Editing Harold Innis (section)

===McMaster and Chicago===
Harold Innis completed a [[Master of Arts]] degree at McMaster, graduating in April 1918. His thesis, called ''The Returned Soldier'', "was a detailed description of the public policy measures that were necessary, not only to provide a supportive milieu to help veterans get over the effects of the war, but also to move on with national reconstruction."<ref>Watson, p. 93. Watson notes that 240,000 young Canadians died in the war, while 600,000 were wounded. The war was a devastating blow to Innis's generation.</ref>

Innis did his postgraduate work at the [[University of Chicago]] and was awarded his PhD, with a dissertation on the history of [[Canadian Pacific Railway]],<ref>{{cite book |first=Harold A. |last=Innis |title=A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofcanadia0000inni |url-access=registration |location=Toronto |publisher=University of Toronto Press |orig-year=1923 |year=1971 |edition=Reprint |isbn=0-8020-1704-5 }}</ref> in August 1920.<ref>Watson, p. 94</ref> His two years at Chicago had a profound influence on his later work. His interest in economics deepened and he decided to become a professional economist. The economics faculty at Chicago questioned abstract and universalist [[neoclassical economics|neoclassical theories]], then in vogue, arguing that general rules for economic policy should be derived from specific case studies.<ref>Watson, p. 111.</ref>

Innis was influenced by the university's two eminent communications scholars, [[George Herbert Mead]] and [[Robert E. Park]]. Although he did not attend any of those famous professors' classes, Innis did absorb their idea that communication involved much more than the transmission of information. [[James W. Carey]] writes that Mead and Park "characterized communication as the entire process whereby a culture is brought into existence, maintained in time, and sedimented into institutions."<ref>Carey, J. W. (1992). "Space, Time and Communications: A Tribute to Harold Innis." In ''Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society''. New York: Routledge, p. 144.</ref>

While at Chicago, Innis was exposed to the ideas of [[Thorstein Veblen]], the iconoclastic thinker who drew on his deep knowledge of philosophy and economics to write scathing critiques of contemporary thought and culture. Veblen had left Chicago years before, but his ideas were still strongly felt there. Years later, in an essay on Veblen, Innis praised him for waging war against "standardized static economics."<ref>In his 1929 essay, Innis concluded: "Veblen has waged a constructive warfare of emancipation against the tendency toward standardized static economics which becomes so dangerous on a continent with ever increasing numbers of students clamouring for textbooks on final economic theory." (The essay was republished in Innis, ''Essays in Canadian Economic History'', pp. 17–26.)</ref>

Innis got his first taste of university teaching at Chicago, where he delivered several introductory economics courses. One of his students was Mary Quayle, the woman he would marry in May 1921 when he was 26 and she 22.<ref>Heyer, Paul. (2003) ''Harold Innis''. Lanham, Md: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc.. p. 5 & pp. 113–15.</ref> Together they had four children, Donald (1924), Mary (1927), Hugh (1930), and [[Anne Innis Dagg|Anne]] (1933).<ref>Watson, p. 119.</ref> [[Mary Quayle Innis]] was herself a notable economist and writer. Her book, ''An Economic History of Canada'', was published in 1935.<ref name="Watson, p. 103">Watson, p. 103.</ref> Her novel, ''Stand on a Rainbow'' appeared in 1943.<ref>Thomas, Clara. (1946) ''Canadian Novelists: 1920 – 1945'', Toronto: Longmans, Green and Company, p. 67.</ref> Her other books include ''Mrs. Simcoe's Diary'' (1965), ''The Clear Spirit: Canadian Women and Their Times'' (1966) and ''Unfold the Years'' (1949), a history of the Young Women's Christian Association.<ref name="Watson, p. 103"/> She also edited Harold Innis's posthumous ''Essays in Canadian Economic History'' (1956) and a 1972 reissue of his ''Empire and Communications.''<ref name="Watson, p. 103"/>

[[Donald Quayle Innis]] became a geography professor at the [[State University of New York]]. Mary married a surgeon and did graduate work in French literature. Hugh Innis became a professor at [[Toronto Metropolitan University|Ryerson University]] where he taught communications and economics. [[Anne Innis Dagg]] did doctoral work in biology and became an advisor for the independent studies program at the [[University of Waterloo]] and published books on zoology, feminism, and Canadian women's history.<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/viewFile/1391/1472|title='Both of us can move mountains': Mary Quayle Innis and her relationship to Harold Innis' legacy|first=David J.|last=Black|journal=Canadian Journal of Communication|volume=28|year=2003|issue=4 |pages=433–447|doi=10.22230/cjc.2003v28n4a1391 |doi-access=free}}</ref>