Wikipedia talk:Canadian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 10

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New sports navbox

A new sports navbox was created recently which needs population or discussion... see the article Sport in Canada SriMesh | talk 03:49, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Navigation box second opinion requested

Have been watching some articles as of late, and several navigation boxes have been added to a great huge quantity of articles. The Template:Canada topics, Template:Canadian history, Template:New France have been added to several museum and fort articles. View the what links here page or the user contribution page of the editor who is adding the nav boxes. Are navboxes like categories and used as directly as possible? My previous experience has been if an article is listed in the navbox, the navbox is posted on the article page otherwise, it is not. I started removing the navboxes and then thought about a second opinion. I removed the New France template from the Saskatchewan... The Evolution of Education Museum for instance... and removed the Education by subject template from Education in Saskatchewan‎. Should Fort Edmonton Park and the Manitoba Museum have upon them the Canada topics template, I don't think these small museums are going to be topics of Canada? The Template:Education by subject has been added to many college and student union articles which are not really education subjects. Or am I wrong about navboxes, and the should be on any article which may show an interest in the navbox content? SriMesh | talk 04:33, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree with your interpretation SriMesh as being similar in spirit as categories in having the most applicable navbox to ease navigation to related articles. Fort Edmonton Park does not really benefit from having {{Canada topics}}, {{Canadian history}}, and {{Military history of North America}}. DoubleBlue (talk) 04:45, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

There has also been advise given at Adminstration incidents and the incident has been referred to Navigation templates talk page with a {{RFCstyle}} discussion startup. SriMesh | talk 00:32, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

separate ratings switches for subprojects

{{WPCANADA}}

Quite often there's been issues as to "importance" ratings for articles, as what's not "high" or "top" nationally is provincially or within a subproject such as Sports or Education or Roads. Just now I discovered on a certain page that WikiProject Christianity has subproject-specific switches i.e. {{WikiProject Christianity|class=B|importance=|eastern-orthodoxy=yes|eastern-orthodoxy-importance=}} is an example. Can this already be done for e.g. "bc=yes" such that "bc-importance=yes" would already work, or does the template have to be re-coded for that?Skookum1 (talk) 02:58, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree. This also occurs as a problem for the Canada geography project because there are articles that have more importance to that subject rather than WikiProject Canada itself. WikiProject Australia has a similar rating system for subprojects. Black Tusk (talk) 03:53, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I think that's a good idea... especially if people were to merge city project banners into the WPCANADA banner. Otherwise almost everything for a city would be "low" priority. There should be a general importance rating, then a Canada importance rating as well. (ie. importance to understanding Canada, vs importance to Canadians) 76.66.198.171 (talk) 09:57, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I knew redirecting the province wikiproject templates would do nothing other than make things worse. With the lack of activity at this project and the problems mentioned above, everything has become haywire. Black Tusk (talk) 06:01, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

This is a good idea for the banner template! If it has been done before at other WP it can be done here as well. Kind Regards SriMesh | talk 00:52, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I think that it wouldn't be that hard to have projects use the same importance scale. Four levels of importances is a lot, and I think that the Manitoba project wouldn't suffer much from having Premier of Manitoba be high-importance rather than top. Nevertheless, if the projects really want their own importance scale, it wouldn't be too hard to set that up. However, I recommend that we only do so for projects that have an active base and specifically request it. There is little point giving the smaller projects their own assessment power when it will just result in those projects having most articles unassessed for importance. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 03:47, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, lots of articles don't get assessed. I wouldn't say all subprojects of WikiProject Canada are small. Wikipedia:WikiProject Geography of Canada is sizable and active and therefore there's no reason why that wikiproject should not have separate rating switches. Most Wikipedia users active in Canadian geography are members of that wikiproject. Canadian geography is broad and diverse. Black Tusk (talk) 04:38, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Use of flags on municipal and RD pages

User:RingtailedFox has been adding flags to various municipal pages - often without there being a flag, so some are just reflinks, apparently because he/she intends on uploading flag images. I just noticed the addition of such a redlink on Cariboo Regional District.....on a regional district page? My impresion has been that the use of flags for decorative purposes is a no-no. Are they accepted norms on municipal infoboxes? And don't they strike you as odd being on regional district pages?Skookum1 (talk) 17:57, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

If the district/municipality has a flag, it should be there, how is it decorative to inform people of the flag of a municipality? If it is, then so is the flag of Canada on the Canada page. Or do you mean ancillary articles, and not the main article - then it would be decorative. A municipal flag is a basic piece of information about a municipality. 76.66.198.171 (talk) 16:25, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, we should show municipal and regional symbols, just as we do for provinces, territories, and Canada. Ideally, this would be in an infobox. —Michael Z. 2009-01-08 17:54 z

The inclusion of municipal or regional flags in Wikipedia articles is permissible, as long as the images are uploaded under the proper license, but the links shouldn't be added to the articles until the flag image has actually been uploaded. Ideally, though, the RDs should have {{Infobox Settlement}} on them instead of just having freefloating image thumbnails in the article body. Bearcat (talk) 23:11, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Pacific Cordillera & Western Pacific Cordillera

Western Pacific Cordillera was renamed from a US only title, and Pacific Cordillera was prodded because the editor said the US based article was the same topic, instead of merging the articles. I've deprodded it, because the newly renamed article is US centric, so the Canadian centric article shouldn't be deleted until the US article is no longer a US article. I have problems with the title "Western Pacific Cordillera", since this Cordillera is on the edge of the Eastern Pacific, not the Western Pacific, which would be Japan. 76.66.198.171 (talk) 16:52, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Province or territory of Canada

There is a proposal to delete this template and use {{Infobox Settlement}} instead. --Big_iron (talk) 21:54, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Template:Infobox_Province_or_territory_of_Canada. --Big_iron (talk) 21:56, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Western Pacific Cordillera

I've initiated a move request for Western Pacific Cordillera, because this name does not appear to have ever been used to refer to what is usually called the Western Cordillera or Pacific Cordillera, and the scope of the article is more than just the western part of the Pacific Cordillera. Please leave your opinions at Talk:Western Pacific Cordillera 76.66.198.171 (talk) 00:08, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

List of international ice hockey competitions featuring NHL players

At Talk:List of international ice hockey competitions featuring NHL players, there is a discussion going on about the scope of the article. Please comment. 76.66.198.171 (talk) 07:00, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Mount Royal

The Mount Royal article was moved around via cut-and-paste moving, and then it was corrrected via histmerging, so now we've ended up with the original Mount Royal article situated at Mount Royal, Montreal, and the Mount Royal (disambiguation) article sitting at Mount Royal. 76.66.198.171 (talk) 20:44, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

This is being discussed at Talk:Mount Royal as it has appeared at WP:RM ; note virtually no articles link to Mount Royal, Montreal, and virtually everything linking to Mount Royal mean the one in Montreal. 76.66.198.171 (talk) 06:41, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Being Erica

A bit of a situation emerging here; there's an editor who seems to be determined, even in the face of repeated reversions, to add a "see also" section to this article listing practically every TV series he can think of that happens to involve time travel as part of its premise, even if there's no actual thematic or production relationship to the CBC show. So far, his additions have included Tru Calling, which at least has a marginal similarity, and an obscure science fiction series, which doesn't. Do we really need this kind of thing? I don't think so, but he's determined enough to keep readding it that I thought I should ask for other opinions. Tanx. Bearcat (talk) 01:21, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Notability of List of Canadian cities with large Chinese populations

I added the notability template to the article, and commented on the talkpage. I don't see a reason for this list to exist....Skookum1 (talk) 13:33, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Mark Sweeten Wade

I just wrote this up, and Margaret Ormsby as well, as someone had come along and taken important redlinks out of List of Canadian historians. Needs a going-over with a fine-tooth comb and I did what I could to only paraphrase from the most thorough source, which is an uncopyrighted typscript/PDF from the Kamloops Museum & Archives. Anyone interested in history and historian bios please have a go-over, I might yet be able to turn up a picture of him, also....provincial archives I'm thinking, or I'll solicit one from the Kamloops Museum....Skookum1 (talk) 18:36, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Use of StatsCan information for ethnicity

I would like to call into question the use of Statistics Canada as a source of information for ethnicity within a city. For example, in Greater Sudbury:

Ethnic origin	Population	Percent
Canadian	74,945	48.82%
French	59,580	38.81%
English	30,295	19.73%
Irish	24,910	16.22%
Scottish	21,300	13.87%
Italian	12,025	7.83%
German	10,180	6.63%
Multiple responses included. Table source:

49% of the population is listed of Canadian origin. 38% listed as French origin and 19% as English origin. While I can understand the number is greater than 100% because some people are listed as both of French and English origin, the fact that only 48% of the population is of Canadian origin is blatantly wrong, it seams as though using this information is actually providing misinformation. I don't know what the solution is, but I suggest these tables not be used unless we can actually get some sort of consensus about what is right. There are other cities that have this issue, but I don't know what they are off hand.--kelapstick (talk) 18:26, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

And? StatsCan generally relies on self-identification via the census. StatsCan is a perfectly useful and reliable source, not really sure what your issue is here. //roux   18:41, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I think the problem is that the information is almost meaningless for the general readership. Unless you've actually filled out the census form and seen the "tick any boxes you want" instructions, the numbers can be very hard to understand. I myself just check off Canadian, but that's really not an ethnicity per se. If there was a "mish-mash" box, I might check that one off too.

This is not just cities, it applies to provinces and national articles too. We don't explain self-identification to the reader, and we don't explain exactly what information is being conveyed in the tables. More so than many nations, in Canada the concept of "ethnic origin" gets pretty blurry. Franamax (talk) 18:52, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

A single click to the source in the reference explains the numbers quite comprehensively. //roux   19:10, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think understanding the statistics was kelapstick's problem. The table does say “multiple responses included”, and if that's unclear, one can also read about the census in Canada, demographics of Canada, census, demographics, or statistics if their background is lacking. —Michael Z. 2009-01-20 19:14 z

I totally don't understand the complaint. This is reporting what Canadians consider to be their ethnic origin(s) (not their “place of birth” or something else). I don't understand how one can state “the fact that only 48% of the population is of Canadian origin is blatantly wrong”, unless they've done a better study than the Canadian Census. —Michael Z. 2009-01-20 19:06 z

There might potentially be a way for us to more clearly identify the fact that this is not meant to convey "only 48 per cent of the city's population is of Canadian origin", but rather "48 per cent of the city's population specifically chose the ethnic identifier 'Canadian' on the census form". Bearcat (talk) 19:19, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I do understand the statistics and how they came about, but the point is (as Franamax pointed out) the information is almost meaningless, other than stating how people identify themselves on a list of countries (actually neither the article, nor the reference states that it is how people "identify themselves", it just states that this is their "ethnic origin"). Maybe the Canada section should just be taken out, the Stats Canada website states that 93% of the population of Greater Sudbury was born in canada right here (145,555 out of 156,400 which should qualify my "blatantly wrong comment"). Now I don't want to speak for peoples ethnicity, but if you were born in Canada, you are of Canadian origin (as in you originated in Canada), which doesn't mean that you can't be of English, French, German, Dutch etc. origin too but it does show the incorrectness of the Canadian number in the table.

My point is the Canada section is misleading, although taking it out will skew the data too as over 33,000 gave Canadian as a single response, which is why the table should be removed all together as it is just a list of how people identify themselves under the guise of being a factual referenced breakdown of the ethnicity of a city, which is misleading to the reader who doesn't know the intricacies of the Canadian Census System, and clicking on the reference doesn't clarify it any more.--kelapstick (talk) 20:49, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

(after e/c) Yes, that's what I was getting at in my comment above. Canada does "ethnicity" differently than the "pick one" method used (I believe) by most of the rest of the world. The mere fact that someone would look at that table and say it is "obviously wrong" should indicate that we are doing a disservice to our global readership. The casual reader shouldn't have to resort to the source data (Roux) or search for related terms (Mzajac) to divine the meaning - it should be plain. "Canadian" is not an ethnicity, it's a box on a form. We should be clear that when you look at Ethnic Origins in Canada-related articles, you're not going to see what you might expect. One way might be to blue-link the title of the table so that "Ethnic Origins" links to Ethnic origin of Canadians in every Canada-related article. Then we would have a prominent but unobtrusive link to the explanation, which would include the fact that many people in Canada don't care all that much about ethnicity. Franamax (talk) 21:03, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

The note at the bottom could be changed to “Multiple responses, self-reported.” Linked headings may be useful too.

I disagree that this is meaningless or misleading, or “in the guise of being a factual referenced breakdown”. Self-identification is how ethnicity is defined by StatsCan. Their methodology is clear, and their statistics are the authority on Canadian demographics. I doubt that we're going to censor these articles because an editor isn't happy with the national statistics bureau. Our job here is to report what's published, not to censor it because of our personal dislikes.

The single click through to the reference gives a very clear explanation below the data: “Respondents who reported multiple ethnic origins are counted more than once in this table, as they are included in the multiple responses for each origin they reported. For example, a respondent who reported "English and Scottish" would be included in the multiple responses for English and for Scottish.”

Kelapstick, barring mandatory genetic testing, this is pretty much how ethnicity can be ascertained in any census. Where one is born doesn't determine their ethnicity either—when you state “if you were born in Canada, you are of Canadian origin” then you are completely changing the question, aren't you? See section 17 in the questionnaire. Even more detailed explanation on p 9 of the Census Guide.

Franamax, I don't think single or multiple responses or other details of StatsCan's reporting is really relevant here—It's clear and unambiguous that 74,945 Sudburians identified themselves as Canadian. Also, due respect, that you say that Canadian is not an ethnic origin is irrelevant, because the statistic reports that 48% of Sudburians do. —Michael Z. 2009-01-20 21:31 z

What's also clear is that those of us commenting here are all quite familiar with the intricacies of the Canadian Census, we probably also all know how the proportion of Canadians whose religion is Jedi came about. :) But "we" are not our readership, which is a global audience. So yes, it is indeed clear and unambiguous that some number of Sudburians identified themselves that way - but what does that mean? An encyclopedia provides meaning to the information it presents, it's not just a regurgitation machine - or put another way, why not just link the census data and let the reader figure it out themselves? We should provide context which is not OR, in this case along the lines of the links you've provided, none of which are apparent in the presentation the OP has questioned. We shouldn't expect the average reader to do the research for themselves, when we can provide an easy link to help them interpret what they see (linking to the census page itself = not, imo). Our duty is to explain, based on RS. I'll take a shot at blueing up that redlink above later today, unless you beat me to it. A link from the table heading will solve all our problems. Franamax (talk) 22:05, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

And on related topics, 1) it's only clear and unambiguous that 33,315 Sudburians identified themselves as Canadian (single responses), the majority of the "Canadians" were indeed somewhat ambiguous (multiple responses); and 2) using two-decimal-place precision in the table seems a little silly to me, we imply a precision of one part in 10,000 based on "20% sample data" from a count that uses "origins with total response counts of 15,000 or more for Canada" - has anyone counted the sigmas to get down to .01%? Franamax (talk) 22:18, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, if we consider ethnic make-up to be significant in the article, then I don't think it would be sufficient to just link to StatsCan. We can cite the first couple of categories in running text, but since Canadian demographics tend to be fairly diverse, it makes more sense to include a table with a few of the most significant groups represented (for consistency, we could set a cut-off percentage to use in various articles, but that's going far). It's clear to anyone what the relative proportions are. If someone is interested in how the statistics are derived, they can read the table notes, maybe click through to Ethnic groups in Canada if we add a link, or click through to the source. There are details we can improve, but I don't think there is a real problem with the way we have presented these statistics.

The precision only need be suitable for intepreting StatsCan's absolute numbers in their table—so the percentage shouldn't be so precise as to report fractions of people. But then, they only need be precise enough to show the relative proportions to a reader. (But I'm no statistician.) —Michael Z. 2009-01-20 23:05 z

The general statistical principle as I understand it is to claim no greater precision in the results than there is in the input data. That's not fractions of a person, it's fractions of how well we can count people in the first place. A subsidiary principle is to provide meaningful numbers. I've been through StatsCan's voluminous verbiage on data quality, and they artfully dance around the subject without actually saying "plus/minus" anything at all. :( I do note 20% sample data, a 5.8% non-reporting rate, and unknown audit numbers to review systemic ("when they wrote "Indian", what did that mean?) and data-entry errors. Combine that with the usefulness of reporting percentages to two decimal places (1 part in ten thousand - which of our readers actually cares?) and the contrasting usefulness of avoiding clutter - for me, 1 decimal place in percentage numbers is the way to go. Franamax (talk) 00:26, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

First off, I don't have any particular problem with what StatsCanada does, or the information they provide, and I am not trying to censure them, I am trying to understand what the table actually tells the reader and of what value it is. Personally reading the table (being born in Canada and living there most of my life) it gives me no meaningful information, and I truthfully have no idea what Canadian Ethnicity is. Question 17 states:

"While most people in Canada view themselves as Canadians,information on their ancestral origins has been collected since the 1901 Census to capture the changing composition of Canada’s diverse population. Therefore, this question refers to the origins of the person’s ancestors."

