A teacher of English to the young McLuhan at Winnipeg and a friend of the McLuhan family, and later president of Acadia University in Nova Scotia. A prolific literary translator across many languages, Kirkconnell is where Cameron begins his case for a Nova Scotia School of Communication: the man who, alongside McLuhan's mother, first showed McLuhan a Canada of many peoples and the art of moving between them.
Across the dialogues
Enters as the first thread of the Nova Scotia School — the polyglot translator who carried a McLuhan influence into the province and modelled the leap between identities
Kirkconnell taught McLuhan English in Winnipeg and was close to the family — the first mentor Cameron traces from McLuhan's youth toward Nova Scotia.
"a social friend of the McLuhan family was a guy by the name of Watson Kirkconnell."
A translator working across "all sorts of different languages," Kirkconnell saw Canada as a multicultural mosaic decades before the phrase — and, with McLuhan's mother's one-woman plays, gave McLuhan the leap between identities that "characterized McLuhan from start to finish."
"Because nobody was looking at Canada as this multicultural mosaic in those years."
Kirkconnell's path — Manitoba to McMaster to the presidency of Baptist Acadia — physically carried a formative McLuhan influence into Nova Scotia, anchoring the province's claim on him.
"he became president of Acadia University in Wolfville."
Connections
A Winnipeg English teacher and McLuhan-family friend whose polyglot translation work — with McLuhan's mother's stage roles — gave McLuhan an early image of the "human mosaic."
The opening figure in the Nova Scotia thread — a formative McLuhan influence who ended up president of Acadia University in the province.