 In 1946 , Innis was elected president of the Royal Society of Canada , the country 's senior body of scientists and scholars . That same year , he served on the Manitoba Royal Commission on Adult Education and published Political Economy in the Modern State , a collection of his speeches and essays that reflected both his staples research and his new work in communications . In 1947 , Innis was appointed the University of Toronto 's dean of graduate studies . In 1948 , he delivered lectures at the University of London and Nottingham University . He also gave the prestigious Beit lectures at Oxford , later published in his book Empire and Communications . In 1949 , Innis was appointed as a commissioner on the federal government 's Royal Commission on Transportation , a position that involved extensive travel at a time when his health was starting to fail . The last decade of his career during which he worked on his communications studies was an unhappy time for Innis . He was <unk> isolated because his colleagues in economics could not <unk> how this new work related to his pioneering research in staples theory . Biographer John Watson writes that " the almost complete lack of positive response to the communications works , contributed to his sense of <unk> and depression " . 