Does that mean that if you put your are of Canadian Ethnicity on the census card that your ancestors are Native Canadian? That is how I would read it, but only 7,000 people identified as aboriginal (in 2001). The problem is this table is taken out of context, and although I was a little harsh in how I worded it, it appears to be a hard and fast description of the ethnic breakdown of Greater Sudbury, with (according to the wording of question 17 and) 48% Native Canadian, 38% English and 20% French. Like I said, that is my interpretation of it, so if as a life long Canadian Citizen doesn't know what to make of it, I don't know how non Canadians will.--kelapstick (talk) 22:27, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

The statistics merely summarize what people said about themselves, and they don't purport to do more than that. (“Aboriginal identity” and “visible minority” are a separate questions, and we shouldn't pretend we can mix those numbers with these.) 49% of Sudburians said their ethnicity is Canadian—that's all it says, and if you want us to read something else into that, then you're on your own. —Michael Z. 2009-01-20 23:05 z

So than the question is: Is what the people of Greater Sudbury say their ethnicity is important to an Wikipedia article when the result is an ambiguous table with no meaningful content (by no meaningful content I mean that 48% of the population identifies with an ethnicity that nobody appears to be able to define). --kelapstick (talk) 23:24, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, actually the question seems to be whether you will realize that repeating your opinion yet again won't make us all ignore reality and start agreeing with you. I think not. —Michael Z. 2009-01-21 15:29 z

Canadian ethnicity

If everyone thinks that I am wrong and there is nothing wrong with a table with the only meaningful information being that 49% of Sudburians didn't understand question 17 on their census form (hell I was probably one of them) than that is consensus and I will shut up, but nobody answered what an Ethnic Canadian is (the only link is to Canada), I am really surprise that I am the only one that sees any major problem with this.--kelapstick (talk) 16:21, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Assuming readers interpret the data correctly, these do provide some useful information. Research on the "Canadian" ethnic origin response (see for example Who are the "Canadians"?: Changing census responses, 1986-1996) shows that people who claim to be of "Canadian" ethnic origin are overwhelmingly of British Isles or French ancestry. So a table will give a decent idea of the size of non-British/Irish, non-French groups, and readers can make what they will of the "Canadians."

On the other hand, I don't know how significant intra-British differences are in contemporary society. In much of its data, Statistics Canada groups Cornish, English, Irish, Manx, Scottish, Welsh, and "British, not included elsewhere" under the heading "British Isles origins." Tables could be made more useful for readers by shifting attention away from intra-British differences, which are not likely to be significant features of most cities, towards non-British groups, whose sizes are more likely to vary from city to city. This would mean combining the British groups in our tables into "British Isles." In many cases, this will be done in the original sources as well. (See for example this census tabulation.) It could even be argued that some other groupings used by the census, such as "Caribbean origins," would be more useful than the fragmented "Antiguan," "Bahamian," etc., but this is less important.

As for the issue of not confusing the reader, I think there's definitely a problem, since I agree "Canadian" is not an ethnic group. I would suggest using the words "Reported ethnic origin" instead of "Ethnic origin" in our tables. I think this is likely to give readers enough of a heads-up about what's going on. Joeldl (talk) 16:30, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

• Agree that if the reader interprets correctly, the data is useful. However, we are all discussing here the meaning of the data in the context of multiple external links and knowledge familiar only to Canadians. Our readership is global though, and they will certainly be asking "what the heck are these Canadians, I'd heard there are a lot of aboriginals in Canada, I never knew it was 30% of the population though". We do need to explain the data, not just present it and expect people to figure it out in a vacuum.
• Agree also that using summary numbers such as "British Isles" would be beneficial (though I'll let you be the first to tell a Scotsman and an Irishman that "there's no difference between you two", if you don't mind :). Our intent should be to allow comparisons across all Canadian city articles to give the casual reader a sense of overall ethnic diversity in the country, contrasting for instance Toronto (which has a lame Demographics article BTW), Montreal, Vancouver against maybe Thunder Bay (lots of Finns there, 1/12 of all of them in Canada), Brandon, Yellowknife. So the devil is in the details, but using reliable summary numbers would provide a much better picture IMO. Can we make a guideline out of that though?
• Agree also with using "Reported ethnic origin" as the standard table header, but I'd like to also have it as a link to Demographics_of_Canada#Ethnic_origin, which section we could beef up with the several valuable links provided above to increase the naive reader's understanding of the meaning and interpretation. We discuss this as "insiders", but we have a responsibility to the "outsiders". Franamax (talk) 00:26, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, all good comments. Maybe I don't have to be the first to offend Irish and Scottish Canadians if we decide to do it collectively. More seriously, I think we're backed up by sources that make precisely the suggested grouping. I think the phrase "British Isles origins," which differs pointedly from "British origins," is likely to be sufficiently evocative of the multiplicity of ethnic groups for almost everyone reading it to be reminded that it refers to more than just the English. Most people interested in the current ethnic composition of Canada care about Italian, Greek, Chinese, etc.; they're likely to find intra-British Isles distinctions a distraction, particularly when only a handful of ethnic origins are given anyway.

Perhaps "Canadian" should not be linked, and should have a footnote with a comment such as "Census respondents, including non-Aboriginals, frequently report the ethnic origin 'Canadian,' which is included among 25 sample responses on census questionnaires."

My understanding is that originally, only 3 or 4% of people said they were "Canadian." Then, one year, the census included a selection of frequent past responses, and since "Canadian" made the cutoff, it was included. Of course, seeing "Canadian" in the list makes it seem a legitimate choice to you - once you've been told by the authorities that it is an ethnic origin, are you going to say you're not Canadian?

Add to this a "Count me Canadian" campaign, led mostly by Reform Party people in the 90s (I think that's what helped it get to the cutoff in the first place), and people were sure to start writing this. My assumption is that Reform wanted to cloud the boundary between "Canadian" and "English Canadian," so that English-Canadianness would sort of be viewed as the norm. To do that, you had to get rid of the name. Joeldl (talk) 08:57, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

[undent]Joeldl said "I agree Canadian is not an ethnic group". I strongly disagree; ethnos in its Greek meaning/origin and ethnicity in English and its cognates in other language have to do with self-identificatino; which is why there are German and Polish surnames among the French, and Spanish ones among the Irish, and German names among the Norwegians, and so on and so on. Here's the intro paragraph and the first line of teh second paragraph of the Ethnic groups article:

An ethnic group is a group of human beings whose members identify with each other, usually on a presumed or real common heritage.

Ethnic identity is further marked by the recognition from others of a group's distinctiveness and the recognition of common cultural, linguistic, religious, behavioral or biological traits, real or presumed, as indicators of contrast to other groups.

Ethnicity is an important means through which people can identify themselves.

I submit, Joeldl, that your opinion on this matter is highly POV, and to me smacks of the common prejudice among new immigrants and p.c./anti-anglo scholars and politicians that "Canadians have no culture", or if they do it's an inferior culture (Trudeau had a line, in justifying implementation of mass immigration in combination with official multiculturalism that "English Canada doesn't have a culture. I'm going to give it one"). Clearly 49% of Sudburians don't agree with you, and speaking for myself I don't either; I'm of Norwegian, irish, French and English descent (and maybe a few other things in the woodpile) but I'm Canadian by identity and culture, not Norwegian or Irish or French or English, and I can tell you also that ethnicity isn't only about self-identification but also about how a given ethnic group sees you; my Norwegian cousins consider me Canadian, not Norwegian (I/m 1/2). Many hybrid Canadians feel the way I do, and many non-hybrids as well; I'd even venture that there are ethnic groups within the Canadian population, such as Nova Scotians and Newfoundlanders, many people I know of Asian or mixed Asian descent (Japanese-German, Ukrainian-Chinese etc) would identify themselves as English Canadian, and as CAnadians; they do not identify as Japanese or German or Ukrainian or Chinese, unlcess consciously doing so as part of ethnic-flavoured celebrations (here I don't mean multicutralism-department funded "cultural events" but things like weddings, family dinners, Xmas traditions). Many new immigrants, of any background, are adamant that they are Canadians; it's not for you to declare that they're not. I think you'll find related dicsussions on related American and Mexican pages (e.g. the many Mexicans of Polish descent, or German descsent, identify as Mexicans, even without having any Spanish creole or mestizo blood, though most do; there's a group of "old stock Americans" - over 1/4 maybe 1/3 of the US population, whose mixed-Europeans-with-some-African-and-Native American blood who are "ethnically American", by descent and by culture and really can't be identified any other way; something like 3/4 of the African-American population is also Native American by descent, for example). I'll leave you to chew on all that for a while, and to consider that all those people who marked only "Canadian" see "Canadian" as t heir ethnic group, no matter their genetic inheritance orwhat language their great-grandparents or even grandparents spoke; some of them may even b e people who have neither official language as a mother tongue; in fact I know an older Icelandic immigrant, in the country since the 1940s, and his Filipino-origin wife who are adamant that they are Canadian and nothing else (even though he teaches icelandic language and culture and is a consultant to the film industry in that capacity). So I submit that your statement that "I agree Canadian is not an ethnic group" is not just POV and unsubstantiated by WP:RS and the testimony of self-identified "only Canadians" in the census figures, it's also original research and shouldn't flavour edits to this artic.e I do agree though that adding "reported" to "ethnic origin" is appropriate.Skookum1 (talk) 15:29, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Somewhere out there, also, I'm sure, you'll find papers on "the emergence of Canadian ethnicity" both in terms of anglo/"white" Canada and also post-official multiculturalism Canada. And consider even the common statement that "Canadians have no culture" as an ethnic indicator made by other groups, i.e. by setting Canadians apart as a group, other ethnic/cultural groups inherently identify them as one.Skookum1 (talk) 15:31, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the wise words. Ethnicity and nationality aren't something indicated by a blood analysis or DNA test—they are primarily people's self-identification, and are often coloured by politics and the law. I challenge anyone to show a definition of ethnicity in a respectable dictionary which clearly excludes “Canadian”.

CanOD: “eth·nic . . . 1 [of 4 adj. senses] (of a population group) sharing a distinctive cultural and historical tradition, often associated with race, nationality, or religion.” Certainly Canadian can fall within this sense. —Michael Z. 2009-01-22 17:26 z

I'm also not crazy about trying to explain what Canadian means in this table by adding more detail than the original source. Phrasing like “including non-Aboriginals” says more to me about the preconceptions of the writer than about the defined term.

Finally, we must not make summary categories. Aside from the potential original-research problems, remember that these figures are counts of multiple responses, not counts of people. If someone reported their background as English, Scottish, and Welsh, for example, then a “British Isles” category would count that person three times. —Michael Z. 2009-01-22 17:11 z

No, that's not true, because the category "British Isles" is tabulated by Statistics Canada itself. In so doing, it does not, for example, count a person twice if they said they were English and Scottish. Data on "British Isles Origins" is available for all provinces, census metropolitan areas and census agglomerations. It wouldn't be us adding the numbers up ourselves. I think this also handles your objection about original research.

As for the fact that more information is added than is present in the source, that is not true either, since Statistics Canada census reference material describes the wording of questions, and also mentions that comparison of responses across censuses is problematic because the wording of the question has changed so much. (See [1].) The serious difficulties in interpreting the data resulting from the "Canadian" response have been discussed in reliable sources (see my further comments on this), so it is not original research to conclude that the wording of the question is relevant to readers interpreting the data (much more than for other census questions). Common sense is enough to tell us that many readers are going to be confused on seeing "Canadian". A neutrally worded note can't hurt; perhaps the wording I suggested could be improved. Joeldl (talk) 11:11, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Hello? You suggested that we should be “combining the British groups” to create “summary numbers.” I said we can't do that, and we can't. StatsCan's “British, n.i.e” (not included elsewhere) is isn't a combined figure either. —Michael Z. 2009-01-23 15:25 z

You've persuaded me as to adding the numbers ourselves - we would be double-counting people that way. But the combination already appears in census statistics (not as "British, n.i.e.," but as "British Isles origins"). Please see this table, which I linked to above, for an example. What I'm suggesting is using the "British Isles origin" figures provided by Statistics Canada, and removing from the tables figures for English, Scottish, etc. Why do you say that we can't do that?Joeldl (talk) 15:56, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Please don't imply that I wrote something which I didn't.

The table with summaries is good. Sudbury is represented too.[2] One advantage is that it combines Aboriginal identity with other ethnicities.

If you're suggesting that we use all of the combined fields, then Canadian wouldn't be represented, and the table for Sudbury will include something like British Isles, Non-Aboriginal North American, French, European, Aboriginal—doesn't seem to be an improvement to me. Maybe it's okay to use only some combined categories, so it could resemble British Isles, Canadian, French, European, Aboriginal. Or we could combine the British nationalities, but keep the European ones separate.

But I don't see how we can justify picking and choosing: does doing this represent anything but our own biases? The topic is ethnic origin, not country of origin. It may be best to just pick one of StatsCan's tables and transcribe the most significant figures, as we have already done. —Michael Z. 2009-01-23 16:40 z

Well, in other sources "British Isles origins" and "French origins" are treated specially as being the main two groups in some sense. There is no intra-group difference in language (except for a handful of people in N.S. who speak Scottish Gaelic), which certainly isn't the case within "European origins", to take an example. And clearly, the reason Statistics Canada separates "British Isles origins" and "French origins" from other European origins - Britain, Ireland and France are in Europe, after all - is that these groups play a special role in Canada, at least by their number. Really, I think this would be a judgment call on our part in deciding what is most informative when we limit ourselves to the top 6 or 7 groups. The factual accuracy of the information is supported by the sources, and the manner of presentation (putting certain groups together), I think, falls within the range of our discretion as editors. Part of the job of an encyclopedia is to collect and synthesize information. Joeldl (talk) 04:27, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

This is all true, but this still has to be done judiciously, if at all. It's one thing to see them associated by category in StatsCan's table, but a bit different to remove a group so that someone may infer that it is insignificant. And language is not a clear discriminator—actually some of those European groups do share their language, and in other cases summary categories include very diverse groups which don't share language or ethnicity (e.g. American and Québécois, Inuit and Métis, etc.). I'm open to suggestion: how would you break up the list?

My suggestion would be to replace the English, Scottish and Irish lines with a single "British Isles origins" line. That's the only really important point. Since mixed British origins are so common, this will go a long way towards reducing the overcounting resulting from multiple responses. This will leave room for additional ethnic origins and/or shorten the table. Second, for uniformity, possibly replace the current "French" with "French origins." (This amounts to combining the responses "French" and "Acadian.") I've come to the view that if we decide to combine any other groups, it will be too complicated sorting out which ones to do it for, so perhaps we just shouldn't touch them. Joeldl (talk) 19:03, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

But you can't add up the numbers, since people are allowed multiple responses. You would be double counting many people, inflating the actual size of the combined categories, relative to the non-combined categories. --Rob (talk) 19:27, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

No. As I've mentioned previously in this discussion, we wouldn't be adding the numbers up ourselves. Statistics Canada does it. The number they provide is less than the sum English+Scottish+Irish+etc. (Unfortunately, for single, rather than total, responses, it is just the sum. So English-Scottish, for example, doesn't get counted as "British Isles origins, single response.") Joeldl (talk) 19:44, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

I won't oppose this change for Sudbury, but I'm sorry that I don't really see how this improves anything. There's no point in considering “overcounting” as a problem to be reduced: the data counts real memberships in ethnic groups, not idealized pure-blooded individuals, the sum will never be 100%, so why pretend otherwise? If we want more groups represented in the table, then just add them—we're not going to run out of paper. And if English, Irish, and Scottish are among the largest groups in this community, then wouldn't they be some of the most important ones to identify? —Michael Z. 2009-01-24 23:55 z

I think there are more sources that analyze questions about English vs. French vs. new immigrants and their descendants than English vs. Scottish vs. Irish questions, and those interested in the former tend to look at British Isles origins together. I'm not saying that this must be done; I'm saying it could be helpful, if there's consensus for it. And this could be a practice that extends beyond just Sudbury - after all, I thought the original question concerned tables like the one on Sudbury. Joeldl (talk) 09:12, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Right, we're discussing both Sudbury in particular, and general practices, I think. But I wouldn't agree to the blanket use of combined categories. In Sudbury there is a large group of English, Irish, and Scottish descendants, and few or no Cornish and Manx ones. But Sydney (Cape Breton RGM) for example, has twice as many Scots as any of the other British groups[3] – these differences are the cultural compositions of Canadian places, and I wouldn't propose arbitrary rules to obscure them. Safer to show them all, methinks. (Cf. Cape_Breton_Island#Demographics, where some editor has created their own “Caucasian” category and cited the census, presumably with a mix-and-match of ethnic origins, visible minority status, and Aboriginal identity data and hot lashings of supposition.) —Michael Z. 2009-01-26 18:45 z

(Unindent), Michael, you have a point that in some cases intra-British differences will be of interest. I think it will happen more often that they're more of a distraction, and we would do best to either shorten the list or add additional minority groups. We can see what other people say about this. I don't know what that editor did on Cape Breton Island, but the census does have statistics on "population groups," one of which is "White." I think the name "Caucasian" is not ideal, because it can be confused with reference to the peoples of the Caucasus. In any case, StatsCan uses "White." Data can be found here: [4]. Joeldl (talk) 13:48, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah thanks, I hadn't seen the “population groups” data before. The Cape Breton table makes more sense now, but it looks to me that South Asian has been skipped.

