My McLuhan Story
September 6, 1994
It was the first class of my first day of university at the University of Windsor. It was Tom Dilworth's English Lit lecture in Dillon Hall, a building that has housed the English department since it was part of the original Assumption College where McLuhan and Wyndham Lewis crossed paths in the mid 1940s.
Professor Dilworth entered the room and stood in silence to draw attention to himself. Once all eyes we upon him, he picked up a piece of chalk and printed "THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE" on the blackboard. He turned to the class while pointing to the board and asked "who coined this phrase"? With no response from any of the students after about ten seconds, I lifted my voice and answered "Marshall McLuhan". I knew this because 1) I used to see it in this Canadian Heritage vignette that aired on CBC Television
http://bit.ly/bns5lj; and 2) I had recently picked up a copy of "Understanding Media" after reading a Jim Morrison bio in which Morrison oft referenced UM.
In a later conversation, I would learn that Dilworth was a student of McLuhan's in the late sixties and the seventies at the University of Toronto. He even used to eat lunch with McLuhan frequently. Here's an essay he wrote about his observations of McLuhan:
http://bit.ly/fEsrSN. Dilworth also co-authored a book about Wyndham Lewis' influence on Canadian Culture while Lewis was in residence at Assumption College
http://bit.ly/ic3q2w.
That's how my post-secondary phase started: in the heart of the McLuhan/Lewis vortex, which turned out to be prep school for Bob's Media Ecology, which would find it's way into my hands 8 months later.
Chad
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