The Dictionary of Canadian Quotations

Peter Martin is a senior projects editor at the University of Ottawa
Press.

Colombo has now written, edited, or compiled more than eighty books, of
which three (at least) are collections of quotations. This is the
latest, not the best, of these. The content is okay this time around,
but the form isn’t.

Colombo’s Canadian Quotations (1974) was set up the right (i.e.,
Oxford) way: contributors were entered alphabetically and a generous
(20,000-item) subject and keyword index led the user to relevant
sources. This arrangement is congenial for browsers and plagiarists
alike. But in 1987, the “master gatherer” fell from grace.
Colombo’s New Canadian Quotations was arranged by topic with sources
relegated to the index. Colombo has followed the same system in the
newest shuffle of his three-by-fives.

Subject sorting is inherently idiosyncratic; even the Dewey Decimal
System, labored over by many great devoted minds, is arcane and often
counterintuitive in its categorical subtleties. Open the new Colombo and
you’ll find subject sequences like Service-Settlement-Sewage.
“Service” is a woolly word with a myriad of meanings, while
“sewage” is too specific to be useful as a subject heading. Nor is
“sewage” cross-referenced to anything, not even “Environment.”
In fact, there is no “Environment” subject heading, although there
is one for “Environmentalism,” which says “See also Ecology,”
which in turn leads back to “Environmentalism” and on to
“Greenpeace” and “Nature”—but not curiously to “Earth.”

Idiosyncratic, too, is Colombo’s weighting of sources. Betty Jane
Wylie is quoted 68 times, Robertson Davies only 66. Psychologist Cyril
Greenland rates seven entries, T.C. Haliburton but one.

Subject weighting is also a little weird. “World War II” as 10
entries, while “Gulf War” has 11.

But enough carping. Although the book fails as a tool, it succeeds as
an entertainment. It looks like a reference book, but its place is in
the bathroom, for browsing, and there’s nothing wrong with that. After
all, as Winston Churchill said (quoted, and easily found, in the Oxford
Dictionary of Quotations), “It is a good thing...to read books of
quotations.”