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The entire staff of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary has been laid off because of declining sales.

The Canadian branch of the Oxford University Press said it told two full-time and two part-time employees this week they would be let go due to "changing market conditions."

Katherine Barber, the full-time editor of the dictionary, is among those who have been let go. Dubbed "Canada's Word Lady," Barber has been at the helm of Oxford's Canadian dictionary department since its creation in 1991.

David Stover, president of the Canadian company, said sales of all print dictionaries have declined in recent years. - CBC

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“What we’ve been seeing in North America is a continuing decline in the sales of printed dictionaries – a double-digit trend over the last few years that shows some signs of intensifying. Although we are the market leader in [dictionaries in] Canada, that has still had an effect on sales,” said Stover.

Stover said that OUP Canada will continue to publish its flagship title, The Canadian Oxford Dictionary, and its spinoffs, with plans to keep revising them. But without a dictionary division, routine lexical research will be outsourced to freelancers and consultants. OUP Canada will also be working more closely with the lexicography department in the U.K. offices to draw on shared resources....

The first edition of The Canadian Oxford Dictionary was released in 1998, and went on to spend more than a year on the Globe and Mail’s bestseller list. It purportedly includes more than 2,200 words unique to the Canadian lexicon, like “toque,” “two-four,” and “double-double.” In the years since, OUP Canada has published a number of updated editions and many spinoff titles. - Quill & Quire

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When reached in Toronto Wednesday, former editor-in-chief of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary Katherine Barber said she was not going to comment on the recent firing....

The Canadian Oxford Dictionary division was first created in 1991. The first dictionary was published in 1998 and sold almost 200,000 copies.

It contains more than 20 million words, 2,200 of with uniquely Canadian spellings like centre, doughnut, travelling and honour. - CanWest

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[ 05 October 2008: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

His residence, Montebello, in Buckingham, Quebec, on the Ottawa River, was apparently named after one N.A.Lannes, Duc de Montebello, French minister of foreign affairs at the time (d.1874)

It's been a useful working dictionary for this Ontarian while trying to understand all parts of my country. Wish I'd had it as a working reporter many moons ago. Wish it was a required reference work in all schools.