Michael David Bristol
13 March 1940 – 9 September 2025

Michael (Mike) Bristol was born to Edward and Amelia Gertrude Shapiro Bristol in Jersey City, NJ on March 13, 1940. He joined our class from Westfield High School, Westfield, NJ and first resided in Bingham with P.E. Berry and H.G. Will, and only stayed for the first semester. Mike rejoined us September the next year in Berkeley. There he became non-resident member when he married his high school sweetheart, Doris Ruth Thomas, on August 14, 1960.

Mike was active on the Banner, serving on the Board for three years and as Advertising Manager his senior year. In his junior year he served also as the chairman of the Dwight Hall Tutoring Agency. As an English major he was a Ranking Scholar in the falls of 1958 and 1959, and on the Dean’s List in 1960. With his major, scholarship and interest, as expressed in Time and Change, our 40th Yearbook, in pursuing a life of the mind, which he attributed to his early love of comics, he earned a Ph.D English from Princeton University in 1966, with a focus on Shakespeare.

With his second child, Joseph, due and in need of income to support his family, Mike started teaching at the University of Illinois in 1965. Daughter Katherine (Kate) had been born in 1962. But Illinois was not where the Bristols were to settle; in 1970 Mike accepted a tenured position at McGill University and they moved to Montreal. From there he eventually retired as the Greenshields Professor of English.

He loved teaching and working with students, and that was manifested in his delight in receiving occasional Facebook salutations from former students who had discovered his profile when browsing. As an academic he published three major books, two of them on Shakespeare and, as his obituary says, “he believed that Shakespeare had much to tell us about the early modern world but also about our own contemporary world and the power of words, writing and theatre.”

Montreal also put them closer to their summer home on Sebago Lake in Maine where he enjoyed being “Uncle Mike” to extended family and friends. His obituary notes that “Michael was know as a preparer of lobster feasts, master gardener, boat driver, and teller of stories. He also loved playing folk guitar and leading singalongs with family and friends.” He and Doris were avid birders, which led the family to travel all over the US and eventually the world.

Mike was survived by his wife Doris, daughter Kate and son Joseph (Y’88) and their spouses, plus grandson, Aaron, and by his sister Ellen Bristol. In Time and Change Mike mused: “I always thought my job was to reduce ignorance in the world. I think ignorance is actually gaining ground right now (2002), but I’ve given it my best shot.”

— John D. Hatch III