Harold Innis Staple Approach

Harold Adam Innis, a Canadian professor of political economy, was born in 1894 in Southwestern Ontario in Oxford County. Harold's parents practiced farming and were firm Baptists. Schooling life of Harold started in Sunday school and the local one-room public school. His high school career started at Otterville High School proceeded by his college life at Woodstock Collegiate Institute. Innis joined McMaster University which back then served as a local Church College in Toronto. Shortly after his degree in 1916, the outbreak of World War I forced him to join the army at the age of 21 (Innis, In Buxton, In Cheney, & In Heyer, 2016). After the war, Harold returned to Canada where He completed an M.A degree and enrolled at the University of Chicago
In an attempt to explain the distinct differences between the economy of Canada and that of United States, Innis wrote about what is called the Staple Approach. He described the diverse political culture and argued about an economy that specialized in exporting staples to imperial metropolis (In Stanford & Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives,
Consequently, Canada is dependent on manufacturing countries like Britain and U.S. Harold's', Staple Theory got advanced between the years the 1920s and 1930s. Advancement of the theory occurred at a period during which Canada used to be sole exporter of raw materials to Europe. According to Harold, economic and civil relationships emanated from the Toronto-Montreal urban corridors particularly at the ends of western, eastern and northern regions. Innis continued to argue that with the dominance of the Toronto-Montreal corridor over the eastern, western, and northern peripherals, a special relationship grew. Innis described the relationship between the two states as that of a heartland and that of a hinterland. The heart needed the accumulation of staples to propel their economy and political power by exploiting the hinterland. Harold gives an example of the fur trade which determined Canadian boundaries by far. Fur notably resulted in the northern half of the continent remaining British. Although Canada gained independence from the colonial power, Britain continued as their trade partner (In Stanford & Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives,