WSCM 2: Gertrude Avenue connection

  • Map showing 507 Gertrude and 600 Gertrude
  • Pictures of the two houses
  • Blowups of Henderson’s City Directory for Winnipeg in 1924 showing the McLuhans at 507 Gertrude and the Allisons at 600 Gertrude
  • Blowup of Hayakawa oral history (with sound?): “I had two close friends, Gerard and Carlyle Allison, and they had a little sister, Mary Josephine. Well, when Father [moved back to Japan and] established his head offices in Osaka, and Mother and my sisters were taken along afterwards to stay with him, I moved in with the Allisons. (…) Have I told you about the Allisons? He was professor of English, William Talbot Allison. (…) Did you enjoy staying with this family, the Allisons? I enjoyed it so much I’m still in touch with them. Papa and Mama [Allison] are dead long ago, but their — they had three children, two boys and a girl. I just talked within the last couple of days to one of the boys, who is long, long retired and quite ill. We’re still in touch [in 1988, over 60 years later!]. And the daughter, I was also on the phone with her a few days ago. How long did you live with them? About two years. Your nickname was Hak, then? Yes.”
  • Blowup of pages from In Thought and Action: The Enigmatic Life of S. I. Hayakawa: “In 1924, Ichiro Hayakawa [S.I. Hayakawa’s father] decided to relocate his firm’s main operation [from Canada] to Japan (…) Hayakawa’s two sons [Sam and Fred] remained in Canada, not only because it was their choice but because both parents recognized that Samuel [nicknamed ‘Hak’] and Fred weren’t culturally Japanese. (…) Hak, meanwhile, moved in with the family of one of his professors at the University of Manitoba, William Talbot Allison (…) Allison’s sons (…) had been two of Hak’s closest (…) friends (…) Another of his chums was the neighborhood paperboy, a youngster named Marshall McLuhan, whose path would cross Hayakawa’s several times in the decades to follow.”
  • Blowup of a Trib page from 1927 showing McLuhan as a paperboy. McLuhan is in the picture on the right, back left:
  • Blowup of a letter from Hayakawa to McLuhan in 1968, 40 years later:
  • July 7, 1968
    Dear Marshall —
    I heard to my sorrow that you have been ill, and I heard more recently that you are well again. I hope you have received an invitation from St Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Ind., to take part in a philosophical symposium. They wanted me, and I accepted in the hope that you too would accept so that our paths might cross again.
    What’s this I hear about a McLuhan Newsletter? How do I get on the mailing list?
    Best wishes, as always.
    Yrs etc, Don [Hak’s later nickname]
    I was in Winnipeg June 13-19. My 1st visit in  35 years! My gosh, how we have all changed!