User:MinTrouble/Douglas Leechman
Douglas Leechman (1890-1980) was an English-Canadian anthropologist, author and lexicographer.[1] He was one of the first, from about 1920 to the 1970s, to publish detailed accounts on Indigenous populations in British Columbia , the Yukon and the Canadian Arctic. He advised the Canadian government on what then was called, in his own dictionary definition, "Indian country".[1] He was in his later years an avid lexicographer of Canadian English.[2]
Life and Education
[edit]Leechman was an "anthropologist of international standing", who specialized in Canada's Indigenous populations.[3] He was born in Coventry, England in 1890, migrated to Canada as an adult, where he joined the Division of Anthropology at what would by 1927 become the National Museum of Canada (as of 1967 the Canadian Museum of History) in 1924. He would work there until his retirement in 1956.[4] Leechman held a BA in anthropology from the University of Washington and would, in his 50s, earn a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Ottawa.[5]
Work for government and colonial attitudes
[edit]Leechman used his studies in material culture of the Indigenous population not just for his work at the National Museum of Canada in Ottawa, but also to write textbooks (Native Tribes of Canada, 1957) and popular books for a settler audience about "Indian country" (e.g. Eskimo Summer, based in a 1935 research trip) . He would inform the governmental policy of assimilation. In this vein, his mindset was clearly assimilationist: the Indians would be led to cast away their traditional ways, as laid out in a 1960 publication.[6] Leechman collaborated in at least one instance with the National Film Board of Canada for a 1950 educational movie on what he called "primitive" stone tools of the "Indians of British Columbia" that was played in Canadian schools and other educational institutions.[7]
Work for the Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles
[edit]Leechman was one of six editors of the "flagship" dictionary of Canadian English, the dictionary that put, as of 1967 in J. K. Chambers's words, "Canadian English into print and, more important, into our [Canadian residents'] consciousness".[8] As of the early 1960s, when retired from his museum job, Leechman would work full time under Walter Avis on the Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles(First edition, 1967), as family diaries have shown.[9] Leechman was one of the "Big Six", which was "a group of scholars working on Canadian English" when the notion did not exist yet.[10] The "Big Six" were RMC linguist Walter Avis, UVic linguist Matthew H. Scargill, publisher Patrick "Paddy" Drysdale (1929-2020), American lexicographer Charles J. Lovell (1907-1960), Charles B. Crate and Douglas Leechman.[11]
Work for the Oxford English Dictionary
[edit]After work on DCHP-1 was completed in November 1967, Leechman, then a recognized historical lexicographer, would contact Robert Burchfield, chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary at the time, and work as a consultant and paid reader for the next decade.[12]
Selected works
[edit]Leechman, Douglas. 1926. The Chinook Jargon. American Speech 1(10): 531—34.
Leechman, Douglas. 1950. Eskimo Summer. Ottawa: National Museum of Canada.
Leechman, Douglas. 1954. Vanta Kuchin. Ottawa: National Museum of Canada.
Leechman, Douglas. 1957. Native Tribes of Canada. Toronto: Gage.
Avis, Walter S, Charles B. Crate, Patrick D. Drysdale, Douglas Leechman, Matthew H. Scargill and Charles J. Lovell (eds.). 1967. A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, First edition. Toronto: W. J. Gage. Digitized version here.
References
[edit]- ^ a b https://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.837768/publication.html
- ^ Dollinger, Stefan (2019-06-24). Creating Canadian English. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-59686-2.
- ^ Dollinger, Stefan (2019-06-24). Creating Canadian English. Cambridge University Press. p. 111. ISBN 978-1-108-59686-2.
- ^ https://www.historymuseum.ca/gwichin/artifacts/dog-pack/info/about-the-collector/
- ^ Dollinger, Stefan (2019-06-24). Creating Canadian English. Cambridge University Press. p. 24. ISBN 978-1-108-59686-2.
- ^ https://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.837768/publication.html
- ^ https://www.nfb.ca/film/making-primitive-stone-tools/
- ^ Chambers, J. K. (2019-06-24). Creating Canadian English by S. Dollinger. Cambridge University Press. pp. back cover, blurb by J. K. Chambers. ISBN 978-1-108-59686-2.
- ^ Dollinger, Stefan (2019-06-24). Creating Canadian English. Cambridge University Press. pp. 112–13. ISBN 978-1-108-59686-2.
- ^ Dollinger, Stefan (2019-06-24). Creating Canadian English. Cambridge University Press. p. 23. ISBN 978-1-108-59686-2.
- ^ Dollinger, Stefan (2019-06-24). Creating Canadian English. Cambridge University Press. pp. 23–25. ISBN 978-1-108-59686-2.
- ^ Dollinger, Stefan (2019-06-24). Creating Canadian English. Cambridge University Press. p. 152. ISBN 978-1-108-59686-2.