Margaret "Marge" Stewart, McLuhan's trusted secretary and administrative assistant at the University of Toronto — she managed his office and handled manuscript work during Understanding Media, and her husband Jim was the household handyman. For Bob she is less a thinker than a conduit: the source of unpublished transcripts and, through Carolyn, of McLuhan-household stories.
Across the dialogues
The office — Marge as the source of an unpublished McLuhan interview transcript
An unpublished transcript of a McLuhan interview reached Bob through Marge Stewart (via George Thompson) — one of the office records she preserved.
"I got a transcript that Marge Stewart did, and George gave it to me, George Thompson."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 2 (10 Nov 2020), 29:06
The channel — through Carolyn, Marge relayed McLuhan-household stories to Bob
In McLuhan's last years Carolyn worked alongside Marge — the channel through which Marge's household stories later reached Bob.
"Carolyn became an advisor on it, and then helped Marge Stewart."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 9 (7 Jan 2021), 2:09:58
Elevated to iON’s provocation — the Tech Body answers "what are you?" as "Marge Stewart," iON’s half-serious thesis that McLuhan’s typist was the mind behind him
iON’s provocation, which the Tech Body voices — Marge Stewart, who typed and had to understand McLuhan’s dictation from 1963, is "really more important than Marshall McLuhan."
"the iON's thesis that Marge Stewart is really more important than Marshall McLuhan."iON, read by Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 21 (8 Apr 2021), 1:00:59
Her claim on the McLuhan corpus escalated from typing to authorship — Bob relays iON's verdict that the credit should be hers because she wrote and grammared the material
The strongest attribution claim made for her in the series, and one that rests entirely on a channelled source rather than on the documentary record.
"iON says that Marg should be given the credit because she wrote all the stuff. She typed it up and had to put the grammar in."iON, read by Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 65 (16 Feb 2023), 59:40
Connections
McLuhan's trusted secretary at the University of Toronto; managed his office during Understanding Media and, later, a channel of household stories to Bob.
Handed Bob the unpublished McLuhan interview transcript that Marge Stewart had preserved.