Michael Alms was an orthopaedic surgeon in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. He was born Tadashi Kubo in Kyoto, Japan on 29 January 1922. His mother, Naka Kubo (‘Kimi’), was from a samurai family; his father, George Frederick Hill Alms, was a member of the Royal Engineers who went on to become a brigadier. Kimi’s relations felt she had brought shame to her family by marrying an Englishman and rejected the young couple. George returned to the UK and in 1924 Kimi and Tadashi joined him. On arriving in Taunton, Tadashi was renamed Michael Alms. He was educated at Bembridge School on the Isle of Wight and went on to study medicine at Bristol University, qualifying with the gold medal in 1945. He trained at the United Bristol Hospitals and spent three years (from 1951 to 1954) as an orthopaedic surgeon in Mauritius. He went on to Liverpool University, gaining an MCh in orthopaedics in 1955 and became a senior registrar in orthopaedic surgery at Bristol. As his nephew wrote in his obituary in *The Guardian*: ‘Despite his ample qualifications, he was told that because of his racial origins, he would never be appointed as a consultant surgeon.’ As a consequence, in 1960 Alms decided to emigrate to Canada. He was an orthopaedic surgeon at University and St Paul’s hospitals in Saskatoon and later went into private practice. He invented a surgical retractor used to keep open insertions and wounds, known as an Alms retractor, still widely used. After retiring from private practice, Alms volunteered for Care International, in the Dominican Republic and later Peru. He finally retired in 2000 and settled in Vancouver. Outside medicine, he was a keen sailor, golfer, photographer and potter. After the death of his mother in 1990, Alms traced some of his family in Japan and returned several times to visit. In 1946 he married Beryl Norris (known as ‘Goo’), a nurse. Predeceased by Goo and their daughter Charlotte, Alms died on 22 January 2022, a week before his 100th birthday. He was survived by their remaining children, Harriet, Richard and Georgie, five grandchildren and a great grandchild.