but after it was discovered that McLuhan had 
drawn upon Innis, and had in effect extended his 
work—remember, the year Innis died was the year 
television was introduced officially into Canada—
once the critics discovered this connection, they 
tended to use mythical language, saying that 
McLuhan was the Icarus to Innis’ Daedalus. Innis 
was the great scholar and he’d really done all the 
work, and then you had McLuhan coming along, 
basically scalping ideas, going off on all these wild 
tangents. I think that is sheer nonsense. If you 
read the work of the two men, McLuhan’s 
contributions were significant in extending and 
deepening many of the kinds of insights that Innis