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His mother knows he is
“destined for greatness right around the globe.”
Elsie and Herbert Marshall McLuhan.
Radio was inseparable from the rise of jazz culture as TV has been inseparable from the rise of rock culture.
– Marshall McLuhan
Across the river, the lanky boy, all spindleshanked and elbows akimbo, sees the clearing below the massive maple where he and Red built that disaster of a tree fort, that rather ram-shackly effort that collapsed when the winds from the north blustered through Winnipeg last fall. He finds the view restful, calming, an antidote to the rages, knots, and tangles of angry voices ricocheting around the walls back at the house. The Assiniboine flows peacefully, predictably, snaking gracefully into the haze of the sun’s brilliant afternoon light further upstream, right next to where the boat he’s building with Red is cradled on its sawhorses in Mr. Levin’s garage.
Mars dreams the boat’s finished and he and Red are rowing together, steering the little vessel into the future, away from the insanity, arguments, and hysterical catastrophes back at the house. No doubt, thinks he, remembering his only brother, Red’s cowering beneath the back stairs, quietly crying, per usual. Red doesn’t mind the noise the way his older brother minds it. Mars minds it terribly; the shrieks and screechings rip his guts out. Red’s got more tolerance. He’s got a much better attitude about all of it.
As for Mars? He hates it. He simply hates it. Why can’t people just get along, be happy with each other, understand that nobody’s perfect (or everybody is, since that’s God’s will)? If everybody were perfect, why, we’d bore each other to death, sighs he, audibly perplexed, kicking the root of the elm exposed by the river’s erosion.
Well, even though he’s only nine, he reasons, he’s not too young to promise himself he’ll marry an agreeable woman, a peace-loving woman who doesn’t have to scream and yell and pick fights to make her points, an order-craving woman who understands the meaning of “compromise.” Someone with sparkling eyes, a sweet smile, and a forgiving nature, someone who doesn’t have to be right 100 per cent of the time. Yep. That’s the best he can do. Swear he’ll never marry a screamer. Sheesh.
By the time Mars reaches the garage, he’s already feeling a little better. A lark perches on the roof, laughingly hopping from foot to foot, happily mocking the long-faced kid. Mars examines the tiny bird closely, thinking it’s not a big fancy thing but – its up there on the roof of the Levins’ garage strutting and mimicking Mars to beat the band. Sassy little devil. Sort of like the boat he’s building with Red. It’ll float, thinks Mars, squaring his lantern jaw. It’ll float. He’ll make it float. All the doubters will eat their words. If he has to bail water till the cows keel over, that boat will float.
The lark on the Levins’ roof, perfectly on cue, whistles in affirmation. Mars swears it. And, that’s what he’ll call the boat, too. The Lark. For a lark on the river with Red in the boat that will most definitely float.
Count on it.
Almost a decade into the twentieth century, highly intelligent and ambitious nineteen-year-old Elsie Naomi Hall, in possession of a freshly minted teacher’s certificate from Acadia, Nova Scotia’s then-Baptist university, joins her family in Mannville, Alberta; within weeks, she’s handily secured a position in one of the area’s better schools. It is there, at a Sunday picnic, the delicate and doe-eyed beauty proudly announces she’s met and plans to marry the tall, handsome, and charming Herbert McLuhan on 31 December 1909.
A year later, the adventurous newlyweds relocate a hundred miles due west to Edmonton to begin their life together. While the amiable Herb forms a promising real-estate company – McLuhan, Sullivan & McDonald – with his trio of partners, Elsie prepares for the 21 July 1911 arrival of the first of their two sons, Herbert Marshall, just before the couple takes up permanent residence in their spacious two-storey custom-built home in Edmonton’s well-to-do Highlands district. Then, following the birth of Marshall’s younger brother, Maurice Raymond, on 9 August 1913 (and the addition of Rags, the family’s beloved Airedale collie), Elsie declares the clan complete.
On 28 June 1914, as tensions escalate in the Balkans, an assassin’s bullet fells Austria-Hungary’s heir to the Hapsburg throne, Archduke Ferdinand, in Sarajevo, signalling the symbolic beginning of the First World War.
Herb enlists. He gallantly insists Elsie and the boys return to her family in Middleton, Nova Scotia, near the Bay of Fundy; but, for reasons of either flu or flat feet, Herb’s army days are numbered. Instead of returning to Edmonton, however, the couple reasons the family will probably fare better in the flourishing railroad city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, the financial capital of Canada’s West (as well as the home of the Alice Leone Mitchell School of Expression where Elsie elects to pursue her elocutionary studies and hone her oratorical skills training in the “principles of public reading” and dramatic performance).
Herb enters the life-insurance business (and is soon demoted from manager to salesman); Elsie becomes the School of Expression’s top student. In 1921, the McLuhans finally settle into a suitable rental dwelling among the Scots and Irish in Winnipeg’s Fort-Rouge residential district.
Marshall – “Mars” to his copper-topped brother, Maurice (“Red”); “Marsh” or “Mac” to everyone else – is hurting. Elsies disciplined him yet again with the razor strop. Maurice knows the feeling; but, if he doesn’t mind his Ps and Qs, Marshall could well turn on him; so, he keeps his mouth shut and makes himself as inconspicuous as possible. For a minute or two. Then, well, Maurice being Maurice (and almost eight years old), he tries to make the best of things.
“Mars? Marsy?”
“Yeah? What, Red?”
“Are you okay?”
“I’ll live. Don’t worry. I’ll live.”
“Mars?”
“Yeah, Red?”
“Do you want me to help you work on The Lark tomorrow?”
“No, I don’t think so, not tomorrow.”
“Okay, Mars. Okay.”
“Maybe on Sunday, though?”
“Really?”
“Sure. Right after Sunday school. Okay, Red?”
“Okay.”
“Yeah, it’s okay, Red, it’s really okay. See? Nothing’s broken.”