Without knowing a place, I can't judge the reported categories to be a distraction. I do know that, for example, there are Canadian communities where Scottish culture is influential, so I wouldn't make a blanket policy to combine it with other groups. In Sudbury, I have no idea if the groups in question have strong individual identities or are culturally active, or not, so again, I am not able to judge that listing them separately is a distraction. And if it suits the readers, they can filter out the noise of the the three table rows with a glance. —Michael Z. 2009-01-27 17:59 z

Unfortunately, they can't entirely filter out the noise because of multiple responses. Essentially, all the people answering with multiple British Isles origins get counted twice or more. Because these groups speak the same language, their overlap is likely to be much higher than between other groups. Having a "British Isles origins" would give readers information they can't get by adding those numbers up. Taking the Sudbury table as an example, the presence of multiple British origins, together with the difficulty for readers of analyzing who the "Canadians" are, makes it impossible to have even a rough idea of how many people are of British/Irish descent. Joeldl (talk) 22:36, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Explaining “Canadian”

Skookum, I don't see how you can accuse me of not thinking there's such a thing as English Canadian culture, or of having a "new immigrant/anti-anglo bias"; I have neither (not that having one would be any worse than having anti-immigrant/pro-anglo bias). I am myself English Canadian, but am willing to accept that my culture is one component of Canadian culture and not synonymous with it. Canadian culture has multiple components, and to the extent that there is an element common to all Canadians, it is not ethnically based. Canada does not even have a common language. That is a fact, not "P.C. bias."

You write this: "Many new immigrants, of any background, are adamant that they are Canadians; it's not for you to declare that they're not." You're absolutely right, and you're actually making my point for me. My point is that all of us who have made Canada our home are equally Canadian - even those who declare themselves, say, Chinese Canadian. Most Canadians have ancestors who came from other countries in the past three or four centuries; it would be absurd for to suggest that those who do, and are aware of the country they came from, are not - or are less - Canadian. Writing "Canadian" on the census (at least before it was listed as an example) seems more like a form of protest at being asked about one's ancestors than a true statement of one's ethnic origin. It is quite incorrect for you to make an argument that I am being exclusive of immigrants in my position. In fact, a backlash against immigration was a factor in the initial increase in reporting of "Canadian," at least according to this article [5]:

Not least, it is relevant to consider why those who claimed “Canadian” ethnicity did so in relatively large numbers in 1996 compared with other census years. Monica Boyd’s (1999) careful and insightful analysis of the ever-increasing numbers of people reporting “Canadian” between the 1986, 1991, and 1996 censuses suggests that the cumulative factors that account for the increase include a backlash against immigration, the rise of the Reform Party, and questionnaire design changes in the census. Boyd also highlights the “Count-Me-Canadian” campaign mounted prior to the 1991 census date through the print media. Combined, these factors highlight that far from being a “natural” evolution, the increase in numbers reporting “Canadian” on the census results from a form of the “politics of identity” [...]

Let mle ask you this. According to your definition of ethnicity, is there a significant argument that can be made that Stephen Harper and Stéphane Dion belong to the same ethnic group? Their ancestors (which is what "ethnic origin" refers to)? Do they have a "real or presumed common heritage"? If they are not of the same ethnic group, which one of them has the privilege of calling himself Canadian?

Here's an excerpt from a Toronto Star article on the topic [6]:

University of Western Ontario sociology professor Rod Beaujot said "Canadian" is meaningless and shouldn't be an option on the census.

"Canadian doesn't really help us with regard to understanding ethnicity," he said, recalling the census when the Sun tabloid newspaper chain launched a campaign aimed at getting people to drop the hyphen – an effort that totally skewed the data.

The main problem here is of course that the fact that the response "Canadian" is so frequent is largely a product of the wording of the question, which includes "Canadian" as an example. Reference material on the 2001 census says this [7]:

The increase in the reporting of multiple responses and the increase in the reporting of "Canadian" are the most noticeable results of changes in the format of the ethnic origin question. However, data comparability has also been affected for several ethnic groups and categories, in particular, British Isles, French, Black, African and Caribbean. The following sections of this report discuss comparability issues for each of these groups.

Further: The number of respondents reporting "Canadian" as their ethnic origin has grown considerably over the past decade. Although just 0.5% of the total population reported "Canadian" as a single or multiple ethnic origin in 1986, 3.8% reported "Canadian" in 1991, 31% reported "Canadian" in 1996, and 39% reported "Canadian" in 2001.

Of course, they don't mention the "Count me Canadian" campaign in 1991. Given that even according to Statistics Canada, reporting of "Canadian" as an ethnic origin is so heavily dependent on question format (going from 0.5% to 39% in the space of 15 years), and given the significant effect this has had on the reporting of other ethnic origins, it is not inappropriate or POV to mention the wording of the question. Without that information, it is difficult to make any sense of the response "Canadian." Joeldl (talk) 11:11, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Let me add this quote from a Statistics Canada researcher [8], which I think clarifies the issue quite a bit:

Persons reporting Canadian as their sole ancestry, however, appear to be drawn almost entirely from among those who previously described their background as English or French. Joeldl (talk) 11:39, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

And just to add a note, the census question is "what is the ethnic origin of your ancestors?", not "what ethnic group do you belong to?". Your immigrant examples above are free to say that they are Canadian, but if that's how they answer the ethnic origin question, they're answering wrong. I said Canadian on mine because on one side, my family is Canadian for 220 years, and also just to be ornery. I really should have noted my Danish mother, but I didn't. The responses are the responses, but we do need to be clear to our readers what information they convey. And as Joel and others point out, the number of people reporting Canadian ancestors didn't go from 3% to 34% in ten years because 10 million new kids were born. People changed their choices because new choices showed up. Franamax (talk) 19:16, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

totally agreed and also to note that Census Canada's comment brought up by Joeldl is typically ambiguous and political at the same time, as is the wont of politicized federal agencies such as Census Canada clearly is (since day one): i.e. does the use of "English" in "English and French" mean "English ancestry/ethnic" or does it mean English Canadian in teh sense of what has become necessary to qualify by the French term anglophone? My mother is of French (from France) ancestry, born in Toronto, to an anglicized French-from-France Quebec family (from the Townships, near the NY border); when she immigrated to Canada (her family had moved to California in the 1920s) in 1939/1940 sometime, the immigration officer classed her as "French Canadian" because of her surname; she spoke no French, neither did her father, though they were from Quebec (yet not quebecois). Similarly among "English Canadians" that "English" usage in Census Canad's comment quite likely includes fully anglicized Scandinavian, German and Slavic ancestry folks, and not just form families in teh coutnry for hundresd of years, but also recent arrivals. I think the issue here is teh notion of "unhyphneated Canadioan", sometihing that people of English/French language./extraction are more likely to invoke because of s ense of communal identity, and no need to say what their "hyphen" is; I happen to know some of even Chinese descent who would adamantly claim they are Canadian only, and also English Canadian, speaking Chinese, and who are rejected as "Chinese Canadian" by other passport-waving chinese Canadians except when it comes to counting them for reasons of political expdiency; if you look on [[Talk:Chinese Canadian} you'll find that even young Chinese-speaking Chinese Canadians are also considered by others to "not be Chinese enough". The issue here, much evaded by politicians and academics, is the emergence of a bona fide distinct Canadian "natoinality" (i.e. ethnicity) which more recent and much more politically-conscious definitions have since been superimposed and deliberately vagarized (IMO). I have to go until later, but will reply to some of Joeldl's specifci rebuttals when I get a chance; my main response is to the notion that "there is no Canadian ethnicity". This is both a conceit and a deceit, and is, as I said, highly POV; rewriting the cultural identity of the country is a political agenda I have watched unfold in my lifetime (I'm 53) and it's a very clear process; the rise in people who would say "Canadian" only is a backlash to having the country, and their identity, redefined for them by political and academic agendas....Skookum1 (talk) 19:32, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Skookum1, with respect to your passion on the subject, it might be better to discuss more how we can find our way to a good solution for our readers. I, like Joel, stated above that "there is no such thing as Canadian ethnicity". I'll take the risk of speaking for Joel here by saying that what we mean is "what the hell does the term mean?" and "what exactly is it that we're trying to define when we say ethnicity?" For me, Canadian is the only acceptable definition. My ancestors came here to Canada, to be Canadian. It's not defined by the food I eat, that depends which way I turn on West 4th and how far I walk. It's not the clothes I wear (blue jeans) or the church I go to (none) or the causes (environmental/natural/scientific) or politicians (liberal) I support or which countries news I read (all of them). If "polite and tolerant small-town-dude" was a category, I'd pick that - but I feel no ties to any other country but Canada. Within the hopelessly vague definition of "ethnicity" then, I'm a Canadian. There's no political or PC or identity-rewriting components to it - it's just what I am and always will be.

Regardless of how those census responses came about, truth or backlash or sheer confusion, I think the best we can do is to try to beef up the explanation in as NPOV a way as possible, letting the sources speak for themselves. And indeed, if there are RS to discuss politicization of how the census works, we can put that in and let the reader decide. The key here is to explain to our global readership how the figures can be interpreted, and people above have certainly dug up enough sources to get that started. Franamax (talk) 00:40, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

To answer your question, Skookum, what Statistics Canada means is that the people who now answer "Canadian" only to the ethnic origin question are mostly among those who would have answered "English" or "French" had the wording of the question been the same as in older censuses, before "Canadian" was listed as an example. The best way to see that is the huge drops in the "English" and "French" responses that happened in 1996 after they made the change. I think another good illustration of this is that, according to this table, 99.1% of people who said they were "Canadian"-only had English or French mother tongue, versus 80.3% of Canadians as a whole. In fact, that same table gives us a decent idea of who the "Canadians" are in a place like Sudbury. Joeldl (talk) 20:03, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Due respect, fellow editors, but I don't see the point of this chat. Well-researched study of the Census questions can go into Canadian Census or Demographics of Canada. But if you're not proposing specific changes to the article, then please don't swamp our edit summaries with idle speculation about specific population changes, the relationship of ethnicity and mother tongue, or the cause of changing identity in Canada. —Michael Z. 2009-01-25 00:02 z

I was suggesting that some explanatory matter concerning these "Canadian" Canadians be inserted on the page itself. Skookum, and this is only a supposition, might oppose that because it might look as if we were apologizing somehow for the fact that we had "Canadian" as an ethnic denomination in our data. I'm uncomfortable leaving it in without any explanation on the page itself.

The best approximation for ethnicity in census data among "Canadian"-only Canadians seems to be mother tongue. Data are available for each province, CMA, CA, and CD on the mother tongue (if it's English or French) of "Canadian" Canadians (both total and single-responses). It might be helpful to make it a regular practice to provide a second table with this information so that readers will know an approximate English/French breakdown of the "Canadian" Canadians in the various locations we're providing a table for. (I know that at least one analysis of ethnic data used the language the survey was conducted in for this purpose. This was not for the census but for the "Ethnic Diversity Survey.") Joeldl (talk) 09:27, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand. You're going to use the results of a distinct question about language, to second-guess the ethnicity of respondents who said “Canadian?” You're going to assume that people who said “Canadian” all speak English or French as their “mother tongue” (I assume this means “the language that this person first learned at home in childhood and still understands” from the questionnaire). So, how will your formula account for the English-speaking Black Canadians who have lived in Nova Scotia for generations, for example, or recent immigrants of Indian origin who learned English in the home? —Michael Z. 2009-01-26 18:58 z

No, I would just present the data about mother tongue for that group, without commenting on it. The numbers available are: 1. Total number of "Canadian" single-response. 2. number among those with English mother tongue 3. number with French mother tongue. 4. number with both English and French mother tongues. (A similar breakdown is available for total "Canadian" responses, including multiple ones.) Readers can draw their own conclusions, but based on the statement from Statistics Canada that most of the "Canadians" would have answered English or French in previous censuses, readers' inferences are likely to be correct ones. Joeldl (talk) 19:14, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm skeptical. Note that the remark in StatsCan document refers to “Persons reporting Canadian as their sole ancestry,” not to all people reporting Canadian as an ethnic origin, that they “appear to be drawn almost entirely...” – how many decimal places of accuracy is that? And your statement about readers' inferences being correct assumes that yours are.\

Can you make up an example for Greater Sudbury, with the references? —Michael Z. 2009-01-26 19:33 z

Joeldl, do you have a specific link on linguistic breakdowns among single-responding Canadians? I'll share Mzajac's skepticism that I don't see help article-by-article for the casual reader to interpret the "Canadian" data. It would need some seriously robust explanation at Demographics of Canada at the least. For instance the population originating in Haiti, speaking French, living in Montreal, identifying as Canadian - under your criteria may disappear as white people originating in France. I'm sure that's not your intent, but I can't analyze your proposal in enough depth. I still favour appropriate expansion in the Demographics#Ethnic Origin section.

I'd also favour including a table for "Linguistic Origin" (single-answer primary-language response?) in all Canadian city/province/demog articles, which I believe is partly what Joel has in mind - and gives the linguistic origin vs. "ethnic" origin anyway. Rather than hypercube the data though, we should keep the two concepts separate and explain each. Franamax (talk) 07:55, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Due respect to you also Mzajac, but if you want to discuss improvements to any specific "the article", it's best to discuss those on the specific article talk page. The discussion here is at WT:CWNB, where we treat with Canadian articles in general, so our discourse is relevant to the general topic, not just to Greater Sudbury. It's been raised as an interesting test case, and we should try our proposals there first, but we're trying to work out a much broader solution - which we will hopefully also propose at WP:CANSTYLE if we get some good agreement here. Franamax (talk) 22:56, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

What are you talking about? Do you want to see an example of the Joeldl's proposal done for Sudbury or not? —Michael Z. 2009-01-27 04:44 z

OK. it's like this: read up above, to the previous six-: indent, it's by Mzajac, begins with "Due respect, fellow editors...", and questions the "point" of this "chat". I indented once to respond to your original point. It's usually best to follow the indenting. And if it indents too far, the convention is to prefix with "(undent)" or "(deindent)" or some such to note which sub-thread is continuing.

