History and Communications: Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, the Interpretation of History

R. Douglas Francis is a professor of History at the University of
Calgary and author of Images of the Canadian West.

This is an unconventional book. It is neither an analysis of the ideas
of Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan, two Canadian giants in the field
of communication studies, nor an in-depth study of some period in
Canadian history. Instead, the book attempts to fuse the two fields,
using Innis’s and McLuhan’s ideas on technology and communications
to arrive at a new perspective on two timeworn topics in Canadian
history: “the Family Compact” and “Responsible Government.”

Patterson contends that Innis’s later works on communications were
not an entirely new shift in thought from his earlier works on staple
production, out of which evolved the Laurentian thesis, a new
interpretation of Canadian history. This is a myth, first perpetrated by
Donald Creighton, a student of Innis’s and his biographer. The
misunderstanding arose according to Patterson, out of the different
approach to history—and to thinking in general—of these two
historians. Creighton thought in a linear fashion; for him, historical
events were unique and could be explained only in a rational, sequential
fashion. Innis thought in relational terms; for him, historical events
could best be understood by relating them in a random, abstract fashion
to other events that appear on the surface to be unrelated both in time
and space. Thus, for example, Innis saw meaning in the history of the
British Empire by relating it to the history of the Roman Empire and of
the Egyptian and Babylonian empires. The St. Lawrence River system was a
communication link for Canadians like the Nile River for the Egyptians.
Patterson spends considerable time contrasting these two historians and
their approach to history. To anyone who has read their works, this
observation will come as no suprise; the two men were worlds apart both
in style and approach.

Patterson maintains that what links Innis’s work on staple production
with his work on communications is ideas. “Staples”—fish, furs,
timber and wheat—were more than material items of trade for Innis;
they were metaphors—symbols—of a communication system. They were
part of a process of communications rather than products of trade.
Patterson then goes on to study two other metaphors or symbols in early
Canadian history—the “Family Compact” and “Responsible
Government.”

This book is fascinating in its analysis of Innis’s and McLuhan’s
ideas on communications and how they relate to the writing of history.
It falls short, however, in its attempt to apply these ideas to actual
historical events. While there are the occasional flashes of insight,
overall the application is unconvincing and contrived. This reviewer
would have preferred a more in-depth analysis of Innis’s and
McLuhan’s ideas alone as an insight into the writing of Canadian
history, in particular, and into the Canadian mind, in general.