Michael Harris (journalist)


Michael Harris is a Canadian investigative journalist, radio personality, documentary filmmaker, novelist, iPolitics columnist and the award-winning author of nine books.
Born in Toronto, Ontario, to Audrey McDonald and James McDonald, Harris is a graduate of York University in Toronto, and was a Woodrow Wilson Scholar. His work has sparked four Royal Commissions of Inquiry.
Harris went to Newfoundland in 1977, as a story editor for CBC Television owned-and-operated station CBNT's newscast Here and Now, before becoming in 1986 the founding publisher and editor-in-chief of The Sunday Express weekly in St. John's, nationally recognized as "the best little newspaper in Canada." There he broke the Mount Cashel orphanage abuse story and the Sprung Greenhouse boondoggle. Later he went on to become the Executive Director of News and Current Affairs for the Newfoundland Broadcasting Company, then owner of the local CTV Television Network affiliate CJON.
Harris was at one time a Queen's Park correspondent for the National Post, The Globe and Mail as Atlantic Bureau Chief and later a senior parliamentary correspondent in Ottawa.
In Ottawa Harris hosted an afternoon radio talk show, Michael Harris Live, on Ottawa-based CFRA, and was a columnist for The Ottawa Sun newspaper until March 2011. Michael Harris Live on CFRA Ottawa was cancelled February 9, 2012. He is now a columnist for the website iPolitics.
His book 1986 book Justice Denied: The Law Versus Donald Marshall detailed the story of Donald Marshall, Jr.’s wrongful conviction in 1972. His investigative journalism culminating in the book Unholy Orders: Tragedy at Mount Cashel, triggered the Hughes Inquiry into the allegations of abuse at the Mount Cashel Orphanage. Harris also authored Rare Ambition: The Crosbies of Newfoundland, Con Game: The Truth About Canada’s Prisons and the national best seller Lament for an Ocean: The Collapse of the Atlantic Cod Fishery. Elizabeth May, the executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada called it "The definitive book on the cod catastrophe... After reading this book, you wouldn’t trust the Department of Fisheries and Oceans with your aquarium". His 1976 novel Outrider on Yonge Street was never published.
Harris is married and has two daughters. he hosted Ottawa's annual "Alzheimers Flame of Hope Golf Tournament", and divided his time between his homes in Ottawa, Ontario and Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. He was the visiting Irving Chair in Journalism at St. Thomas University in New Brunswick.

Works

Non-fiction

Awards

Michael Harris was awarded a Doctor of Laws by the Memorial University of Newfoundland for his "unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us."
He was the visiting Irving Chair in Journalism at St. Thomas University in New Brunswick.