on the home front. Reprinted in the centenary year of the conflict's outbreak, Canadian Churches and the First World War acts as a sobering reminder of the devastating impact the Great War had on Canada - and the rest of the world - in the early twentieth century. It will inspire those with a keen interest in theological, military and women's history, along with academics and students whose areas of research cover the monumental events of 1914-18. This article gives an exquisite insight into the stance of the Canadian churches during the First World War. - Martin Grechat, Theologische Literatur Zeitung 141. Jahrgang, Heft 4, April 2016




The Last Plague


Book Description

The 'Spanish' influenza of 1918 was the deadliest pandemic in history, killing as many as 50 million people worldwide. Canadian federal public health officials tried to prevent the disease from entering the country by implementing a maritime quarantine, as had been their standard practice since the cholera epidemics of 1832. But the 1918 flu was a different type of disease. In spite of the best efforts of both federal and local officials, up to fifty thousand Canadians died. In The Last Plague, Mark Osborne Humphries examines how federal epidemic disease management strategies developed before the First World War, arguing that the deadliest epidemic in Canadian history ultimately challenged traditional ideas about disease and public health governance. Using federal, provincial, and municipal archival sources, newspapers, and newly discovered military records – as well as original epidemiological studies – Humphries' sweeping national study situates the flu within a larger social, political, and military context for the first time. His provocative conclusion is that the 1918 flu crisis had important long-term consequences at the national level, ushering in the 'modern' era of public health in Canada.




Partnership for Excellence


Book Description

In Partnership for Excellence, senior medical historian and award-winning author Edward Shorter details the Faculty of Medicine's history from its inception as a small provincial school to its present day status as an international powerhouse.