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The Canary \C system
was devised by Paul Heitner and John Lowenthal sometime in the late 50's or
early 60's. There is a high level description of the system in The Encyclopedia
of Bridge.

The system is really Roman \C
 with a strong 1C opening
 rather than the Roman weak 1C
 opening. One of the drawbacks to Roman C
 was the necessity to create the suggestion of strength by bidding two suits
 rather than bidding and rebidding one suit. In addition there was no way to
 show a C one suiter
 with the opening bid - one always had to bid a shorter suit first. As a consequence,
 there frequently were opening bids in 3 card suits.
&nbsp;
 Canary avoids that problem altogether. In fact there is no bid in the system
 of a suit less than 4 cards in length unless the bid is pre-defined as artificial.
 There is no illusion of naturalness as there is in Roman C
 or in so-called natural systems.
&nbsp;
 A second feature of Roman C
 was the use of a step response to 1D/1H/1S as an artificial
 negative. This is part of the description of Canary C
 which appears in The Encyclopedia of Bridge too. It has also been a basis
 of Canary C as described
 in earlier versions of this document.
&nbsp;
 As of version 3, we will substitute 1N as the first relay response. This serves
 two purposes:
<ol>
 <li>This puts us more in line with what the ACBL considers legal. The 1N response
 to 1D being treated
 as forcing is unique to this system, I believe, but probably causes no &quot;legal&quot;
 problems.
 <li>Theoretically it probably is superior as well since it causes the hand which
 is more likely to be balanced to be declarer.
</ol>
&nbsp;
There is a problem introduced with this change. Auctions such as 1D
 - 1H - 1N (which showed
 a D suit with a H
 suit at least as long as the D
 suit) and 1H - 1S
 - 1N (which showed a H
 suit with a S suit at
 least as long as the H
 suit) served as a way for opener to show that he didn't have &quot;true&quot;
 reversing values in the old method. There no longer is a means to show the distinction
 between reversing values and weaker hands. Experience will show whether this
 is a problem or not. <a name=basis>
&nbsp;

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