prairie. Elsie Hall’s family had come from Nova Scotia for the same purpose. Elsie’s father, Henry Seldon Hall, unfortunately, was bad-tempered and abusive, and Elsie, as a wife and mother, bore the scars of her upbringing. She was high-strung, willful and ambitious, and quarrelled frequently with her husband, whose career as a life insurance salesman was only modestly successful.

Like many another boy favored by a mother who dominates a household, McLuhan—he had only one sibling, a younger brother Maurice, who took after the father—was himself of a domineering, ambitious temperament. McLuhan also inherited a striking verbal facility from his mother, who was an elocutionist and often performed dramatic monologues in church halls. As an adult, McLuhan was far more compelling as a speaker than