Harold Innis: An Intellectual at the Edge of Empire (Mel Watkins)

"The colony, Canada, has no more than moved in formal terms from colony to nation, when Innis sees the dark side of it being turned, back, into a neo-colony. He fears that the increasing efficacy of modern metropolitan media is making indigenous intellectual creativity at the margin less possible. His vision, like George Grant's, foresees Canada's failed potential, and sees that fate as a manifestation of the increasing threat to the intellectual, not only in Canada but generally. At its darkest, he envisages the modern intellectual, as in the ancient aphorism, having "insight into much and power over nothing..." "