Q:  Could you tell us about your first encounter 
with Marshall McLuhan?

A:  I was a graduate student at teachers college 
and the course was being conducted by Louis 
Forsdale. He’s retired now but he was a friend of 
McLuhan. McLuhan was an obscure English 
professor at the University of Toronto, but 
Forsdale was well aware of some of McLuhan’s 
ideas and brought him down from Toronto to give 
a lecture. McLuhan, in those days, still smoked 
cigars, although he mostly had them unlit as far as 
I could see, and he gave his talk with an unlit cigar 
in his mouth. And he talked in that style that we