The organizing thesis of Dialogue 18 — Bob and Cameron's name (Bob prefers "Nova Scotia," for the province rather than the city) for the claim that McLuhan's formation runs through Nova Scotia. Its members and roots: Watson Kirkconnell, Rupert Lodge, Father Phelan, Herbert Leslie Stewart and the Dalhousie Review, Eric Havelock, Harold Innis' 1936 article, Wyndham Lewis' birthplace off Amherst, and George Sanderson's Antigonish Review — a counterpart to the Winnipeg School Bob had already mapped.
Across the dialogues
Named this session — the pair assemble McLuhan's Nova Scotia mentors and roots into a "school" set beside the Winnipeg School Bob had already researched
The premise — McLuhan's thought grew out of his Nova Scotia associations, and "many of his mentors also had roots in Nova Scotia" — which Cameron builds into a "school" while demurring that he "created" it.
"McLuhan was very much influenced by his associations."
The thesis reaches its flourish in the wireless: with Marconi's first experiments off Cape Breton and Wyndham Lewis born off Amherst, Bob half-jokingly roots the "global village" — the "global ESP" of "no connections" — in the province itself.
"the global ESP comes out of Nova Scotia."
By the end the pair treat the school as established — and, Bob adds, one that "started before the Winnipeg School of Communication," giving Nova Scotia priority in McLuhan's formation.
"I think we have established the Halifax School of Communication, and it started before the Winnipeg School of Communication."
Connections
The thesis is that McLuhan's formation runs through Nova Scotia — his family roots and nearly every early mentor.
McLuhan's Winnipeg English teacher and family friend, later president of Acadia in Wolfville — gave McLuhan the "human mosaic" image.
The Dalhousie Review (founded 1921) gathered Lodge, Phelan, Innis, and McLuhan's first essay.
Substituted a semester at Dalhousie for Stewart and was "the single biggest influence on McLuhan" at Manitoba — a path into the Dalhousie Review.
The Halifax-raised priest who guided McLuhan's Catholic conversion and secured his teaching posts — friend of Stewart, whom he helped start the Review.
Overlapped with McLuhan at Toronto in 1946, Havelock's last year there; through him McLuhan took up the Epyllion form.
His article shared McLuhan's first Dalhousie Review issue in 1936 — evidence McLuhan knew Innis' work long before the standard 1951 story.
Even Wyndham Lewis was born off Amherst, Nova Scotia — near where Marconi's wireless first reached the province.
The St. Francis Xavier professor who founded the Antigonish Review and "popularized McLuhan a great deal" — "the next generation of McLuhan."