The Halifax quarterly founded in 1921 by Herbert Leslie Stewart, and the load-bearing document in the archive's account of what McLuhan knew and when. Its 1936 issue carried McLuhan's first published essay, on Chesterton — and, in the same issue, an article by Innis. From that coincidence Cameron builds his claim that McLuhan encountered Innis' work in 1936, eleven years before the two met, which pushes the Toronto School's origins back a decade. The journal also anchors the Nova Scotia cluster the pair map at length, alongside the Antigonish Review. Start at dialogue 37.
Across the dialogues
Enters as a node in a Nova Scotia network rather than a journal, its founder and contributors mapped as the people who surround McLuhan before he is anyone
The journal is given a founder with a biography attached, which is how this session works — an institution is only as interesting as the delayed passage and thwarted appointment behind it.
"So there was the Dalhousie Review was founded in 1921 by a philosophy professor by the name of Herbert Stewart."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 18 (18 Mar 2021), 1:57:41
A contributor list is read as a map of proximity — the journal's value is that it shows the same handful of philosophers converging on one masthead before any of them matter.
"so Phelan published at the Dalhousie Review. Rupert Lodge published there."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 18 (18 Mar 2021), 2:08:32
A single appearance is upgraded into a sustained relationship, which changes what the 1936 issue can be asked to prove — an ongoing tie makes the contents of that issue something he would plausibly have read rather than merely received.
"McLuhan obviously stayed in touch with the Dalhousie Review so that he published in it at very different phases in his career."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 18 (18 Mar 2021), 2:13:38
The dating claim is stated as a position to be defended rather than a fact, and its force is circumstantial — shared paper, not documented reading, which is the strongest evidence available and is treated as sufficient.
"I maintain that he knew of... Innis's work at the latest by 1936 when that article by Innis appeared in the Dalhousie Review in the same issue as McLuhan first essay."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 18 (18 Mar 2021), 2:20:15
Narrows to a single issue and is asked to carry a dating argument on its own — one table of contents standing in for evidence that no longer exists
The argument is restated as an impossibility rather than a probability, which is how it hardens — nineteen dialogues on, a hedge about what someone likely read has become a claim about what he could not have avoided.
"There's also a very interesting article by Innis, and I don't think that McLuhan could have had that issue of the Dalhousie Review and not have read the article by Innis, and that was in 1936."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 37 (23 Sep 2021), 1:10:07
Connections
Founded in 1921 by the philosophy professor whose move to Nova Scotia was delayed by his mother's illness.
McLuhan's first published essay, on Chesterton, appeared here in 1936 — and he kept publishing in it across his career.
An Innis article ran in the same 1936 issue, which is the archive's argument for when McLuhan first read him.
Lodge published there on the philosophy of education, in a paper McLuhan helped put together.