“Thy life’s a miracle,” Shakespeare’s Edgar tells his despairing father. The line might serve as G. K. Chesterton’s credo. Earlier this year I went to Toronto for a meeting of the Chesterton Society, presided over by Father Ian Boyd, who also edits The Chesterton Review. The meeting itself was a bit of a miracle.
People came from as far off as Alberta and England. One of the speakers was Russell Kirk. In the audience sitting a row ahead of me at one point was another familiar-looking figure whom I couldn’t place. The tiny tape recorder he held up to record the speech should have jostled the right association; but I didn’t realize who he was until another speaker nodded politely to him and spoke of “Professor McLuhan.” Kirk and McLuhan aren’t usually spoken of in the same breath, but in Chesterton they are united.
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