This chapter outlines the development of English dictionaries in Canada as expressions of the national variety of Canadian English. Four stages of dictionary development in Canadian English are identified. The role of and dependency on publishing houses in the field's development is surveyed. This dependency led, ultimately, to what is called the Great Canadian Dictionary War. A handful of less widely known dictionaries that were important in Canada’s lexicographical development are discussed in some detail, and numerical methods are used to analyse developments within the Canadian dictionary market since the late 1970s.

This chapter deals with the Canadian Dictionary War of the late 1990s and early 2000s, when three excellent desk dictionaries were competing on the small Canadian market. Linguistically, in the 1990s it looked as though Canadian English would be doomed in light of competition from American English. At the same time, however, the global diversification of English and ensuing linguistic awareness had created a market for national dictionaries of English that seemed too attractive to foreign publishers to pass up, triggering a new kind of dictionary war in the Canadian context. A genuine public relations and marketing battle ensued between Oxford University Press, the newcomer, and Gage Ltd, the mainstay in Canada. In the end, unlike the American dictionary war of the mid-1800s between Webster and Worcester, which Webster won, the Canadian Dictionary War saw only losers, as all three dictionaries folded by 2008, raising the bigger question of how smaller nations might enable and support adequate language reference sources. The chapter offers a behind-the-scenes look at what makes and breaks a general desk dictionary and defines, linguistically, the notion of Standard Canadian English.

This chapter is an introduction to language and linguistic concepts from the viewpoints of North America. It sets the historical stage for the development of Canadian English from about 1900 to the present. Couched in the ascension of English as the predominant world language, the chapter sketches the influences on Canadian English via immigration and language and dialect contact throughout history. It introduces the six protagonists of the book, the "Big Six", who, shortly after World War II, embarked on a campaign to define, codify, and create the notion of Canadian English as a variety on a par with American and British English. Special emphasis is given to changing linguistic attitudes towards the English used in Canada, from the 1850s to the present. Basic concepts from the fields of dialectology, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, and World Englishes are explained and illustrated for the non-specialist reader.

This chapter focusses on Avis rescuing the faltering dictionary project after Lovell's unexpected death in 1960, after only two years at the helm of the project. It explores the intellectual background of Avis at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, where he met his future wife Faith Hutchison, who was one of the most educated women in all of Canada at the time. It traces Avis' academic socialization to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he was trained and surrounded by the best linguists and dialectologists of their day. Avis, just like Lovell, died relatively young of a heart attack, and there are a number of further parallels and differences between the two men that are highlighted. Parallels between Avis and Lovell on the one hand and Noah Webster and Henry L. Mencken, the American spokespeople for linguistic autonomy, round off the chapter.

The popularity of the Dictionary of Canadianisms happened as predicted in Canada's centennial year 1967, and, for a few years following, Gage Ltd's investment in the historical dictionary produced returns. However, rather than the promised revisions of the Dictionary of Canadianisms, a cheaper abridged version was produced in 1973, which ultimately failed to garner significant uptake. Other editions were either not produced or priced with discounts not large enough. Changes in focus in the wider field of linguistics, combined with the high price of the dictionary, combined to let the dictionary fall into relative oblivion just a decade after its much-celebrated publication. Douglas Leechman, one of the key contributors to the 1967 edition, moved on in 1968 to become the perhaps most important Canadian consultant for Robert Burchfield's Supplements to the Oxford English Dictionary, so he was unavailable for revising the Dictionary of Canadianisms. The Chomskyan and Labovian schools coming to the fore, the latter with its renewed focus on spoken non-standard language, helps explain the relatively sudden lack of attraction for academic linguists in the Canadian English dictionary work.

The final chapter goes beyond the set time frame of 1940-98 and into the present. Analyzing news coverage since the postwar period, in this chapter we identify a recurring Canadian news coverage on Canadian English, presenting the concept of "Canadian English" as either new or weird. In the light of the evidence presented throughout the book, the readers are in the position to decide for themselves whether there is a Canadian English. Canadian intellectuals are shown as often taking a rather negative stance, treating expressions of national identity as more or less akin to national jingoism, which is surprising given their generally international orientation. Attitude data are used to show that a "Canadian way of speaking" is firmly entrenched in the minds of today's Canadian residents, with 80 per cent of Canadians across all age groups positively confirming the concept. This is a radical change from only a generation or two ago, when especially younger Canadians were often sceptical. News coverage has since also seen a shift, being today exclusively positive. Such data should encourage educators to teach about Canadian English expressly, starting in elementary school. Using examples from www.dchp.ca/dchp2, it is shown that much remains to be explored about Canadian English.

This chapter addresses the nitty-gritty of dictionary making in the pre-digital era. Focussing on the quotation slip in lexicography, which is an attested use of a target word in context, the chapter explains the problems of editing a dictionary in an era when unique, physical paper files had to be sent back and forth across a vast country. With Avis working in Ontario and the dictionary centre located in British Columbia, and Lovell working early on from Illinois, the Dictionary of Canadian English depended on reliable postal delivery by Canada Post. Quotation slips on First Nations band names from the archives show the amount of documentation that the Dictionary of Canadianisms, the "Canadian OED", required, not without highlighting the challenges of Avis taking over Lovell's data collection and of co-editors working together despite being located in very different places. Based on extant correspondence between Avis, Douglas Leechman, Charles Crate, and Joan Hall, the editorial assistant, the genesis of the defining dictionary of Canadian English is traced in considerable detail. Etymologies of Canuck and beaver stone, the latter going back to Early Modern times, round off this more technical chapter.

This chapter places the identity-affirming events in and around Canada's centennial year in 1967 front and centre, with special emphasis on the linguistic dimension. A brief overview of historical dictionary projects in five countries, their notorious cost overruns and decade-long delays is offered to put into perspective the achievement of the Big Six and their historical Dictionary of Canadianisms. Canadianisms are linguistically defined and illustrated in this chapter, using the second edition's six-tiered typology, which leads into a knowledge-theoretical discussion of how one can detect words, meanings, and uses that are "distinctly characteristic" of Canadian English. The dictionary series, which was finally completed in 1967 with the third and fourth volumes, was received with much praise. Historical sales data of the Dictionary of Canadianisms helps reconstruct how the Canadian flagship dictionary, which was praised so much in 1967, could have been forgotten within a decade.