Harold Innis is widely understood as the proponent of the "Laurentian school" of historiography, which mapped Canadian development along an East-West axis. Harold Innis and the North turns the axis North-South by examining Innis's intense and abiding interest in the North, and providing new perspectives on this seminal figure in Canadian political economy and communication studies. This collection reveals that Innis's advocacy of the North was closely bound up with his vision of northern Canada as the site of a second industrial revolution based on mining, hydro-electric power, pulp and paper, and enabled by new forms of transportation. Long preoccupied with Canada's coming of age as a balanced and integrated industrial nation-state, Innis grappled with the same issues about the North in the Canadian nation that we are dealing with today. Chapters explore the breadth of Innis's northern activities, including his early studies of the fur trade, his biography of eighteenth-century explorer and cartographer Peter Pond, his review essays on the North for the Canadian Historical Review, his leadership of the Rockefeller-sponsored Arctic Survey, and his trip to the Soviet Union. Harold Innis and the North crafts a new narrative about the nature and scope of Innis's intellectual project and provides a unique appreciation of his multi-faceted professional identity. Contributors include Sergei Arkhipov (North-Ossetian State University and NGO Vladikavkaz Institute of Economics) Jeffrey Brison (Queens), George Colpitts (Calgary), Matthew Evenden (UBC), Barry Gough (Churchill College, Cambridge and Kings College, London), Paul Heyer (Wilfrid Laurier), Jim Mochoruk (North Dakota), Liza Piper (Alberta), Shirley Roburn (Concordia), Peter van Wyck (Concordia), Jeff Webb (Memorial).

William J. Buxton is an associate professor in the Department of Information and Communication at the Université Laval and a distinguished professor emeritus of communication studies and senior fellow at the Centre for Sensory Studies at Concordia University.

William J. Buxton's profile page

"Innis recognized the central importance of the north to the Canadian nation, and climate change debates and contemporary geo-politics have given us fresh reasons to revisit his perspectives. This book is a useful contribution to a range of discussions about nature, the nation, and development." Kerry Abel, Department of History, Carleton University

“Buxton and his fellow authors reveal how large a role the North played in Innis’s own imagination, as both an integral part of the Canadian economy and a counterbalance to Americanizing tendencies elsewhere in Canada.” Charlotte Gray, Canada’s History

“Innis remains an important figure for those hoping to understand Canada’s resource economy, which makes this book, edited by William Buxton and his eleven contributors, a timely volume.” Manitoba History