This introduction to the symposium approaches the themes of autonomy and homogeneity in Canadian English from a historical perspective. We trace the debates on these topics back to the late 19th century and relate them to changing public attitudes toward Canadian linguistic autonomy over time. We review the scholarly evidence on autonomy and homogeneity and outline the evolving interpretations of these themes from earlier research to that of the present day. While much linguistic research in the 1980s and 1990s approached linguistic change in Canadian English in terms of “Americanization”, subsequent work has shown that a more nuanced interpretation is in order. We end with a brief review of the six papers in this symposium, in terms of our two themes: four deal with questions of homogeneity and heterogeneity, while two primarily address issues of linguistic autonomy and heteronomy. These papers reveal both common ground and diverging assessment of the data, which attests to a lively field of inquiry.