Dossier File 71 - Xhignesse, Louis

Louis Xhignesse, was born on April 2, 1926, he worked as a volunteer intelligence agent in occupied Belgium for the Belgian High Command in exile during the Second World War and came to the United States around 1951. From 1951 to 1955 Xhignesse studied aeronautical engineering and aeronautical maintenance and then completed a Bachelor of Science in mathematical-engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana. He began graduate work in engineering psychology but became interested in the Communications program at the University of Illinois' Institute of Communications. In 1961, he began his doctorate in the study of communications and engineering psychology and by 1963 had completed his course work and examinations. In 1963, Xhignesse started work at the University of Saskatchewan, Regina Campus as a Special Lecturer, Assistant and then Associate Professor of Social Studies until he retired in 1987.

In 1963, Xhignesse came to the University of Regina, following Dallas Smythe, under whom he had studied at the University of Illinois. He continued work on his thesis but has never completed it. From 1963 to 1987, Xhignesse taught, primarily, for the Department of Social Studies, as well as for the Canadian Plains Studies Program, Engineering, Psychology, and Religious Studies. Many of Xhignesse's classes were interdisciplinary in nature, and usually fell outside the core of required classes. In Social Studies he lectured on such topics as: the Symbolic Basis of Behavior, Communication and Social Reality, Man and Time, Time and Change, Propaganda, and Ecological Perspectives. Xhignesse worked on developing an undergraduate Human Information and Ecology Program, and a Social Studies (Human Ecology) Laboratory.