Editing Harold Innis (section)

==Rural roots==
===Early life===
<!--Optional image:[[File:Stamp_Canada_1899_2c.jpg|thumb|right|An 1899 postage stamp. Harold Innis was born near the end of the Victorian era when the "Dominion of Canada" was still a self-governing British colony.]]-->
[[File:Harold-Innis-school.gif|thumb|right|The one-room schoolhouse in Otterville, officially known as S.S.#1 South Norwich. The photo was taken around 1906. Innis is the boy with the cap, fifth from the right, back row. Innis would later teach for a few months at the school.]]

Innis was born on November 5, 1894, on a small livestock and dairy farm near the community of [[Otterville, Ontario|Otterville]] in [[southwestern Ontario]]'s [[Oxford County, Ontario|Oxford County]]. As a boy he loved the rhythms and routines of farm life and he never forgot his rural origins.<ref>Creighton, Donald. ''Harold Adams Innis: Portrait of a Scholar''. [[University of Toronto Press]], pp. 8–9.</ref> His mother, Mary Adams Innis, had named him ''Herald'', hoping he would become a minister in the strict [[evangelical]] [[Baptist]] faith that she and her husband William shared. At the time, the Baptist church was an important part of life in rural areas. It gave isolated families a sense of community and embodied the values of individualism and independence. Its far-flung congregations were not ruled by a centralized, bureaucratic authority.<ref>Watson, pp. 50–51.</ref> Innis became an [[Agnosticism|agnostic]] in later life, but never lost his interest in religion.<ref>Babe, Robert. ''Canadian Communication Thought: Ten Foundational Writers'', [[University of Toronto Press]], p. 51.</ref> According to his friend and biographer [[Donald Creighton]], Innis's character was moulded by the church:
{{blockquote|
The strict sense of values and the feeling of devotion to a cause, which became so characteristic of him in later life, were derived, in part at least, from the instruction imparted so zealously and unquestioningly inside the severely unadorned walls of the Baptist Church at Otterville.<ref>Creighton, p. 19.</ref>
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Innis attended the one-room schoolhouse in Otterville and the community's high school. He travelled {{convert|20|mi|km|0}} by train to [[Woodstock, Ontario|Woodstock]], [[Ontario]], to complete his secondary education at a Baptist-run college. He intended to become a public-school teacher and passed the entrance examinations for teacher training, but decided to take a year off to earn the money he would need to support himself at an Ontario teachers' college. At age 18, therefore, he returned to the one-room schoolhouse at Otterville to teach for one term until the local school board could recruit a fully qualified teacher. The experience made him realize that the life of a teacher in a small, rural school was not for him.<ref>Creighton, pp. 18–19.</ref>

===University studies===
[[File:RoyalConservatoryofMusic.JPG|thumb|right|The original home of McMaster University at 273 [[Bloor Street]] West, Toronto]]

In October 1913, Innis started classes at [[McMaster University]] (then in [[Toronto]]). McMaster was a natural choice for him because it was a Baptist university and many students who attended Woodstock College went there. McMaster's liberal arts professors encouraged critical thinking and debate.<ref>Watson, pp. 64–68.</ref> Innis was especially influenced by {{ill|James Ten Broeke|qid=Q75135621}}, the university's one-man philosophy department. Ten Broeke posed an essay question that Innis pondered for the rest of his life: "Why do we attend to the things to which we attend?"<ref>Watson, p. 326. Innis refers to the question in the preface to ''The Bias of Communication,'' his book of essays on consciousness and communication.</ref>

Before his final undergraduate year at McMaster, Innis spent a summer teaching at the Northern Star School in the frontier farming community of Landonville near [[Vermilion, Alberta|Vermilion]], [[Alberta]]. The experience gave him a sense of the vastness of Canada. He also learned about Western grievances over high interest rates and steep transportation costs.<ref>Creighton pp. 26–27.</ref> In his final undergraduate year, Innis focused on history and economics. He kept in mind a remark made by history lecturer W.&nbsp;S. Wallace that the economic interpretation of history was not the only possible one but that it went the deepest.<ref>Creighton p. 28.</ref>

===First World War service===
[[File:Harold Adams Innis.jpg|right|thumb|Harold Innis in uniform]]

After graduating from McMaster, Innis felt that his Christian principles compelled him to enlist in the [[Canadian Expeditionary Force]]. He was sent to [[France]] in the fall of 1916 to fight in the [[World War I|First World War]].<ref>Creighton, p. 31. Creighton wrote that Innis believed if German aggression went unpunished, it would be fatal to Christian hope for the world. Innis wrote to his sister: "If I had no faith in Christianity, I don't think I would go."</ref> [[Trench warfare]] with its "mud and lice and rats" had a devastating effect on him.<ref>Quoted from a later Innis letter by Creighton, p. 107.</ref>

Innis's role as an artillery signaller gave him firsthand experience of life (and death) on the front lines as he participated in the successful Canadian attack on [[Battle of Vimy Ridge|Vimy Ridge]].<ref>Creighton, pp. 34–35.</ref> Signallers, or spotters, watched where each [[Shell (projectile)|artillery shell]] landed, then sent back aiming corrections so that the next shells could hit their targets more accurately. On July 7, 1917, Innis received a serious shrapnel wound in his right thigh that required eight months of hospital treatment in England.<ref>Watson, p. 70.</ref>

Innis's war was over. His biographer, John Watson, notes the physical wound took seven years to heal, but the psychological damage lasted a lifetime. Innis experienced recurring bouts of depression and nervous exhaustion because of his military service.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Books in Canada - Review |url=https://www.booksincanada.com/article_view.asp?id=4754 |access-date=2024-02-02 |website=www.booksincanada.com}}</ref>

Watson also notes that the Great War influenced Innis's intellectual outlook. It strengthened his [[Canadian nationalism]]; sharpened his opinion of what he thought were the destructive effects of technology, including the communications media that were used so effectively to "sell" the war; and led him, for the first time, to doubt his Baptist faith.<ref>Watson, pp. 68–117.</ref>