n. — originally Forestry, Clothing
a heavy plaid jacket for outdoor wear, usually red and black; a lumberjack jacket.
Type: 3. Semantic Change — The specifically Canadian sense of the term bush jacket refers to a type of plaid jacket designed for outdoor wear. The term is another name for a lumberjack jacket (see COD-2, s.v. "bush jacket"). The plaid fabric used to make bush jackets is typically red and black (see the 1978, 2000, 2001 and 2012 quotations). This term is a semantic change due to the various types of jackets that are classified as bush jackets. For example, the term can be used to describe a type of khaki safari jacket with four pockets and a belt, as well as a type of coat worn by the military.
See also COD-2, s.v. "bush jacket", which is marked "Cdn".
See also: bush coat lumber jacket Mackinaw def. 4 Mackinaw coat Mackinaw jacket
- 1949  Now it the time for the clothing industry to come to the aid of every red-blooded Canadian boy. It is time that it realized the shame of the lad who turns up at the school in a bush jacket, which, as every one, or practically every one knows, went out of fashion after just two months last year. 
- 1971  A tough-looking, crusty young man in jeans and a plaid bush jacket talks about the indignities and difficulties of poor housing. 
- 1978  He comes to work wearing a Montgomery beret and leaves wearing a Rommel forage cap. And then there's that ghastly red-and-black bush jacket; he flouts it just to flaunt convention. 
- 1996  Dony Sawchuk and Rob Arthurs are hoping red longjohns, plaid shirts and other "Canadiana-style clothing" are the kind of fashion statement young Japanese want to make. [...] The products include everything from the longjohns [...] to heavy cotton bush jackets. 
- 2000  The outside is blanket-weight wool, checkered red and black. The inside is thick hunter orange fleece, reversible, so it can be turned inside-out for October logging or November deer hunts. It is the quintessential yard and bush jacket, the kind you hang on a hook on the back of the kitchen door and reach for as you leave the house. 
- 2000  Will the sari in India, the batik shirts of Indonesia, the kente cloth of Ghana, the veils of the Middle East, even that familiar red-and-black Canadian bush jacket disappear in favour of mono-dressing? 
- 2001  The driver is described as being a male person, six-feet tall, between the ages of 40-65, with short grey hair and a medium build. The driver was wearing a red and black plaid bush jacket at the time he fled the scene. 
- 2012  Judy has created a local line of clothing for children and parents alike based on our Northwestern Ontario location. Everything that is sold in the store is sewn right on the premises. The Bush Baby store is known for its red and black plaid classic bush jacket.