And yes, I've already done a piece on Greater Sudbury, however other wiki-issues have stalled me from saving my comment on Joeldl's linguistic suggestions in the minithread above. They will appear presently in their appropriate position. Sorry, I work one wiki-bit at a time, and each takes hours. :) Franamax (talk) 07:32, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, sorry. I usually respond to older comments directly below, and indented still further then the previous response. They sometimes get lost because they're not at the end, but they are easier to associate with the responded to. Ta. —Michael Z. 2009-01-27 18:01 z

(Unindent) Yes, Franamax, the links are here: [9] [10]. I understand that the "Canadian" responses given in the table are for total responses and not for single responses. But I think breaking down the single responses is more important, because people who said they were "Scottish" and "Canadian," or "Italian" and "Canadian" have already been counted once. Perhaps an entire separate table is overkill, but what about something like a footnote for the "Canadian" response (a total of 64,345 people in 2006) saying this: "Includes 25,980 who gave the single response 'Canadian.' Of these, 14,390 have English mother tongue, 11,070 French mother tongue, and 380 both English and French mother tongues." Joeldl (talk) 13:38, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I realize I am arriving late in the conversation, but in any case, I thought it might be or interest to some to read a June-2008 thread on the same topic right here. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Canadian_Wikipedians%27_notice_board&action=edit&section=12Mathieugp (talk) 22:03, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Interesting link, and here's another one to a much shorter discussion that ended up [11] [12] with the "Ethnic Origin" part of the infobox in our signature article getting changed to something I can't quite figure out. We have a big hole to climb out of here... Franamax (talk) 00:58, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Explaining "Canadian" (continued)

I've partly been out of this conversation lately due to a house guest, who's out at the moment, but also because I feel that this conversation is skirting all over the thin ice of original research as well as the various POVs about "what is Canadian?" and "who are Canadians?". Attempting to analyze StatsCan data in order to arrive at a conclusion about anything is clearly synthesis, if not directly original research, though that's a very fine line as well. The opening paragraphs of the Ethnic groups articls re "what is ethnicity" are sufficient; for those who do not feel that Canadian is a bona fide ethnicity - however it is defined, i.e. by those "sporting" it as their own marker, or as defined by others (for those who think Canadians are just like Americans, the Americans have their own opinions about that and can pick us out from a mile away, and not just from the plaid-in-drab-colours and Habs jerseys...). Confusing ethnicity with ancestry is part of hte problem here; ethnicity is an awareness, a loyalty, a sentiment, virtually a POV concept whether self-worn or externally-designated. It's a cultural minefield as well as a polltical one (as this conversation serves to demonstrate) and the more basic and more direct the article content is (on any connected article), the better. To fret about making it clear that the Sudburians who say they're only Canadian and feel a need to explain that these are actually only those of English and French ancestry - or rather, linguistic culture - is feeding grapes to the grapevine, and while it's likely true that the French feeling about "being Canadian" is probably different than the English one, that's not for this article to state; an external source commenting on that, yes, but for us to go about retooling the wording in order to convey some kind of interpretive analysis of the figures, or of the meaning, or intended meaning, of the choices of those who marked only "Canadian" on the census forms, is not the job of Wikipedians". StatsCan, as I've already noted, has a clear political agenda and its choices or wordings and questions, and in fact the absence of various topics in their analysis, is one of the main problems with that august body; it's also why it's difficult to get ethnic breakdowns for smaller communities/census areas - just the ones they cherrypick (although you can get visible minority figures for nearly anywhere, even Old Crow and Lower Post); which makes it hard to trace, for example, where Canadians of Norwegian ancestry are in the backwoods comunities of BC, or the distribution of Germans in the rural Cariboo, or to identify Revelstoke and Trail as the Italian-flavoured communities that they are, or Castlegar or Grand Forks as Doukhobor, or Kitimat as Portuguese or Prince Rupert as Hungarian; it's also impossible with t he "North American Indian" ancestry to know if those might be in-migrant Americans with some Cherokee or Sioux or whatever blood, or even if they're from this side of the border to know if, say in the case of Quesnel, they're Carrier, Chilcotin or Shuswap (or from other areas of North America, again). Census Canada makes a point of obfuscating such figures while focusing on so-called "multicultural" figures (i.e. visible minorities=races). It's a minefield and the figures are what they are, likewise StatsCan's own political directives (censuses are used to define budgeting for various programs, whether economic or cultural...). The census itself is ALREADY subjective, in other words; for "us" to try and interpret or "weed" its figures for "emergent truths" is far beyond the pale of what WP:OR and WP:Synthesis proscirbe, and because anyone looking for the truths they're looking for is doing so on their own agenda ("Canadian is not an ethnicity" or "Canadian IS an ethnicity"), then WP:POV is just as much an issue. The best that can be done is to state that bit about "reported" or some other simple wording in the table and in the intro; tyring to interpret any figures is not our job; if there are reports that do interpret those figures, they can be cited (bearing in mind that all such reports, e.g. in journalism especially, are not peer-reviewedd and likely have a POV agenda....). That's all for now, my friend will be back soon; Joeldl you took what I was saying as an accusation; it was an observation; and I'll state clearly that I feel the confused meaning of "Canadian" today is not so much a polarity as it is a spectrum, but at one end are "those of us" who have no external loyalties and who do not primarily identify by any cultural group, other than the usual English-French linguistic divide; among hte Anglophone Canadians I know are many who have other languages as their mother tongue (including French).Skookum1 (talk) 19:03, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

What I'm suggesting is including certain information that is directly supported by sources, especially census data. I'm not suggesting we interpret the data ourselves - you're right, that's not our job. However, choosing what information is relevant to include is our job. In particular, the inclusion of absolutely verifiable information that might throw some light on who the "Canadians" of Sudbury are is not original research. It's open to you to argue that it's a poor editorial choice for whatever reason, but original research is not one. Joeldl (talk) 22:07, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

You want to add spoken language data to the article's demographics section, to help readers reinterpret the actual demographics data, which you consider flawed. I think this is something like what Skookum1 means by synthesis and possibly original research. —Michael Z. 2009-01-27 23:50 z

What you're calling an impermissible synthesis would actually be an ordinary editorial decision that falls within editors' discretion. Selecting attributed material for inclusion is our job, and deciding what is relevant is our job. What is not allowed is putting together information from various sources and drawing conclusions from it that are not themselves attributable to any source. (Please see WP:SYNTH.) What I am suggesting is providing relevant information to readers, all of which is itself attributed. (And let me add that mother tongue statistics clearly fall within the domain of demographics.) Joeldl (talk) 09:30, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

“The best approximation for ethnicity in census data among "Canadian"-only Canadians seems to be mother tongue.”—I don't believe this basis for your theory is true. I think ethnicity is their response to the ethnicity question, and any other “approximation” of that is fanciful. We shouldn't be outlining original research projects for our readers. —Michael Z. 2009-01-29 09:39 z

I'm not suggesting that we write that it's a good approximation. And if I have any "theories," I'm not suggesting putting them in the article. Presenting attributed information is not original research. We are entitled as editors to use our brains in deciding what seems relevant when complete information isn't available.

I've already given a quote from an academic saying that "Canadian" ethnicity is "meaningless." Clearly some academics feel that these people's true ethnicity is other than "Canadian." That provides support for the view that additional information on the "Canadians" could be helpful to readers.

We have already seen that a Statistics Canada researcher says that the "Canadian"-only people are mostly among those who in previous censuses would have answered "English" or "French." From the census data we cannot tell exactly how many there are of each, and therein lies the problem. It is only common sense, and not at all "fanciful," that there is a strong relation between English/French ethnic origin on the one hand and English/French mother tongue on the other. It is uncertain to what extent this is the case, but since I am not suggesting the inclusion in the article of any statements to this effect, it is not necessary to attribute the claim.

In its current state, the table makes it extremely difficult to have a general idea of how many people's ancestors came from the British Isles and how many from France. The purpose of my proposals is not to answer the question directly, because we cannot; it is to provide data that are relevant to it. Joeldl (talk) 11:59, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

The pompousness and arrogance of academics is a major bugbear in this country, telling us who and what we are; and many of them have origins elsewhere, or educations heavily biased against the notion of an emergent Canadian nation, i.e. a Canadian ethnicity as opposed to a Canadian "Nationality" ("I have a passport and so I'm Canadian, even though I prefer to live in Hong Kong/Lebanon etc or as if I were still in Hong Kong/Lebanon etc."). The p.c. bias of academics predicates as citing them as anything but opinions, i.e. as POVs; like it or not, whether meaning you or the academics in question, there is such as thing as a Canadian identity which transcends mere passport-holding, and lineage facts - such as the person above who commented that his mixed-ancestry family has been here for over 200 years - fly in the face of the prejudicial branding of such people as "European", as if that were a synonym for "white" and/or "anglo". In politically-oriented contnet, such as the parliamentary dispute article, editorial/op-ed comment is not citable as anything but opinion, and should not and never be used as "proof of fact", simply because some twit in an ivory tower wants to pontificate on how Canadians don't have an ethnicity or an identity or a culture of their own; it's a substextual justifrication for making multicultural agendas the surrogate/replacement for the "indigenous ethnicity" which was emerging here before Trudeau opened the proverbial floodgates and started rewriting, as did his successors and lieutenants (e.g. Sheila Copps) in teh creation of a new, synthetic nationality, to replace the older one, unclear as it was at the time; in fact if there's a rise in "Canadian" attestations in the census that is a backlash, that's what it's a backlash to - an ethnicity finally defining itself in defiance of the government's, or the academicians', agenda. As for your comment:

It is only common sense, and not at all "fanciful," that there is a strong relation between English/French ethnic origin on the one hand and English/French mother tongue on the other

You continue to obfuscate between English ethnicity and English mother tongue. I'm 1/4 English "ethnic" but wholly English-mother-tongue on all of my four sides (even though my father's mother tongue was Norwegian, he was an English Canadian and did not speak English with an accent, nor had spoken Norwegian much since his father's death in 1916). I'll ask again - when Census Canada says that about "Canadians" being of either English or French origin, did it say "English mother tongue" or "English-ethnicity ancestry" (by whatever terms). There's a very BIG difference, but blurring the lines is a common game of both Census Canada as well as teh academicians and multiculturalists; in Western Canada particularly, "English Canadian" clearly includes the preponderance of those of Ukrainian, German, Scandinavian, French, Russian, Hungarian etc etc ethnicities; even overtly Greek-culture Greek Canadians would consider themselves English Canadians even if their mother tongue was Greek. So even "mother tongue" isn't useful; identification as an English Canadian is what's relevant, but Census Canada isn't interested in the distinction; "levelling" anglo and white populations into one bloc is a political game; it's also why you can find visible minority breakdowns for all places in Canada, even when their levels are 1% or less (e.g. Kamloops see demograhpics section) but you can't find "ethnicity" breakdowns for those same places, large or small (unless you pay for them). The whole Census is a political shell-game.....and the premises of academics all too often are nothing more than POV hot air and disnformation, re-tooling the public identity on an agenda, just as our history is "rewritten" through ethnic adn gender lenses intsead of simply being taught "as it was". Myself, it's clear that while such opinions exist, your effort to give them a presence in the article without looking into other sources - journalists, popular authors, even other academics - who differ with the p.c. interpretation ("Canadian is not an ethnicity") should also be present; if they are not, only having the one side would make the content POV.Skookum1 (talk) 14:55, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't want to engage in debate here over whether StatsCan or certain academics are biased, and I think we now know where each other stands on the basic issue of whether it makes sense to speak of "Canadian" ethnicity. Certainly, your position has been held by others, since the Toronto Sun took your view. (If you could identify academic opinion agreeing with yours, you'd make your case even stronger.) In any case, the articles I've read make it clear that the defence of the idea of a "Canadian" ethnicity is clearly associated with the English Canadian right wing, and particularly the Reform Party according to one source. I guess saying that they "differ with the P.C. interpretation" is one way to describe them.

But I think you're misunderstanding the purpose of my quoting the academics here. It's merely to establish that there is a body of opinion - not just mine - according to which "Canadian" ethnic origin figures are at the very least difficult to interpret. What I deduce from that is that some additional explanation is in order. Of course, whatever explanation there is should be sourced. In-depth discussion of the "Canadian" ethnic origin which is not specific to the city in question should probably be reserved for articles about the census, etc.

To answer your question, what Statistics Canada means is that the "Canadian"-only people are mostly people who would have answered "English" or "French" to the ethnic origin question as it was worded previously. In other words, some people who previously answered Italian or Scottish may well have begun to write "Italian Canadian" or "Scottish Canadian" when the wording was changed to include the example "Canadian," but few people like that began to write "Canadian" by itself. Most people who did that are people who otherwise would have written "English" or "French," or perhaps "English-French."

Also, I know the difference between mother tongue and ethnic origin, and I'm not proposing that we write that they're the same thing. Anything that goes into an article will be accurate and clearly worded. Joeldl (talk) 16:02, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Let's avoid making leaps.

I've already given a quote from an academic saying that "Canadian" ethnicity is "meaningless.—actually, you quoted a Toronto Star journalist using “meaningless” while paraphrasing an academic. Has the professor published on the subject, or just given newspaper interviews? I guess “Academic deems Canadian statistics meaningful” wouldn't make a headline.

In fact, the same article also points out several ways in which ethnicity, and specifically Canadian is meaningful in the context of demographics. And perhaps the jump in Canadian responses is as much because “according to a 2005 Statistics Canada analysis, respondents were for years "discouraged from describing their origins as Canadian"”, or maybe because after 140 years of statehood and 400 years of European settlement people's perceptions are actually changing, or maybe all of the above and then some. —Michael Z. 2009-01-29 17:48 z

Joeldl: "In any case, the articles I've read make it clear that the defence of the idea of a "Canadian" ethnicity is clearly associated with the English Canadian right wing," I take extreme exception to, as I'm not right-wing and such sentiment is also found in rank-and-file NDP supporters and also in teh Green Party and other political elements; it is a left-wing conceit (though perhaps widely published) that the idea of a Canadian ethnicity is a right-wing agenda; to me that strikes of left-wing rhetoric about the right; perhaps it's true that such sentinments in the left helped drive former NDP support to the Reform Party, particularly in the Interior and North of BC, but that again is an expression of the idea of a Canadian ethnicity finding a home in a party that was open to the idea, instead of actively negating it or seeking to redefine it ideologically. Similarly, for a long time envirnomental issues were claimed to be a leftist issue; now it's all cost-benefit accounting and rapidly becoming recognized as a non-partisan issue. In other words, if only one organized party dared to express "Canadian" ethnicity, that's not to say it's a right wing idea; it's just that it was that party that actively dared to defy the "new cultural order". It's also ironic that many "new Canadians" are right-wing and tend NOT to support left-wing parties; you've opened a rat's nest of issues with a comment like that Joeldl, and displayed some POv pretexts/perceptions of your own. If only right-wing mouthpieces are talking about this it's because the left-wing doesn't want to express what people are saying, it wants to tell them what they should be saying; I'm not saying that's the cause, but you're making a "cause" argument out of circumstantial evidence; it's not a right-wing sentiment adn I've heard lots of it from people who still vote NDP or Green or left-Liberal, and who are disatisfied with their own parties' positions on it, or lack thereof.... Skookum1 (talk) 19:13, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Michael, you're right that "meaningless" was not a direct quote by the journalist. But whatever your objections to the particular newspaper article, I think I've established that there is academic opinion holding that there are problems with the idea of "Canadian" ethnic origin. I gave another couple of links about this in our earlier conversation.

Skookum, I'm referring to an academic paper which states that the rise in "Canadian" ethnic origin responses was related to the positions of the Reform Party. You don't need to take it on my authority.

You've accused me of showing POV, but what's actually happened is I've mentioned the reliable sources, including academic ones, that I could find on this topic, and you've rejected these as biased and "P.C." If you can bring some sources to the table that take the opposite point of view, maybe we can begin to sort out what the balance of opinion is on the issue, without recourse to personal experience. I'm an anglophone Quebecer, and I have a very different point of view on this than you might in B.C., which is one of the provinces with the lowest percentages of francophones. Perhaps the fact that English and French have an equal claim to the name "Canadian" doesn't register as strongly over there. Joeldl (talk) 21:07, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Academic opinion is still opinion, just like op-ed or blogs, it's not fact; and quite often even academic facts are not facts, as I'm finding out consistently in readings not just in history but also in supposedly objective fields like geography and geology. And what I can also tell you is that there is a large body of literature about "problems with ethnicity" to do with Germanness, Frenchness, Spanishness, Englishness, ....Greeks, Turks, "former Yugoslavs", nearly anyone, even the Japanese; lineage/ancestry and identity/ethnicity are two different things; and while the academics that you've come across - and modern academia has its own prevailing political fashions, always bear that in mind - earlier today I came across a passage in this googlebook chapter on BC, referring to something I've known from many, many other readings in the period, that even in the 1860s, BEFORE CONFEDERATION, there was a sense of Canadian identity/ethnicity in British Columbia distinct from the British element already in place, and likewise recognized as distinct by more recent historians as well (Dan Marshall, Claiming the Land, UBC thesis, 2000, McGowan's War, D.J. Hauka and many others) - given the different temperament, customs, political sentiments and manners/culture....the same historians also point out that within the so-called "American influx" were many French (from France/Belgium), German/Austrian and also Americanized Canadians (of whom Amor de Cosmos was one); I won't go on about it, except to note that from the BC historical/cultural perspective, "Canadian" was not part of a "European" or "British" or "American" flavour/subculture, it was seen as a distinct identity/culture, an the Canadians in that place also identified each other the same way. If modern academics don't reckon with that, they're just blowing smoek through their hats as well as their asses. Academic opining about what Canada isn't, rather than waht it is, is one of this country's intellectual establishments' failings, and you've served up a case in point; opinion presented as fact on POV issues is nowhere near fact, and can only be mentioned as opinion; and the political bias of that opinion, and in many cases the national origin of the opining prof (many are of US or British origin, in fact, either by birth or education, if you look at faculty rosters). I don't put a lot of faith in so-called reliable sources unless they're right. There's lots of bad, but citable "reliable" sources out there; things that are overtly rooted in subjectivity or opinion, especially on POV subjects, are not really useful at all. Newspaper editorials, even letters to the editors, are every bit as valid as any overstuffed twerp with tenure and alphabet soup (BA, MA Ph.D, M.BS) adoring their office door....Skookum1 (talk) 04:58, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

All the moreso when questions of public identity/culture/ethnicity are what's at issue. Academics aren't the ones to decide; they'd like us all to believe their opinions-cum-facts as a way of passive endorsement of their "authority". but it's a people who define an ethnicity (whether they happen to vote Reform or not). Ethnicity isn't defined by academics, although those who defined the term' ethnicity, who are cited in the opening of Ethnic groups, offer definitions which clearly would and must include the idea of a Canadia ethnicity, whether it's of people in Sudbury or Reform voters from Alberta....Skookum1 (talk) 05:00, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

[undent]We're virtually the only country where national self-doubt and self-criticism is not only a past-time, it's also institutionalized.....Skookum1 (talk) 05:06, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Just to add a note here, Skookum1 you make many good points but they get a little swamped when you get into diatribes about political viewpoints and hidden agendas within government statistics. You may well be right, but we do have to stick to writing about verifiable facts. And when you say that editorials and letters to the editor are valid, well to some degree yes - but they can only be given their appropriate weight, and if the overstuffed twerp gets a peer-reviewed paper published in a respected journal, it gets more weight here in the encyclopedia. Several other overstuffed twerps of varying political viewpoints will have scrutinized their presentation, and equally overstuffed twerps can publish in response. Editorials and letters, cited separately, are bottom of the barrel for the wiki - they prove nothing other than some wacky viewpoint verifiably exists.

