A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

The U.S.A. is socially and informationally the environment of Canada. Canada is, by way of being anti-environment, a prepared situation that permits perception of the environment … Canada as anti-environment to the U.S.A. is able to perceive many of the ground rules and operational effects of the American environment that are quite imperceptible to the U.S.A. If the U.S.A. has built its distant-early-warning system in Canada for military use, let us observe that we can be of far greater use to the U.S.A. as an early warning system in the social and political spheres generally.
Letter to Claude Bissell, March 4, 1965, in Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987), p 319.
Year: 1965
Chapter: Canada
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan