In the summer of 1954 a small group of scholars met at the University of Manitoba and founded the Canadian Linguistic Association. Among us were Henry Alexander of Queen’s University, J. B. Rudnyckyj of Manitoba, W. S. Avis of R.M.C., G. Dulong of Laval, and J.-P. Vinay of Montreal.

My association and friendship with them all began at that time, and in particular I formed a close personal and academic relationship with Wally Avis.

Thanks to the support of Wilfred Wees, who has done more than any other Canadian publisher to support studies in Canadian English, Dr. Avis, Dr. R. J. Gregg of British Columbia, and I began work on a series of dictionaries, culminating in 1967 with the publication of the Dictionary of Canadianisms, of which Dr. Avis was editor-in-chief. During the preparation of that work, Dr. Avis and I became close friends. In 1963, he spent a full year at the University of Calgary, and in 1965 he was able to devote the entire summer to editorial work at the University of Victoria.

Dr. Johnson impugned his fellow dictionary makers by defining a lexicographer as a harmless drudge. Were a present day dictionary maker to take a Johnsonian editorial liberty and use Walter S. Avis as a personal example in defining lexicographer, that famous definition would need to take a very different form. One would have to include such adjectives as generous, tireless, dedicated, farseeing, and innovative. Avis knew circumstantially that the modern lexicographer can occasionally be elevated above the status of mere “harmless drudge,” but certainly Dr. Johnson could not have been expected to anticipate the kind of dilemma Avis described in “Trade Names, Lexicographers, and the Law” (1978).

Comme le faisait justement remarquer A. M. Kinloch dans une récente notice nécrologique (Kinloch 1980), le nom de W. S. Avis est indissolublement lié—avec celui de mon collègue et ami M. H. Scargill—à l’expansion des études de linguistique canadienne, domaine anglais: “it is no belittlement of the work of C.J. Lovell or of other of his associates to say that it was Avis who put Canadian English on the map.” II est done normal de placer la présente note sous l’égide de Avis, et j’en profite pour rappeler les contacts fructueux qui ont existé entre nous tout au long des années 1950 et 1960. Je voudrais cependant adopter ici une perspective un peu différente de la sienne, celle des canadianismes pancanadiens, si l’on peut dire, en ayant à l’esprit le problème très concret d’un dictionnaire bilingue français-anglais à l’usage des Canadiens (Vinay 1962). Je me propose d’examiner brièvement les différents critères retenus par les auteurs pour cerner le concept de canadianisme; et pour compléter l’image que Avis donne du mot canadianism, je ferai porter l’accent sur l’aspect français de la question.