Joeldl, I think Skookum1 has quite well demolished your proposition to use the census linguistic breakdowns for single-answer Canadians as a proxy for interpreting the "Canadian" census response per article, although it should be discussed centrally. Skookum and Mzajac, Joel dug up an interesting paper showing a clear correlation in the initial swing in responses, 1986-1996, where those changes were from the "English" and "French" ethnic origin groups. We have no evidence that correlation still applies, it's just worth noting in the Demographics article. Franamax (talk) 05:36, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Names of lists of Canadian rivers

Please see the note here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Rivers#Names_for_Lists_of_rivers —G716 <^T·_C> 18:20, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

First Nations reserves vs. Indian Reserves

I've changed List of Aboriginal communities in Canada to List of Indian Reserves in Canada because the latter expresses the legal terminology, although in the case of NWT/NT/YT some "rider" introductions have to be made, or those sections broken off into their own lists. The list also confused bands and tribal councils with reserves, and they're very different beasties. This list was at some point "First Nations reserves" which is both a neologism and POV in nature, and "Indian Reserve" remains the toponymic/official reality, even in use by band governments themselves (many bands and TCs also use "Indian" in their titles, so the p.c. argument falls down flat when imposed across the board). I've posted a rename whatzit on Category talk:First Nations reserves in British Columbia as I think that shoudl be Category:Indian Reserves in British Columbia. Note also that the Duck Lake 1 sort of format falls down flat with unnumbered reserves so sometimes article titles will have to be Duck Lake (Indian Reserve) w/wo the brackets, despite the Census Canada-derived name; on Talk:List of Indian Reserves in Canada I've also made notes on how some can simply be redirects, and teh varying circumstances by which an IR title might redirect either to a regular placename (e.g. Kluskus 1 and Kluskus 14 to Kluskus, British Columbia - though they're 5 miles apart, roughly) or Chopaka 7 to Chopaka, British Columbia and at other times to a band government when the placename might also involve non-native residents (e.g. McLeod Lake, British Columbia which isn't only an Indian Reserve, although the article reads that way for now.....the over-use of "First Nations" to replace "Indian" and other uses is highly agenda-driven and therefore POV, and also doesn't reflect either official reality, most common usage, or the usages by the peoples/bands themselves....Skookum1 (talk) 19:21, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Skookum, your assumption is false. There are other kinds of Aboriginal communities, not legally classified as Indian reserves. In Quebec, these include "Inuit villages," "Cree villages," and "Naskapi villages," which are all legal classifications. Throughout Canada, there are also communities known as "Indian settlements," which do not have official recognition, but which are designated as separate census subdivisions.

Care should be taken. You can still argue for the move, but then the other kinds of Aboriginal communities would have to be listed separately. Joeldl (talk) 21:15, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

The scope of the article was originally Indian Reserves only, and through various rewordings the title Aboriginal communities came along, but "aboriginal community" is a very broad term, and as Iv'e noted (if you were paying attention) Vancouver, Regina, Winnipeg, Yellowknife, Whitehorse, Prince George and others are also aboriginal communities, very prominently so. List of Naskapi villages in Quebec or whatever is a separate matter; Indian reserves are a particular aspect of the Indian Act legislation unlike other designations; the Sechelt Indian Government District is not an Indian Reserve, for instance, or no longer is teh assemblage of lands once titled Indian Reserve. To combine different designations in a list is a misrepresentation of the realities and the whole point of categorization; especially when said list is in a category which says "reserves"; it doesn't say "communities" (and the Wiki standard is "settlements" (somewhere there's a recent CFD about that, in fact). "Aboriginal communities" is too broad a term; if a province or territory has a different system and nomenclature, that is a different list. This list included band governments and tribal councils, which likewise are not communities, they are govenrments of those communities (tribal councils actually legally aren't goernment,s in fact, they're something like working groups or consultative bodies and are only self-constituted and not part of legislation in any way except agreements signed with and between their member bands and otehr governments, organizations and companies such as the case may be. They shouldn't have been in this article at all (unless the title said/says "List of aboriginal communities, Indian Reserves, band governmetns, tribal councils, and treaty organizatinos". etc etc. All I did here was narrow this article down properly; if there are no Indian Reserves for most NWT native communities, and note also that non-natives live in those communities, whereas in most cases with Indian Reserves they do not (ewxcept on lease agreements such as at Park Royal/Capilano and Musqueam or South Shalalth. The distinction is an important one, and much fudged by earnest types who want to amalgamate/categorize them purely on race; Dzomba Ke (Yellowknife) is a different entity that any immediate Indian Reserve on it; both are aboriginal communities; and there can be more than one community ont eh same reserve, or many reserves for one community (Westbank Indian Reserve is for instance 2, Ntepiskum 11 and 13 or soemthing like that; the other kinds of aboriginal communities - constituted communities, i.e. excluding agglomerations of Indians/indigenous/aboriginal people living in regular apartments but in high concentrations, such as in Vancouver's East End or Winnipeg's North End - constituted native communities; those are a different item entirely than Indian Reserves and should be in separate categories and separate lists. As noted there are US catgories for communities with large aboriginal populations, within which are communities on reservesations and individual reservations categories. Lumping them all together in this list, alongside government and tribal council articles and simply listing reserve names without actually linking them or indicating where they are, which often is different from what the reserve or the band name is....the list needed clarity and the categorization does, too. If you look at Category:First Nations reserves in British Columbia there are places that necessarily have to be in it, and alongside them, redundantly, are reserve names (Pavilion 1 and Pavilion, British Columbia or the reserve article or redlink is unlike an extant traditional village article/name, as with Nimpkish 1 and 'Mamgis and Yalis - the latter is teh community, the middle is the people, the previous is the Indian Reserve name; the place is Alert Bay. To tie all this teogehter is not well-served by loosely defined agglomerations of many different kinds of things in the sam article/category. List of cities in Canada defines a city as a certain kind of legal entity; that's the point here; an Indian Reserve is a particular kind of object, distinct from a community, though the sense is often confused; trhe cmomunity lives on the reserve, the reserve is not hte community, and often not even where that community even lives; the title(s) should also perhaps be amended with "populated" as many IRs are in fact unpopulated; unless, as could also be the case, the best solutino is to list all reserves, and tie them (tableized) to the bands in charge of them/occupying them, and what theyr'e for (Pavilion 1a is a hunting reserve, for instance.... Also a lot of the links on that page go to town articles or in some cases landform/river articles rather than to communiti9es; that's afar more important problem than titles; except it was impossible to solve until the title was clarified.Skookum1 (talk) 02:02, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Since "Indian settlement" already has a specific meaning in Canada, I would say "Aboriginal communities" isn't so bad. My point wasn't that the switch to just a list of Indian reserves couldn't be made; my point was that it was a potentially controversial move that probably should have been discussed. It's not obvious that Indian reserves and Naskapi villages shouldn't be in a single list, for example. Joeldl (talk) 08:08, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

As I also pointed out I didn't think the move was such a great idea. Anyway I removed all but one of the places in the NWT, all of Nunavut and fixed the incorrectly linked Yukon reserves, of which I found four listed by Stats Can. There are still errors in the page with links to non-reserves such as Metepenagiag Mi'kmaq Nation, Woodstock, New Brunswick and Port Hope Simpson, Newfoundland and Labrador. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 09:10, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

"Aboriginal communities" is unworkable, as I'll repeat again, as it necessarily includes "unorganized" agglomerations such as those in major cities and also non-IR communities which have high native populations (a situation also found in southern Canada, not just in the Territories). "Communities" is also un-wikistyle as far as category terminology goes (I'll find the CFD in question later), where "settlements" is the norm; and again, an Indian Reserve is a type of landholding/incorporation in the same way that cities, towns, villages, district municipalities etc are different kinds of settlements; except an Indian Reserve is not a settlement, it's an Indian Reserve, a form of land tenure on which there may be settlements, and which falls under the aegis of a government (both DIA and the local band, technically). The cooperative role of traditional nations with the territorial governments is a very different situation frmo the Indian Reserves, which are creatures of the Indian Act and also a form of something very much like apartheid, and in BC are more than symbolic of the tiny share of the landscape claimed and historically ocupied/used by most of the nations in question. It only makes sense that non-IR communities are in a different article/list/category, it's like having citeis and district municipalities in separate categories. And I'll underline again that settlements and Indian Reserves are not the same thing; Sta7mes is a settlement/village/community, it's located on the Stawamus 7 reserve (Stawamus Indian Reserve No. 7 - if that's the nubmer, not sure); Homulchesan is located on the Capilano Indian Reserve, but so is Park Royal, other developments including a larger trailer park under the north foot of the Lionis Gate Bridge, a sewage treatment plant, bulk loading terminals and wildlands adjoining Amblesdie Park; Esla7an is on the Mission Creek Indian Reserve, which also has several marinas and other industries as well as some non-native housing; The Seton Lake Indian Band has six or seven communities in teh area of Shalalth and Seton Portage, with two - Shalalth and Ohin, on Slosh 1, while Slosh1a (or Slosh 5?) has the townsite of the local BC Hydro development, most of hte inhanbitants of which aren't FN; several of the reserves under the administration of that band aren't occupied, and as noted some are ocupied by non-natives. The Langley IR down the road from my old place at Ruskin, British Columbia is unoccupied by FN people but has a population of ~150 trailer park inhabitants; in my time it had Mr. Haines, who was the widower of a member of the Whonnock Band (now extinct, or subsumed into the Kwantlen band at MacMillan Island). A people are not a reserve, a government is not a reserve but it does adminster them, and peoples and governments are different things (which is why Sto:lo and Sto:lo Nation and Sto:lo Tribal Council are different articles, and each reserve will or should have its own article. A reserve is not a community/settlement, though in some cases they are, yes, virtually synonymous; but quite often the reserve is only part of a community, as at Pavilion or Alkali Lake, British Columbia or around Hzelton, British Columbia. They're also, just to advise, not part of regional districts though some have categorized them as being "in" regional districts ("inside the boundaries of" is more correct but cumbersome; they are oustide RD jurisdiction and excluded from those quasi-democratic institutions). Skookum1 (talk)

The upshot is that this list was primarily not a listing of communities (aka settlements) but rather of Indian Reserves AND band governments AND tribal councils AND other things than Indian Reserves, such as Naskapi villages (shouldn't that be capital-V if it's a legal designation btw?). So I went by content, and also to remove the vagueness implied by "aboriginal communities" vis a vis cities and other municipalities with large native populations. There's that List of Canadian cities with large Chinese populations mentioned a few sections above, and the American-wiki categories for places with significant Native American populations; a similar set of lists/categories is what's needed for all the non-IR native commuities; combingin them with, or confusing them with Indian Reserves, as if Indian Reserves were communities which they're not, was just a bad idea; my move was for clarity, and also to reflect the actual majority of the content of the article, or the intent of it anyway; "Settlements with large Metis populations" I believe, also, weren't taken into account properly, e.g. Regina and Winnipeg should have been at the top of any such consideration, same as the very pointed fact that it's VANCOUVER that is the largest "aboriginal community" in British Columbia.Skookum1 (talk) 18:22, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

The American category is Category:United States communities with Native American majority populations, and yes, it uses "communities" but again, I'll find the CD in question; the CFD affected Category:Settlements on the Fraser River, for example, which was formerly Category:Cities on the Fraser River (even though most of its contents weren't cities....).18:25, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

[undent]I wanted to give an idea of the distinction between reserves and communities and bands, so the best way might be to point y'all towards a few articles I went through and created this morning:

• Liard First Nation
• Dease River First Nation
• Tahltan First Nation
• Iskut First Nation
• Tahltan Nation

Which are all band government articles, with reserves associated with them listed, except for that last item which is a two-band organization (but no a tribal council). Only some of the reserves described are inhabited; if you go to the inac.gc.ca pages for each of the first three and click on "Registered population" you'll see them broken down by "on own reserve", "on another reserve", "on own Crown Land", "on other Crown Land", and "off-reserve" (five different categories, that is). The area spanned by some of these reserves, i.e. between them, can be on the order of a 100 miles or more; similarly the Kaska Dena Council, which indlues the Liard and Dease River groups as well as the Ross River Kaska Dena in the Yukon, is even more widespread. I hope these serve as cases in point why putting cmomunities on the same page as reserves, or referring to them as if they were teh same entities, likewise the band governments, just doesn't work. It may work in Nova Scotia or Quebec or Ontario, I don't know; it doesn't in BC, and these are only a small proportion of the examples available; I haven't tried seaqrching BCGNIS yet for Indian Reserve but it's probably well over a thousand, also, so "Inhabited Indian Reserves" might be a better option unless this could become a comprehensive list (which maybe there is a point to...).Skookum1 (talk) 18:01, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that anybody is saying that reserves, communities and bands are all the same thing. What was said is that the move needed discussion and what I said is that the way the article is titled now, Liard River First Nation can't be on the list but Blue River 1 could be. And none of these can be in the list. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 22:20, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I was only providing an example, not trying to re-engage an argument; there were reserves on this list that were uninhabited, and a reserve is not a community; communities that are on reserves can be on the different page where the NWT Villages/Hamlets now must be, which would include, by way of example, Slosh, Nkiat and Shalalth (Seton Lake Indian Band). Slosh 1 is not Slosh, in fact - it's Shalalth and South Shalalth, Nkait is Necait 5 or some such. Communities are not reserves. Moricetown 1 is not the same as Moricetown (one minute apart both latitude and longitude), the latter is the community, the former is a piece of land. Moricetown Indian Band is the government and, because some of that band do not live on the reserve, is the effective government off-reserve as well (there are few non-Carrier living there). "Aboriginal community" is not a legal designation, nor is it a useful term because of its vagueness; yes, the villages and hamlets of the NWT and Nunavut and YT and Quebec are different things than Indian Reserves; the page shouldn't have mingled them, it might as well have mingled non-native-chartered coummunities also, as many of them are "aboriginal communities". The page was both mis-named and had jumbled contents (I'm about to unjumble some of it, wait and see); I was bold but somebody had to be....Skookum1 (talk) 23:30, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

OK, I've had a chance to do the tableization that integrates a lot of the parallel information on reserves/bands see Talk:List_of_Indian_Reserves_in_Canada#Removed_Saskatchewan_items_and_tableization; needs work yet and maybe some fields trimmed to simplify it as noted. And might I propose Lists of aboriginally-governed settlements in Canada as a compromise/central listing so that NWT/YT/NT/QC/NL places that aren't IRs can be listed, without having to include Vancouver, Winnipeg, Dzomba Ke/Yellowknife, Whitehorse etc etc etc...Skookum1 (talk) 01:34, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

How would you define "aboriginally-governed settlements"? The way I see that it would exclude all of Nunavut and a lot of NWT, Yukon communities. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 09:47, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't know, that's what I was strying to do, i.e. include them, given the integrated nature of indigenous government with territorial/municipal regimes in NWT/NU - or so I thought. Otherwise what is the difference between Fort Simpson and Yellowknife or Old Crow and Yellowknife (or, again, the big urban centres of aboriginal life in Regina and Winnipeg?). I was looking for at term - can you suggest one? I thought the reason Naskapi village needed "in" was because it was aboriginally-run; I guess not (though that's in Quebec of course). I'm trying to understand what makes a place in the territories an "Aboriginal community" in other terms than "a community that has lots of aboriginal people"....Skookum1 (talk) 16:11, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

