ABSTRACT
The notion of a distinctly Canadian or Toronto-based school of communication studies has been widely promoted and hotly debated (see Hamilton, 2006). Contributing to this debate is the persistent belief that Canada’s geopolitical position on the margins of European and American empires enabled a series of scholars-foremost the political economist Harold A. Innis and the English scholar H. Marshall McLuhan-to assemble critical approaches to communication, media, and technology as a coherent school of thought (Carey, 1967, 1975, 1998; de Kerckhove, 1989; Kroker, 1984; Theall, 1986; Babe, 2000; Watson and Blondheim, 2007). As Donald Theall (Theall and Robinson, 1975; Theall, 1986), Arthur Kroker (1984), and Robert Babe (2000) have each argued, Canadian communication thinkers enjoyed an outsider status, peering into the maelstroms of technological change in America and beyond.
