Northern Enterprise

by Michael Bliss

“A must for students and chief executives alike.” — Canadian Business Review“A major achievement of scholarship, the first study to describe Canadian business over five centuries.” — Winnipeg Free Press“This book contains moments of priceless insight into the Canadian identity. It is the most surprising and possibly the most important book on Canadian history published this year.” — Kingston Whig-Standard Magazine First published three decades ago, Northern Five Centuries of Canadian Business remains the only comprehensive history of business in Canada, beginning with the earliest European fishermen of the late fifteenth century and concluding with the dawn of the era of free trade in the 1980s. Grounded in scholarship yet highly readable, Northern Enterprise includes both accounts of well-known and celebrated events like the building of the transcontinental railway and lesser-known stories such as the rise and fall of Massey-Ferguson, one of the first Canadian enterprises to play a major role on the international stage. Professor Bliss also considers the many political influences on Canadian business, including recurring debates over free trade and worries over the outsized influence of the United States. Winner of the National Business Book Award for its “outstanding contribution to the written history of Canada,” Northern Enterprise is now reprinted in this one-volume deluxe casebound edition, featuring a new introduction by John Turley-Ewart, a noted journalist and business leader, who carried out his doctoral studies at the University of Toronto under Michael Bliss’s supervision.

Genres: Nonfiction, Canada, History, Business

640 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Michael Bliss was a Canadian historian. He was an Officer of the Order of Canada, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and a member of the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame.

Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Szplug · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four-and-a-half stars, rounded down solely due to the subject matter itself, which cannot help—no matter how much Bliss' prose, wit, and style manages to elevate it—but see its own sere and quotidian weight serve as a drag against readerly momentum.

[Laurent Carbonneau · Rating 3 out of 5]

A useful and wide-ranging resource on Canadian economic and business history whose utility is somewhat dampened by the enthusiasm of the author for his subject and his hostility to critics and criticism of business large and small, or even to those who did not love business in the right way (see his treatment of C.D. Howe, especially).

[Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very complete history of Canadian business from before the fur trade to modern commerce. Very detailed. Unfortunately more detail than my interest.

[Gregory Klages · Rating 3 out of 5]

As much as I wanted to gain a fuller, better understanding of Canada’s economic and business history, I’m not sure that Five Centuries of Canadian Business was the best choice to satisfy this need.

While the level of detail in this lengthy tome was sometimes appreciated, combined with the dull writing style and often times sacrifice of clarity for inclusion of what can only be remembered as lists of names or businesses, it was difficult to get through. The length of the text obscured the overall thematic development of the book, which only seemed to gather some consistency and clarity of thought when covering the decades following the Second World War. Unfortunately, Bliss’ book remains one of few available options to familiarize yourself with the larger trends and personalities of Canadian business history.