History remembers people by the imprint they leave on the world. In Marshall McLuhan’s case they were the famous terms ‘the medium is the message’ and ‘global village'. How a person is going to be in the future is influenced by the circumstances one is exposed to during childhood. This notion holds true in the case of Marshall, the man who Playboy magazine once called the High Priest of Popcult.

Born on July 20, 1911, in Edmonton, Canada to Elsie, a willful and socially ambitious woman and Herbert a cheerful and happy-to-go-along man, Marshall was raised in Winnipeg. His parents were a bad match from the beginning and quarrelled a lot during Marshall and Maurice’s (Marshall’s brother) childhood days.

Starting in 1922, when Marshall was eleven, Elsie began a career as a travelling elocutionist, foraying into the country’s remote towns and cities to deliver programs of dramatic reading, performing mostly in church....