ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the narrative that Toronto School scholarship can be reduced to the media ecology of Marshall McLuhan and history of communications undertaken by Harold Innis. Textbook accounts of Toronto School scholarship tend to overlook the clear entanglements between early Canadian media scholars and American counterparts, particularly in the intellectual circles of intercultural communications and anthropology; as well as transatlantic connections to art, urban planning, and architectural history through Tyrwhitt and Giedion. While anthropology provided the initial framework for media study, urban planning and environmental studies soon followed. As Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz has explored, the field of intercultural communication was initiated during these very years through their work as scholars employed by the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State, between 1946 and 1956. The linguistic model for intercultural communication informed Hall's approach that communication is patterned, learned, an approach that Carpenter carried forward in Explorations.