OK, I trimmed it; I left the "comments' field for items like "unpopulated" or "includes commercial/industrial development" which could be specified on teh by-province listing.Skookum1 (talk) 17:12, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

The table looks better and the page size is way down. The only difference between Fort Simpson, Northwest Territories and Yellowknife is that FS has a majority aboriginal population. All communities in Nunavut are open government. That is the hamlet councils can be made up on Native and non-Native members. In Cambridge Bay the population is 80% Inuit but the majority of the hamlet council isn't. Now the same would apply to hamlets, villages, towns and cities in the NWT but for Tlicho Communities, Charter Communities and Designated Authorities the voting regulations may be different. I suppose you could have List of aboriginal settlements in Canada and define it as only those with a population of 50.1% or more Native people. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 19:12, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

new Canadian

Ivan Babikov has become a new Canadian, formally a Russian cross-country skier. Maybe we should move some Canada categories and templates into his page. I think, there is probably the category for Russian-Canadians (or Canadian-Russians, I don't know what is the correct terminology). --Voletyvole (talk) 19:47, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I added a couple of Wikiproject tags to the talk page and a Russian-Canadian category to the article. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 21:14, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

AfD: Pizza-ghetti

The little article about Pizza-ghetti, apparently a popular Quebec food, has been listed for deletion here. Please participate in the discussion. --Zlerman (talk) 02:38, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

The wiktionary entry was deleted because the admins there don't believe it exists? Or something like that. 76.66.196.229 (talk) 06:25, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

What happens on wiktionary is not a precedent for en:Wikipedia! Please don't get discouraged by the wiktionary deletion and participate in the main discussion here. --Zlerman (talk) 06:47, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Engineering traditions in Canada

Engineering traditions in Canada has been nominated for deletion. 76.66.196.229 (talk) 06:25, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

CFD help on tagging RD subcats

In the wake of the previous settlement of the "Settlements in XX Regional District" CFD, the parallel categories "People from XXX RD" need the same adjustment. I don't support the use of such subcategories as if they were geographic regions; I think they're misleading and do not reflect how BCers classify their space/themselves geographically, and therefore constitute "wiki-isms", but if they're going to exist they might as well follow the basic usage "rules" for how regional districts are spoken of. To whit, "People from Squamish-Lillooet Regional District" is ungrammatical; the usage is "People from the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District" in all cases except what is now called "Metro Vancouver"; that category - Category:People from Greater Vancouver was always mistitled if it was delimited by the regional district boundaries, which "Greater Vancouver" as a standalone usage isn't (necessarily), so it falls in a different rationale-for-naming but I've included it in the following list; I've also coined the usage "Region of Stikine" to avoid confusion over the nature of that administrative area vs Stikine Country and Stikine Territory; especially when, as in an older version of the Stikine Region article, the small-case r-term was used interchangeably with the concept of the administrative region (which btw isn't an "unorganized area" ,as the article had also stated (incorrectly). Other than that some needed rewording to conform to the official name of each RD; I've checked them all, I think, but if someone could double check that would be great...Anyway there's an elaborate (to me) process to put so many categories at once in a CFD, template-tagging and the like, and I always seem to screw it up (and wish it was just a matter of posting hte requested changes in one place, instead of thirty). Anyway not all of these categories may exist yet:

• Category:People from Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District -> Category:People from the Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District
• Category:People from Bulkley-Nechako Regional District -> Category:People from the Regional District of Bulkley-Nechako
• Category:People from Capital Regional District, British Columbia -> Category:People from the Capital Regional District, British Columbia
• Category:People from Cariboo Regional District -> Category:People from the Cariboo Regional District
• Category:People from Central Coast Regional District -> Category:People from the Central Coast Regional District
• Category:People from Central Kootenay Regional District -> Category:People from the Regional District of Central Kootenay -
• Category:People from Central Okanagan Regional District -> Category:People from the Regional District of Central Okanagan
• Category:People from Columbia-Shuswap Regional District -> Category:People from the Columbia Shuswap Regional District
• Category:People from Comox Valley Regional District -> Category:People from the Comox Valley Regional District -
• Category:People from Cowichan Valley Regional District -> Category:People from the Cowichan Valley Regional District
• Category:People from East Kootenay Regional District -> Category:People from the Regional District of East Kootenay Regional District
• Category:People from Fraser-Fort George Regional District -> Category:People from the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George
• Category:People from Fraser Valley Regional District -> Category:People from the Fraser Valley Regional District
• Category:People from Greater Vancouver -> Category:People from Metro Vancouver
• Category:People from Kitimat-Stikine Regional District -> Category:People from the the Regional District of Kitimat-Stikine
• Category:People from Kootenay Boundary Regional District -> Category:People from the Regional District of Kootenay Boundary
• Category:People from Mount Waddington Regional District -> *Category:People from the Regional District of Mount Waddington
• Category:People from Nanaimo Regional District -> Category:People from the Regional District of Nanaimo
• Category:People from North Okanagan Regional District -> Category:People from the Regional District of North Okanagan
• Category:People from Okanagan-Similkameen -> Category:People from the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen
• Category:People from Peace River Regional District -> Category:People from the Peace River Regional District
• Category:People from Powell River Regional District -> Category:People from the Powell River Regional District
• Category:People from Skeena-Queen Charlotte Regional District -> Category:People from the Skeena-Queen Charlotte Regional District
• Category:People from Squamish-Lillooet Regional District -> Category:People from the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District
• Category:People from Stikine Regional District -> Category:People from the Region of Stikine
• Category:People from Strathcona Regional District -> Category:People from the Strathcona Regional District
• Category:People from Sunshine Coast Regional District -> Category:People from the Sunshine Coast Regional District
• Category:People from Thompson-Nicola Regional District -> Category:People from the Thompson-Nicola Regional District

You'll note that "Stikine Regional District" was wrong anyway; also "Regional District of Cowichan Valley", which occurs in other category names, is incorrect, it's "Cowichan Valley Regional District" for sure (I just looked at their site a moment ago). Also as with Whistler Blackcomb not having an "official hyphen", the same is true of "Columbia Shuswap Regional District", according to their website; the SLRD and TNRD still have theirs, though, as doe RDBN and RDKS; the Regional District of Kootenay Boundary doesn't, the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen does (consistency would be nice in this province, but it's rarely the case...); the old Okanagan-Similkameen category also didn't tag on "regional district" but there is a difference in concept; it could almost stand as-is without "Regional District" but then it wouldnt' be a regional district category, rather a region. There IS a difference, though I seem to be talking to deaf ears whenever I raise the subject. Whatever the outcome of that, my intent here is to make the category names grammatical and proper to BC idiom; not further using a Wikipedia-derived idiom that indeed has begun to become current because of h te influence of Wikipedia (and is, ergo, synthesis). By the way, the sole occupant of Category:People from Stikien Regional District (sic) is Rob Niedermayer. Where's he from - Dease Laek? Atlin? If he's from Dease Lake, hes now from the Regional District of Kitimat-Stikine and no longer from the so-called Stikine Region; (Dease Lake I would put in the Cassiar Country rather than the Stikine Country btw....).Skookum1 (talk) 18:25, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Further on the Niedermayer thing, if that cat should now be empty (if he was from Desse Lake...Telegraph Creek I'm uncertain which side of the boundary it was on, though if Dease Lake is in the RDKS now, it's likely Telegraph Creek is also); so that category may warrant deletion rather than renaming (and it only ever had one occupant anyway, and is unlikely to have many more).Skookum1 (talk) 18:45, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

'Ooooh, it's not in the article but int he one ref, he's from Cassiar, which is farther north than Dease Lake and probably is still in the Stikine Region; Cassiar's a once-very-large asbestos mining town, now a ghost town.....so he's still, I think, in that category and it won't have to be empty...other "notable people" have come from there (and others are associated with Atlin) so I'll try and populate that category in the next while; though "People from the Cassiar Country" is more appropriate on the one end and "People from the Atlin District" (or Atlin Country") more appropriate on the other.Skookum1 (talk) 13:22, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikimedia Canada

There have repeatedly been groups that have tried to found a Canadian chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation. I am trying to make a serious drive to get this process started again. I am looking for people who support the idea and are willing to become a paying member once the organization is founded. I am also looking for a small number of people willing to spend a significant amount of time becoming the founding board of the organization. If either of these interest you:

• Go to meta:Wikimedia_Canada/Participants to show support if you might want to become a paying member. We need to show that we have numbers behind us.
• Sign up for the mailing list at mail:wikimedia-ca to stay informed.
• If you are willing to attend regular meetings, do paperwork, have your name on the incorporation documents, and loan or donate the founding money for the organization, contact me so we can arrange an online meeting.

--Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 01:58, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm on that like a fat kid on a smartie. //roux   05:16, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, I would be, except I'm always on the hunt for money to survive on and don't have any to contribute. What I would like to propose, in regards to Wikimedia in Canada, is that an "outreach" program to munis, FNs, museums, CoCs, NGOs, unis and others....explaining what Wikipedia is for, what it is not, what it shoudl not be used for. Many of these regularly contribute spam or brochure-promotion material that has to be taken out; but they are also simultaneously sometimes the only sources available....the idea is to educate them so that their contributions are encylopedic, cited etc, and to get them to realize its value in documenting local history, bios, orgs, landscapes etc. "There's a right way to do this"....I'm not very diplomatic, as many here know, but sometimes I've undertaken to write various munis/RDs or FN govs or differnet ministry agencies and stuff in search for information, and to explain what is needed and sometimes how and why things couldn't be presented as they had been. Some kind of outreach program of this kind would be, I'd think, one of the major goals of a Wikimedia Canada Foundation, no?Skookum1 (talk) 20:24, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Given that more than one marketing/ad agency and/or political party has obviously "educated" their members/volunteers as to "how to play Wikipedia's game", I'd say it's maybe a better idea for us to be offering such education/information rather than leaving it to people who try to sneak in spam and POV content "through the back door"....Skookum1 (talk) 20:25, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Survey

I'm conducting a new survey since the last was done 3 years ago (an editors lifetime on Wikipedia) at 2009 Vancouver Vs. Vancouver, Washington Survey. Your input would be most appreciated. Mkdw^talk 21:32, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

technical assistance needed

Could somebody with a bit more technical expertise around working with .svg images update {{Location map Canada Ontario}} so that it's using File:Ontario Locator Map.svg instead of File:Census divisions ON.png? There's no need for us to have two different location maps of Ontario serving the same purpose on different articles, and we should obviously privilege the one that's proportionately accurate over the one that looks like the province has been laterally flattened by a paving machine — but when I attempted to change it myself, it resulted in some of the location dots getting misplaced in the relevant articles, and I don't know how to fix that. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 23:21, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd look into the technical part of this except that I'd much rather see the province split in the same way as the road maps - draw a line through North Bay and Sudbury and use two separate maps. I'll help with clickables and shadings if that gets done. The differences in scale are just too obvious for me...

(Note that the split could run through Ottawa and either of Bancroft or Haliburton too, but the "waist" of Ontario is the best point). Franamax (talk) 00:04, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

You mean break Ontario up into two sections labeled "North" and "South" by some arbitrary line somewhere near Sudbury? That will never happen! All kidding aside, were you thinking of having a key map to show the whole province?--kelapstick (talk) 00:19, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Oohh, nice talk link and very illustrative of the issue(s). :) What I'm talking about is spatial organization and presentation of information. Observe the map scales - to me it seems obvious that there is a dividing line for geographical presentation of information, a "Southern" Ontario map distinct from a "Northern" Ontario map simply allows for better resolution and clickability if we decide to add areamaps to click on separate entities. The scale of geography north of the French River approaches an order of magnitude greater than that to the south - thus it renders the comprehensive map of Ontario incomprehensible with respect to the political/regional divisions in the southern part i.e. they're all crowded together.

This has nothing to do with the political or home-identity aspects of the matter, I'm talking about how to make the maps most easily understandable. It's an unfortunate coincidence that roadmap-makers, geographers. historians and the Ontario government all happen to notice how the happy confluence of the top end of the Ottawa River, Lake Nipissing and the French River, ancient trade routes and all that stuff make a natural line of division aligning with the unhappy confluence of provincial politics. How can we make the maps better? That is what I'm addressing. IMO the best way is to split them at the waist. Franamax (talk) 01:20, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I completly agree, the "Northern and Southern Ontario" comment just reminded me of that past conversation. Splitting the map makes sense to me, and that is a good place for it. I was just wondering if there would be an inset within the map that showed the entire province to show where the "half" of the province in question was. --kelapstick (talk) 02:08, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure if that would really be needed and I'm also pretty sure it would be beyond my own technical ability. :) Franamax (talk) 21:58, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Bearcat, on your original question, I think you would have to change the base template from {{Location map}} to {{Location map skew}} to get the longitude placements right, since Ontario is so big. Even then, you might need to twist File:Ontario Locator Map.svg so that the central longitude is vertical to get lat/lon coordinates to work. Maybe now you see why the template uses the steamroller version? Franamax (talk) 21:55, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

CFL attendance

CFL attendance has been nominated for deletion via WP:PROD by someone. 76.66.196.229 (talk) 05:58, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

PROD was removed, and the article survived. PKT(alk) 23:37, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

comma-province again

LOL. User:Ntsimp has just invoked wikipedia naming guidelines to move Barkley Valley to Barkley Valley, British Columbia. The comma-province format is still pretty much standard in BC, despite efforts to move non-city articles (e.g. Bamfield) but I had to laugh at this, given all the fuss over Canadian Wikipedia style conventions; here overridden by an apparent invocation of US naming conventions. Barkley Valley was never a town, more of a mining camp, later occupied by homesteaders who gave up (high altitude, no soil, really harsh mountain climate...) and never had a postal address...and a totally unique name AFAIK (oddly enough it's in the valley of Haylmore Creek and its tributary Common Johnny Creek, no sign of any other Barkley placename anywhere near, unless you consider Barkley Sound to be near, or Barclay Street in Vancouver to be a close second). Just noting this; and see my comments on Ntsimp's talkpage.Skookum1 (talk) 16:40, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Skookum1, to be fair, it seems that Ntsimp was simply assessing a bunch of BC ghost town articles, and noted that most of them had the provincial disambiguator, whereas Barkley Valley did not (and hence moved it). I've left a message on Ntsimp's talk page in reply to your message. Mindmatrix 20:51, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh yeah, I didn't mean anything ironic in his actions, just that it was funny to see something move in the other direction. I've been dispensing with the comma-province disambiguation on Indian Reserve articles (Kung 11) though I have other reservations about such titles (IMO that should be Kung Indian Reserve 11 or Kung Indian Reserve No. 11, as per the usual BC usage (vs StatsCan's), and when Kulkayu (Hartley Bay) Indian Reserve No. 4a comes up, IMO it should be "4A" instead of "4a", as the capital letter is by far the more normal usage (except with StatsCan).(Kulkayu 4a and Kulkayu 4 are redirects to Hartley Bay, British Columbia, as there is no non-native/non-reserve community at that placename and it's indistinguishable from the IRs, other than having different BCGNIS entries). In the case of Barkley Valley teh undisambiguated "Valley" name implies a region, rather than a place/community (e.g. Slocan Valley, Comox Valley) such that when a place is at question (Sunshine Valley, British Columbia, near Hope, formerly Tashme and also at one time the almost-basetown for Silvertip), the comma-province helps distinguish the landform/region from the settlement/locality/place. This came up actually re Smith Sound (British Columbia) vs Smith Sound, British Columbia, just the other day; see the merge discussion wherever the template on the one goes.....haven't looked at what you said to Ntsimp yet...further to note he un-ghost towned Ainsworth, British Columbia but I reversed that see Talk:Ainsworth, British Columbia.Skookum1 (talk) 19:28, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Mount Royal

Mount Royal was moved again, this time to Mount Royal Montreal, and then restored, per previous consensus on naming. 76.66.196.229 (talk) 08:03, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

"Harbour" in BCGNIS vs "bay" or "inlet" or "sound"

Please see Talk:Naden Harbour...not sure what to do, when "harbour" is not a functioning port/harbour and never has ben but is rather a bay/inlet/sound with safe canhorage.....Skookum1 (talk) 02:56, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Harbour is a sheltered anchorage, not necessarily developed. The description at Category:Ports and harbours implies that only developed harbours are included, but there are no clearly-stated criteria. I suggest you add a one-line definition of what is included to the category listing, and you'll soon find out if it meets consensus or not. —Michael Z. 2009-02-17 17:28 z

OK....in some cases like Burrard Inlet, it's the other way around, although I suppose Vancouver Harbour may seem synonymous, Port of Vancouver is not (because of the docks on the Fraser and down at Tsawwassen). It'll have to be a case-by-case judgement, and also the definition of "what is a working harbour" is not tidily answered; Port San Juan, Port Renfrew's bay/harbour is "developed" in the sense of there being a fishing fleet and water taxi and govt wharf. I'm not sure there is one at Naden Harbour, British Columbia (the locality at Naden Harbour; there may be. Obviously a government wharf alone doesns't qualify....but does a ferry terminal e.g. Long Harbour, Sturdies Bay?? "Any port in a storm" need not apply of course....Skookum1 (talk) 19:22, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm usually liberal with the scope of categories. If an article's subject is both a natural bay and a developed docking facility, then put it in both. —Michael Z. 2009-02-17 19:31 z

I'm assuming, then, that Category:Sounds of Canada maybe is a subcat of Category:Bays of Canada? Because Hotham Sound and Wakeman Sound are both bays, and inlets...Skookum1 (talk) 19:34, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

My understanding is that a sound or narrows connects two bodies of water, while an inlet connects a bigger body to a bay. Of course proper place names might not strictly follow the dictionary definitions, but category membership probably should. —Michael Z. 2009-02-17 20:09 z

See Sound (geography)....it's nowhere near that simple. The origin of the term, or a cognate anyway, is the Scandinavian term "sund", and I've always associated it with somewhere a sounding is possible; Queen Charlotte Sound certainly isn't a narrows. Believe me, I've just gone through the list; only Actaeon and Greenway and a few others aren't made of all BC's sounds (which are the bulk ofwhat's in Category:Sounds of Canada and there shoudl probably be a BC subcat....), and there's all kinds; Howe Sound and Hotham Sound are different concepts, so are Fitz Hugh Sound and Masset Sound.....it seems more of a term of convenience....Skookum1 (talk) 20:20, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I see. It appears that Webster's has the sounding of depth related to the Germanic maritime sound, while Oxford has it coming from Latin.

