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0 ~ JOURNAL OF CANADIAN STUDIES -~·, . . ' Editor Associate Editors Editorial Assistants Editorial Board RALPH HEINTZMAN DAVID CAMERON JOHN WADLAND ARLENE DAVIS MARGARET PEARCE JEAN-PIERRE LAPOINTE MARGARET LAURENCE HARVEY McCUE JACQUES MONET, S.J. W.L.MORTON W.F.W. NEVILLE GORDON ROPER DONALD V. SMILEY DENIS SMITH PHILIP STRATFORD T.H.B. SYMONS W.E. TAYLOR CLARA THOMAS MELVILLE H. WATKINS ALAN WILSON REVUE D'ETUDES CANADIENNES Directeur Directeurs adjoints Assistantes Comite de redaction Quebec and the Empire of the St. Lawrence A year ago, Mel Watkins pointed out to me that 1977 would be the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of Harold Innis and suggested that·the editors of the Journal ofCanadian Studies ought to consider devoting an issue to the work and influence of this remarkable Canadian scholar. The suggestion was an inspired one, and, after a year's work, we are pleased to offer the articles on Innis and his legacy included in this Winter issue for 1977. I am grateful to Professor Watkins for his encouragement and advice in the preparation of this issue, but he must, of course, be excused from any responsibility for the final selection and editing of the papers presented here. The current revival of interest in Harold Innis could not be more opportune. For one thing, it coincides with, and in part reflects, the growth of concern for "Canadian studies" in general. In this context, the name of Innis serves as a beacon and an inspiration. It was Journal ofCanadian Studies remarkable how often Innis' name was invoked during the public hearings of the Symons Commission as a symbol of what Canadian studies could and should be. Every one of those who invoked his name undoubtedly had something different in mind, but their choice of Innis was significant. In the last issue of the Journal, Professor J.M. Bumsted argued that the advancement of Canadian studies requires the emergence and encouragement of scholars with "innerdisciplinary " capabilities, persons who can integrate the concepts and insights of a variety of disciplines within their own minds. Harold Innis was "the very model" of an inner-disciplinary scholar. His mind could not be confined even within the boundaries of economics, politics, and history but ranged over the whole field of culture ·until he almost succeeded, perhaps ironically, in creating a new discipline. Moreover , while his appetite for painstaking research was enormous and his energy prodigious, he did not shrink from the boldest speculation. He possessed in an unusual degree that rarest of academic gifts, the scholarly imagination. Above all, however, Innis serves as an example for Canadian studies because he demonstrated their importance to the world. Instead of simply borrowing abstract concepts from foreign scholarship for application to Canadian studies, thereby forcing the Canadian experience into a possibly inappropriate mold, as is often the case in Canadian scholarship, Innis began with the distinctive problems of Canadian history and culture and worked outward from these toward more universal theories of politics, economics, and communications. Instead of relying on the rest of the world to explain Canada, he gave Canada an opportunity to explain the world. And that is surely the highest end to which all Canadian studies should aspire: to discover, in the originality of Canadian history and imagination, patterns of thought, feeling and experience which will enable men everywhere to understand themselves better. In this as in many things, Harold Innis showed the way. The renewed crisis of Canadian "unity" which burst upon us exactly one year ago suggests a second cause to regard the revival of interest in Harold Innis as opportune. It was Innis, and those influenced by him, who brought home to us the underlying economic forces which created Canada in its present form and which now contribute to its growing disunity. Of course Innis did not invent the economic empire of the St. Lawrence: among others the Scottish geographer Marion Newbigin had pointed out before Innis the role of the St. Lawrence valley and its waterway system in the shaping of Canada from New France to the present; and even the politicians and businessmen of Innis' generation were conscious of the importance of (what was to be called) the St...

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