Michael Harris (journalist)

Michael Harris (born 1948) is an award-winning Canadian author, investigative journalist, and radio personality who writes a column for iPolitics. He 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.^[1][2] Michael Harris Live on CFRA Ottawa was cancelled February 9, 2012.^[3] He is now a columnist for the website iPolitics.

Born in Toronto, Ontario, to Audrey McDonald (née Tilley) and James McDonald, Harris is a graduate of York University in Toronto, and was a Woodrow Wilson Scholar (University College in Dublin, Ireland).

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 publisher of The Sunday Express in St. John's, and later the Executive Director of News and Current Affairs for the Newfoundland Broadcasting Company, owners of the local then-CTV affiliate CJON (NTV). Harris was at one time a Queen's Park correspondent for the National Post.

Harris is the author of Justice Denied: The Law Versus Donald Marshall (1986), Unholy Orders: Tragedy at Mount Cashel (Book of the Year, Foundation for the Advancement of Canadian Letters, 1991), Rare Ambition: The Crosbies of Newfoundland (FACL Book of the Year and APBA Booksellers Choice Award 1993), Con Game: The Truth About Canada’s Prisons (2002), and Lament for an Ocean: The Collapse of the Atlantic Cod Fishery (1998), which was a national bestseller. 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" (cited on back jacket cover). His 1976 novel "Outrider on Yonge Street" was never published.

Harris, who is married and has two daughters, hosts Ottawa's annual "Alzheimers Flame of Hope Golf Tournament" (his mother who died in 2009 suffered from the disease), and divides his time between his homes in Ottawa, Ontario and Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. His was the visiting Irving Chair in Journalism at St. Thomas University in New Brunswick.

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