Anyway, if what constitutes a sound is not clear, and category:Sounds of Canada has no membership criteria listed, then I would consider deleting it as useless, or renaming it category:bodies of water in Canada with “sound” in their name. Good luck. —Michael Z. 2009-02-17 21:07 z

Wind chill and Humidex

Just a note. If you notice that a wind chill or humidex figure in a Canadian article has °C please remove it. The necessary references are at "The wind chill is expressed in temperature-like units, but because it is not the actual air temperature, it is given without the degree sign." and "You don't add a degree sign (or any other unit) after the number used for wind chill or for the humidex. Why is that?". I've removed a few and will do them as I see them but really don;t feel like hunting them down. Thanks. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 05:27, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I learn something new every day. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 16:44, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

The only reason I knew was because it involved a three day discussion at work. Usual thing, try and get one over on the other guy. See who knows more minor stuff about what we do. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 23:05, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Alexander "Buck" Choquette

I finally had to get this bio done, though it's still a bit messy and I'd like to have a map showing the various locations in the Stikine Country relating to his story. There's some chronological issues towards the end where I'm admittedly cramming in stray facts...there's another article out there, somewhere in an Alaska newspaper, that's yet another bio, and has some differing/disputatious facts, and lots of redlinks. A pretty intereseting character, and y'never know what else might turnup; one of the pages has a Klondike-vintage picture of him but I suspect there may be others in the Nat'l Archives.....if anybody would please care to tidy this up and straighten out my typically long, convoluted sentence construction, hyas mahsie ("thanks mucho: in the Chinook Jargon).....

Also if anyone's in the mood, a disambiguation page Choquette seems like a good idea, see this wikisearch.Skookum1 (talk) 17:10, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Seems like a good idea, I will make the DAB page.--kelapstick (talk) 17:12, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Member of Parliament (Canada)

Member of Parliament (Canada) redirects to 39th Canadian Parliament. Should it redirect to Parliament of Canada?--kelapstick (talk) 17:27, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

The latter only makes a passing reference to the term Member of Parliament, which strikes me as an oversight in that article that needs to be corrected. Both are reasonable, though I'd like to propose that it could become a disambiguation page, linking not just those two pages, but also various categories related to MPs. Or maybe not. Better yet, it should be fleshed out into an article that can address all those things. Mindmatrix 18:11, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

The 39th Parliament is out of date - we're on the 40th. However, I think a better alternative would be Canadian House of Commons, which mentions MPs in the second sentence. PKT(alk) 18:21, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

That makes sense to me (since that is where they actually sit), I originally thought there would be an article about the position Member of Parliament. After looking though I found it interesting that Member of Parliament (United Kingdom) Redirects to Member of Parliament#United Kingdom, where United States Congressman redirects to United States House of Representatives. I don't know what option is right, Would an article regarding Member of Parliament contain anything that wasn't contained in Parliament of Canada. --kelapstick (talk) 18:31, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

To answer your last question, I think it could. Information that could be included is the history of the position and how it has changed, various "firsts", relationship to caucus and political parties (eg - party whip), relationship to electoral districts, roles and duties (eg - maintaining constituency office), difference between MPs in and out of Cabinet (eg - private member's bills), constituency financing (including campaigning), etc. That's just off the top of my brain. Mindmatrix 19:07, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I've updated the link to Canadian House of Commons, per PKT's suggestion, simply to remove a stale redirect. We can still discuss further changes, of course. Mindmatrix 19:13, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Fort Stikine

One of the things that makes BC history so complicated and unusual vs the other provinces is that so much of our history is tied up with tht of the adjoining US states, and several important episodes in British Columbia history took place on what is now American soil, and so have slipped from the national awareness or been rendered into various kinds of "new history" clichces. Fort Stikine is one of those stories (likewise Buck Choquette).Skookum1 (talk) 04:04, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Air Canada Flight 190

Air Canada Flight 190 has been nominated for deletion 76.66.193.90 (talk) 06:06, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Haida article edit warfare - protect or block?

Tonight a body of material, which has repeatedly surfaced on the Haida article, without citations and with much POV/OR content, has been reinstated; no sooner had I reversed it again that the same IP user proceeded to "re-attack" the article. As it happens, a lot of the copy being inserted, though uncited, is copyvio from the Museum of Civilization website (as is other stuff still in the article which I haven't taken the time to prune out). I understand that in extreme cases (this is about 8RR or 9RR rather than 3RR) an IP user can be blocked, but I don't know the process for that. Or, maybe only a protect or semi-protect is needed. Whoever this user is, they're persistent and determined that their copy is in the article, even though it's in contravention of any number of Wikipedia standards. See the article history of "Haida" for a complete summary. Any admin here care to take this on, or point us where to take it?Skookum1 (talk) 01:56, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

If it is an obvious copy-vio, then at this point slapping a nice big template on their talk page would be good, I suggest {{uw-copyright}} as a kind of "final warning". If they don't stop, then you can report them to WP:AIV, or probably just ask one of the admins who frequent the board (Bearcat is on a lot I believe). The warning is more of a formality, but it's can't hurt and it's not like it's an emergency or anything. A block is also preferred over protection. You must have been lucky to have just been able to write instead of having to deal with too much crap like this (without writers, we don't exist). -Royalguard11(T) 02:24, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

He adopted the charming username of User:Dethman22; I added the template you suggested plus some further (terse) comments of my own at User talk:Dethman22.Skookum1 (talk) 02:54, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Since I started this section, it's gone from about 9RR to 12RR, he's tried twice or three times since to revert it again. Talk about thumping a tub....and a one-track mind...I guess I'll let him revise it again for the night, then dump it again....I gueess he's really "into" the civilization.ca webpage on the Haida, because that's where all of this is coming from (verbatim)..Skookum1 (talk) 02:59, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Just for the record, IP address 209.112.173.196 is located in Anchorage, Alaska....not that that matters...I guss I was expecting someone from Rupert or Skidegate or Vancouver....Skookum1 (talk) 03:07, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I'm continuing to watch the page. -Royalguard11(T) 03:42, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

In the wake of my warning, the edits have now appeared under the guise of another IP address...haven't tried to IP lcoate it (yet).Skookum1 (talk) 03:46, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

IP address 137.229.184.12 is also in Anchorage....Skookum1 (talk) 03:48, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Also note Dethman22's contributions.Skookum1 (talk) 03:50, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

2011 Census

I believe it would be a good idea to begin a new wikiproject, for the upcoming 2011 Canadian census, in order to facilitate the creation of all articles for communities found in the upcoming census. There needs to be a consensus on format of Canadian community pages and, I believe, that is a good place to start. NorthernThunder (talk) 23:41, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 05:02, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Article alerts

Everyone loves it so far, so I don't see why you guys wouldn't. It's already set up for New Brunswick and Saskatchewan, but the rest of provinces and territories would benefit from this as well.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 05:50, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

speedy delete {{Harper Government}} template

I just placed the speedy delete "delete" tag on this; it's bound to be rejected and will have to go to WP:TFD if such a place exists ("templates for deletion"). The 2009 federal budget got added to it, which is ridiculous; every piece of legislation in his tenure is theoretically add-able if that's the case, and that's just not right. No other Canadian PM has such a template, no other Canadian Prime Minister has so many articles about himself (adn I have no doubt that it is party operatives and/or p.r. consultants working for the PMO or Tory party who are making so much "Harper fluff".). Most of the articles in the template need merging either into the main Harper article, or stuff like Economic policy of the Harper Government just go to Economic policy of Canada. Time to kill the fatboy....Skookum1 (talk) 17:17, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

The template is, effectively if not directly, a form os political spam....Skookum1 (talk) 17:19, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I disagree, as Wikipedia becomes more popular it makes sense that current Prime Ministers (and other people) have more pages written about them. There is no reason for Jean Chrétien to not have more articles about his foreign policy, domestic policy, etc. other than nobody has written them, and should the articles be written, a template like this would be appropriate. As for the budget being entered in as an item, I think that is perfectly appropriate as it is a not just another piece of legislation, on top of that it is also a confidence measure so is pretty important (especially in a minority government), personally I think that there should be a line item for budgets, and one for legislation (not necessarily every piece, but some of the major pieces of which we should probably have some form of consensus). Having a Harper Government template at the bottom of a realted article is no more spammy than having a McDonalds template at the bottom of McDonalds. The template only serves to group like articles together. On top of that saying that you are sure that the people who are writing the articles are creating "Harper fluff" because they either are working for the Harper government or are pushing their own agenda is a clear case of not assuming good faith. And what in the world does "Time to kill the fatboy" mean?--kelapstick (talk) 17:50, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

It's a Lord of the Flies reference....and there's a difference between assuming good faith and blind faith in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. If the civic-minded contributors who created Economic policy of the Harper government or Environmental policy of the Harper government (which is something like an oxymoron in both cases...) had also created Economic policy of the Trudeau government or Economic policy of the Mackenzie King government, I'd be more inclined to have good faith. The 2009 Canadian federal budget does not have Stephen Harper in its title, so if there's a Michaelle Jean navbox (who read the budget), or a navbox for Ignatieff (who commented on it), would it also be included in their navboxes? Saying "oh, well, we could use articles on Economic policy of Jean Chretien and Economic policy of John Diefenbaker is all fine and dandy, but rings of "who, me?" or "let them eat cake", even. Wikipedia should not be a public relations platform for a public-relations-happy regime; if the person(s) creating those articles had also taken the time to create articles about other Canadian PMs in teh same vein, I'd be more inclined to have good faith; claiming I'm assuming bad faith for pointing out the huge bulk of these articles vs. the complete absence of any others is, to put it mildly, "disingenuous" (look that up in wiktionary), and by stating that I'm commenting on your view as good faith; if I didn't think it was good faith I'd use "coy".....Skookum1 (talk) 18:05, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I think it is reasonable to have links between articles on significant elements of the Harper administration. I don't necessarily think it needs to be or not be a navbox. I don't however, think it is a candidate for speedy deletion. DoubleBlue (talk) 17:56, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I suppose nobody here has bothered to comment on the merge discussions about all those extra articles, huh? Economic policy of the Martin government, Environmental policy of the Joe Clark government, Immigration policy of the Trudeau government, National unity policy of the Mulroney government....you know, those articles, the ones that haven't been written yet? The much more important ones than Harper's, which in all good faith seem to have been overlooekd by the same zealous editors who created the Harper spin-off articles? And peppered town and even museum articles all over Wikipedia with mentions of our hard-working PM's name?? I'm sure "good faith" will eventually see Social policy in Canada, or Economic policy of Canada, or Foreign affairs policy of Canada eventually made; for now it seems utterly absurd that while they do not exist, ones on Harper proliferate like topsy.....Skookum1 (talk) 18:10, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I've removed the speedy delete template. Please use WP:tfd if you believe deletion is warranted. nat.utoronto 18:18, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

The issue of those articles being blind PR for the Prime Minister lies with the legitimacy of the article existing, not the existence of the template (which is what this discussion started as). If you have a problem with those articles (and it is apparent that you do) than you should be arguing for their deletion/merge not the templates (which you are). As it stands now, the articles exist and the template is a method of linking them together. The 2009 Federal budged not having Harper's name in it is irrelevant as the budget was brought forth by the "Harper Government" and the template links articles about the government and policy under the leadership of Steven Harper, not articles about Harper himself. Also note Skookum if you want to write articles about the policies of Chretien, Trudeau, Martin, or any other Prime Minister in the past you are more than welcome to write them yourself which is a far more effective way of improving Wikipedia than saying that because there are more articles about Harper than there are about Trudeau so we should delete/merge the Harper ones. Another option is if you think that the articles are too biased or too pro Harper you are also more than welcome to improve them.--kelapstick (talk) 18:35, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

And there is still no explanation on what "Time to kill the fatboy...." means, I not trying to be facetious I really don't know.--kelapstick (talk) 18:44, 2 February 2009 (UTC) I missed the LOTF reference at the top of your comment.--kelapstick (talk) 18:56, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Now you're doing the "not in good faith" thing....the "fatboy" in question is the mass of article bloat on this man, and I'm always amused/bemused at the rationalizations and the pointing-at-wiki-policy used to try to jsutify such spammish content; somewhere there's got to be a policy on "political bloat" of this kind; it's obvious to any but the most credulous observer that these articles are overburden; as noted, merge propositions were brought forward, no one here bit; fine then the thing to do is to change Economic policy of the Harper \government to Economic policy of Canada with stub sections on policies on the other PMs in recent memory, and links to the Ministry of Finance. Telling me if I'm not happy, I'm welcome to go write another thirty or forty or ah undred articles to balance the incredible BLOAT built in wikipedia around this man is just insulting, and not at all in good faith. Economic policy of Canada needs to be written, or the Harper-flavoured article needs to be de-Harperized and broadened after renaming to something that it obviously non-spammish in character/titling....a regime built on so much p.r.-without-substance is in and of itself worthy of an article, but I'm pretty sure Wikipedia has policies against using it as a political soapbox for a sitting regime....I'm gonna make lunch, and then I'm going to start renaming articles, since nobody's bothered to even think about merge propostions standing for a while now.....Skookum1 (talk) 19:16, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Wikipedia has policies against soapboxing. But from the way I see it, some of the articles grew out of the Stephen Harper article due to the fact that the original article was overly huge, and the topics needed to be divided into different articles. But if you feel that the Harper Government should not have a massive amount of articles, then I would suggest you draw up a plan, and try to get consensus. nat.utoronto 19:30, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

(after e/c)Feel free to ignoring my AGF comment as it is not intended to make your arguments appear less valid (if they did I apologize). You are still arguing about if the Harper articles should be deleted in a discussion about the template. The merge/delete discussion should be in a different section. As for why I did not weigh in on the discussion for merge/delete, 1) I did not know it was going on. 2) I personally do not care if the articles exist or not, I only came here to talk about the template.--kelapstick (talk) 19:35, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

arbitrary break 1

I find myself on the fence on this one. Whereas I appreciate the interest in creating a template that captures the main elements of Harper's time in power, I also appreciate that constitutionally our form of government (with no executive branch) doesn't lend itself as well to "x government" or "x administration" templates as well as the United States, for example, would. I see that the Brits have templates for their PMs (see, for example, {{Tony Blair}}) - in my mind, renaming the template as Stephen Harper, rather than Harper Government, would be a big improvement. Otherwise, however, the template is fine. I despise Harper, but like his template. :)

As for the relevance of the budget, it has been seen as a make-it-or-break-it test of Harper's government, so for now it does seem to merit inclusion. Later on, with the benefit of hindsight, items can be removed and added as we have a better sense of what constitutes the major events of his premiership.

Lack of articles or templates on other PMs is not a good reason to delete this one. It is, perhaps, a good reason to create more PM-related articles and templates. As for the alleged bias of some of the Harper-related articles, I would suggest tagging those articles where appropriate. That's not really a template issue.

