The sociology of Canadian English (CE), though far from simple, is readily comprehensible. This is perhaps surprising, given the vast territory of Canada, the linguistic complexity of a nation with two official languages, and the diverse ethnicity of the anglophone population. But these complex conditions have mitigating adjuncts. In land mass, Canada occupies more space than any other nation save Russia, but the population of about 27,300,000 (in the 1991 census, according to Statistics Canada, 1992, 1993, the source of all current statistics in this chapter) is relatively compact, largely concentrated in cities or towns, mainly in a long, narrow band within 200 kilometers of the Canada–US border. Of the official languages, English predominates with about 63 per cent speaking English and another 13 per cent admitting to neither official language but who are largely speakers of English as a second language (ESL); outside Quebec, the francophone heartland, about 95 per cent speak English (including ESL). The ethnic diversity of the anglophone population is almost entirely the result of immigrations in this century, but the earlier immigrations – the ones that supplied the formative anglophone influences linguistically and in numerous other ways, as we will see below – were ethnically homogeneous; only now is ethnic diversity beginning to affect our native accents.