Communication History in Canada : A Reader

A distinctive blend of history, geography, government, economics, and biculturalism meant that communication systems and the mass media evolved differently in Canada than in either the United States or Europe.

Bringing together twenty-six articles that range in subject from colonial newspapers in the early 1800s to music television in the 1980s, Communication History in Canada provides the historical foundation for a thorough contextual analysis of modern-day media and communication in this country.

From Marshall McLuhan and Harold Innis to Mary Vipond and Will Straw, the authors in this volume represent a wide cross-section of disciplines, including history, communication studies, sociology, journalism, political science, and film studies. Their essays are grouped in five sections: Time, Space, Technology, and Nation, which explores the relationship between media, society, and human thought; Postal Systems and Telecommunications, which centres on the telegraph, the telephone, and computers; Print Mass Media, which describes the origins and diffusion of newspapers and magazines, with a particular emphasis on commercialization through advertising and market research; Broadcast Media, which charts the rise of radio broadcasting in the inter-war years and of television broadcasting from the 1950s through the 1980s; and Cultural Industries, which examines film and sound recording.