Could we maybe settle this here, without necessitating a TFD? --Skeezix1000 (talk) 18:47, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

There would be no rationale why a TfD in regards to this will succeed. I bet the arguments would be focus only on the articles than the template. As such, as an admin, I would hypothetically speedy close the TfD debate as the discussion would be somewhat irrelevant to whether or not the template should be deleted. nat.utoronto 18:55, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it's particularly helpful to this discussion, or helps keep it civil, to threaten to speedy close a TfD nomination that you have never seen, regardless of your sepculation as to the rationale or arguments. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 19:09, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not threatening to do anything. I was speculating what admins would most likely do, especially with the direction this discussion is going. I'm just giving my opinion, and that's all I'm doing. If a TfD discussion regarding this topic is created, I would recuse myself from taking any admin action on this subject anyways. nat.utoronto 19:24, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd say the only reason why we have so many articles related to Stephen Harper is due to the fact that he is currently Prime Minister and that there is more readily available information on his Ministry than his predecessors. nat.utoronto 18:53, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, that's complete hogwash. There's tons of material about Martin, Chretien, Mulroney, Trudeau never mind Laurier, John A. Mac King.....I've been finding all kinds of spot-mentions on town and band articles where His Bloatedness has conferred so many shekels of taxpayers' money; just news items, not suitable to any article, but they're all over the place. I've worked in advertising and some here must have studied communications thory; or at least walked through Heathrow and been bombarded by spot-ads. That's what all these superfluous mentions are - advertising, and therefore spam. It's a major problem in terms of itx extent, and the insiduousness of the entries. Maybe I'm the only one reviewing a wide enough range of article types to be seeing it for waht it is, though....I have no doubt it's an organized campaign....Skookum1 (talk) 19:36, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

It's not hogwash. It actually quite the opposite. Wikipedia has a tendency to have a lot more information and articles on current affairs compared to other topics. nat.utoronto 19:44, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

there's notable news/current events, and there's non-notable ones. "Prime Minister Harper was in Longblong, Saskatchewan on such-and-so-a-date to hand over a cheque so a swing set could be built in the veterans' park" is the sort of thing I'm meaning, even if it's for a name park; there is such a thing as WP:Notablity after all....and for news type info that's of at least some import (and not just from press releases from teh PMO), that's what WikiNews exists for, not that anybody uses it that much (yet).Skookum1 (talk) 19:59, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Maybe it is an organized campaign, maybe it's not. You can be never sure. A lot of times it's not. nat.utoronto 19:48, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

If you believe that there is something insidious going on with the articles, I would suggest that you be BOLD and just edit them. nat.utoronto 19:54, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

It was seeing yet another item added to the template that galled me; your observations about "administration" were something else I was going to point out, as one of the other contributors above had used it; in reality the admininstration is that of Michaelle Jean/QE II, in our system. I don't think PM-specific policy articles are called for, and a lot of what's in those articles is dross anyway; retitlign to "XXX policy of Canada" and expansion according to that title is appropriate in all cases (after which none belong on the template). Perhaps the individual(s) who worked so hard to create all these articles might spend as much time on anothe PM, just to show their NPOV motives? :-| Skookum1 (talk) 19:16, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest that you take the initiative to create X policy of Canada. It's a good idea, but the only problem would be the massive size of these article, which would result in article division anyways. nat.utoronto 19:40, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Skookum, you are addressing numerous issues in this one debate over the template. Problems with the bloat or bias of any of the Stephen Harper-related articles should be addressed on the talk pages of those articles (or as a separate issue here on CANTALK). Unnecessary "spot mentions" of Harper should also be addressed on the talk pages of the articles where the problems arise; better yet, as suggested above, be BOLD. As for this template, even if some of the Harper-related articles were to be deleted or refocused, I still think there is more than enough content to justify this template (and I say that as someone who usually supports deleting templates, as I tend to believe that superfluous templates spread like herpes). I agree with your comment about the administration, but I think it is solved by simply renaming the template to "Stephen Harper" (the same approach used for the British PM templates, which is a good comparable). --Skeezix1000 (talk) 20:53, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

A capital-G titled "Harper Government" template is a totally different thing than a {{Stephen Harper}} template. True, maybe I wouldn't be so disgusted with it if it weren't so full of fluffy articles meant to make him look more important and impactive than he actually has been; Economic policy of the Harper government is a soapbox, and invites POV attack-edits; Economic policy of the Conservative Party of Canada would make more sense. Note: Economic policy in Canada and Economic policy of Canada are two somewhat different topics; Canadian economic policy implies History of Canadian economic policy; but the "in" vs "of" observation has to do with two different contexts; policy in Canada would include even opposition policy as well as policy theory; "of Canada" implies of the federal government, i.e. national policy. Articles on national policy, fine - but personalized is a big reach. That series of articles is simple enough to fix; cut a lot of teh self-conscious and overwritten bloat, and add in precis on Martin, Chretien, Mulroney, Clark, Trudeau et c...."Environmental policy" is better served by individual ministers; not that Rona Ambrose is of the stature of a Lucien Bouchard or a John Fraser as far as environmental policy goes (oddly enough Tory envirnment ministers - until now - have generally been far more useful than their Grit counterparts....). Renaming the template for now I guess is the only way to go, but as below compere the contents of {{Tony Blair}} to give an idea why those templates aren't POV/spam in quality; this one is....Skookum1 (talk) 01:47, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I would just add that no editor is required to "demonstrate his NPOV-motives". In fact, WP:AGF strongly implies otherwise. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 20:55, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Did I use the verb "require"??Skookum1 (talk) 01:47, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Sigh. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 13:33, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I feel this is another unnecessary navigation template. We already have categories and list pages for this sort of thing. If it's important enough that this stuff be grouped together, create an article/list page for it, and add it to the See also section of relevant articles. --NormanEinstein (talk) 21:16, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Re the Harper template vs. the Tony Blair template {{Harper Government}} vs. {{Tony Blair}}....for all of

Blair's being a politician of significantly greater stature than Harper, both within his own country as well as within it, I don't see any equation between the type of content in the Blair template and that in teh Harper template; not every act or policy of the Blair regime is listed, nor are specialty articles on Economic policy of Tony Blair extant to flesh out the template; and that includes listing the Blair budgets within the template; Blair Ministry is there, but not much else. Apparently Blair supporters aren't so hot to trot to write up articles on every aspect of their glorious leader's now-fallen greatness.Skookum1 (talk) 01:47, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Skookum signed off and no one else objected, so I have renamed the template, to shift the focus along the lines of the British PM templates. As for the rest of the discussion, at this point it is just going around in circles, and the template itself seems to be rather beside the point. I'm just washing my hands of it. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 13:33, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, the issue is not htat the discussion is going in circles, but rather the Stephen Harper series of articles do.....turns out there's a template {{Pierre Trudeau}}, which is very much like the Blair template and "covers ground" without being a cover for a shill....hmmm {{Joe Clark}} and {{Brian Mulroney}} may exist too, let's see if those are bluelinks....Skookum1 (talk) 17:05, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Nope, but {{Brian Mulroney}}'s more than worth making (FTA, Meech, Charlottetown, Oka)....Skookum1 (talk) 17:07, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I find it curious about how one sided this conversation has become.. yet it still seems that Skookum1 has not given ground. It seems that the conversation is obviously not about the template more so then the fact that more information has been collected about Harper, then any other Canadian PM. This is obviously because Wikipedia was not at as full force during any other PM. If Wikipedia survives I whole heartedly believe that the next PM will have equal face time on Wikipedia. Your insistence to remove Harper content waving the banner of anti political soapboxing is actually in my opinion very political. It seems to me (and I could very well be wrong, but currently the evidence supports this claim) that your political views oppose Stephen Harper and that is what is fueling your argument and not Encyclopedic improvement of Wikipedia. For this reason I think that this discussion has derailed from its original intention of deleting the template and should be either ended or moved to a more appropriate location.--Kukamunga13 (talk) 09:01, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I object

1. As the initiator of, and frequent editor to, of the offending template I am very upset that that I never received a courtesy notification that it was up for deletion. I will assume that was a good faith oversight, but I find it bloody frustrating that lot of extremely unoffensive things were said in the previous discussion about the "intent" of the template, and no one bothered to ask me what my intentions were when I created it! 2. For the record, my intention was to correct a gigantic failing of WP which is to focus on political personalities rather than than political actions. It was not intended to be free advertising for Harper, and I would fully support the creation of similar templates for other governments. 3. The Westminster system (in the this case the Canadian variant) revolves around the concept "responsible government" not on the personal power of the head of state, as in the US, so copying templates that work for US or France politicians won't work. (I also think this fit poorly with Tony Blair or any other Commonwealth PM, but that's another story). 4. I find the attacks made of the template unconvincing, and the language used to do it reprehensible. 5. I am no longer a frequent WP watcher, but I will be utmost to reverse this decision no matter long long it takes. --Kevlar (talk • contribs) 05:36, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Slave craton: Copyright violation

As your project has its template on the corresponding talk page, I wanted to inform you that Slave craton is in mosts parts a verbatim copy of http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/mindep/synth_prov/slave/index_e.php. The copyright policy of Natural Resources Canada on http://www.nrcan-rncan.gc.ca/com/notiavis-eng.php is not in agreement with GFDL, thus it's a Copyright violation, isn't it? --12:47, 28 February 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jo Weber (talk • contribs)

Cleaned up - thanks for the report. Hopefully the article can be rebuilt with original content although it should be possible to somehow incorporate the in-depth nrcan.ca material (and other sources) without a cut/paste job. Dl2000 (talk) 03:06, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the job. I didn't want to do it myself, as I discovered the copyright violation halfway through a translation into German, so I was both too involved and disappointed to sort it out.--Jo (talk) 19:38, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Capitalization of "Indian Reserve"

Wiki style guidelines, as invoked, are at odds with the formal legal, standard usage, which is to capitalize both terms, with or without the full name; all official sources ({{BCGNIS}} and {{CGNDB}} most importantly (and also Atlas of Canada by extension, since it's based on CGNDB, but also the band governments themselves, and typically local papers) use the capital-R form. See Talk:List of Indian reserves in Canada, which was just switched from Talk:List of Indian Reserves in Canada, which had been "List of Aboriginal communities in Canada" and was not a correct title (there are Indian Reserves, there are Indian Settlements, and there are Indian Villages and Metis Settlements, these being legal, source-able terms, and all capitalized...but there is no formal "Aboriginal community" designation, capitalized or otherwise). But noting the former title's use of a quasi-legal terminology capital-A Aboriginal, when in fact it's rarely capitalized in standard usage (or in legal usage, for that matter); but a contrary standard is invoked with "Indian Reserves". And to further note, there is no such thing as a "First Nations reserve", and that cat still needs rnaming for that reason..... Skookum1 (talk) 02:22, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

The term "Indian reserve" is the same as "city", "town", "village" or other types of legally-named settlements: it gets capitalized in the proper name of a specific Indian reserve, but not outside of that context. For example, you would write "the City of Toronto" or "the City of Vancouver", but you don't capitalize "city" outside of a proper name (e.g. "the city (not the City) has three universities", "Vancouver is the largest city (not City) in British Columbia".) "Indian reserve" is the same: the R gets capitalized in the proper name of a specific Indian reserve, not in every usage of the term. Wikipedia is bound by standard writing style, not government-officiated legalese. StatsCan also capitalizes "City", "Town", etc., in every last one of the same contexts in which it capitalizes "Indian Reserve", but that doesn't make those standard usages that Wikipedia should be following in text. Bearcat (talk) 17:48, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

One for the watchlists

An anonymous IP has repeatedly inserted claims into Highway 98 (Ontario) indicating that the highway — which was decommissioned in 1970 and now exists only as a series of county roads in Essex County and Chatham-Kent, and never extended any further east than Blenheim — is in the process of being upgraded into Toronto's freeway connection to "Interstate 28", a non-existent interstate connection from Detroit to Biloxi, Mississippi.

The highway which really goes from Detroit/Windsor to Toronto and beyond, Highway 401, is never beyond the range of walking distance from the former Highway 98 route, with the obvious consequence that no expanded Highway 98 is ever going to be built — if Highway 401 ever becomes unable to handle the volume of traffic, the government's response will be to add lane capacity to the 401, not to revive and expand a defunct highway that the 401 replaced.

I removed this about a week ago, but the same person subsequently readded it on March 2 and their vandalism was uncaught until I removed it again today. The same dubious claim also seems to have been added to Future Interstate Highways (although it got caught quicker there, presumably because there are people actually watching that one), so there's a concerted effort of some kind here. The offending IP seems to be based in the United States, for what it's worth.

Could a few more people keep this article watchlisted in case this hoax artist comes back again? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 17:43, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeh. //roux   18:01, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Done. Mindmatrix 18:19, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Geri Hall edit war

Some edit warring is occurring on Geri Hall regarding the mention of the recent Dalton McGuinty spoof interview controversy for This Hour Has 22 Minutes. User:Ptiomb is self-identifying as WP:COI based on this edit. Input and watching from other editors is encouraged. Dl2000 (talk) 00:44, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Source search

• Oswald, Mary. They Led the Way : Members of Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame : 25th Anniversary 1973 to 1998. Wetaskiwin: Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame (1999).

Hi. I'm looking for somebody who has a copy of this book who can help me evaluate a suspected copyright infringement listed at WP:CP. I realize it's a bit of a longshot, but I thought to ask here and at Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation and hope to get lucky. If you can help me out, please let me know. I'll check back. Thanks. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 00:15, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Just to update that I am no longer in need of this. The contributor verifies using material from the source, but is planning to go through the permission process to verify authorization to do so. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 23:24, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Portal:Canada/Current events

Hey, Does anyone know how to update this thing? I thought the recent wikinews:Canadian teams vie for spot at the World Curling Championship might be a good article to add to the portal but I got frustrated trying to figure it out. DoubleBlue (talk) 02:52, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

 Done - bit of a mystery, but involves knowing which parts to create and what to edit in that tangled web of portal pages. Dl2000 (talk) 03:56, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Dl2000, that's what I wanted. It's rather a strange process and a truly tangled web; it's more of a knot really. DoubleBlue (talk) 21:23, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

It is a robot which automatically finds any news article on wikinews with a Canada category and stuffs it in, and updates are done hourly I believe...The robot program is...called the Wikinews Importer Bot I will put this note on the Portal Canada talk page.... and perhaps on the first box section of the news area. An additional import can be made for the same news section of the portal of one sentence news announcements which are not on wikinews if anyone would like that as well. That would be no problem. Kind Regards SriMesh | talk 04:23, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi SriMesh. Thanks. It was actually not the automatic list of wikinews articles at Portal:Canada I meant. It was the Lead story at the Portal:Current events/Canada that is linked from there. DoubleBlue (talk) 21:23, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

United Kingdom standing alone in WWII?

I'm mentioning this here, as it touches at Commonwealth participation. Please contribute to a discussion at Talk:United Kingdom#At one stage in 1940, amid the Battle of Britain, it stood alone against the Axis. --Rob (talk) 19:14, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Missing articles

Here are two (related) important Canadian topics without Wikipedia articles, along with URLs to help anyone who wants to write them:

• APEC Inquiry (there's a paragraph on this at Ted Hughes (judge) and a couple of sentences at Scandals surrounding the RCMP but it deserves its own article)
  • Timeline as of Aug 2001 from archive.org
  • Various CBC news stories via Google
  • UBC Archive
  • Interim Report
  • Final Report
• RCMP Public Complaints Commission (formally Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP - an independent agency of the Government of Canada, established by Parliament)
  • www.cpc-cpp.gc.ca
  • Rules of Practice
  • Departmental organization chart
  • Ottawa Citizen news story
  • Canadian Press news story
  • Canadian Intelligence Resource Centre

--Mathew5000 (talk) 00:27, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

CBC "Spammer" (and BC 150)

Not sure what to do about Schmidtmandaddy, who is posting CBC Archive videolinks on the articles listed in those contributions; my attention was drawn to him by the placement of a "BC 150" link on the British Columbia page; I'm of a mind to move that one to History of British Columbia where it properly belongs, but at the moment the history section on the BC article remains longer than the main history article. My computer/browser didn't have RAM to load the whole BC 150/CBC site; could be because I'm using Camino and it might be IE-friendly only etc so can't see if there's any advertising attached to the material.....Anyway if someone would care to post a nice welcome template and appropriate WP:NOT etc items on this guy's webpage....I suspect it's a CBC p.r. staffer, though could just be a fan of the network.Skookum1 (talk) 16:45, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Speaking of BC 150, that article needs updating and maybe de-peacockery, if anyone's in the mood....exraneous mentions of it on various articles have all been deleted (as they invariably plugged the Premier adn the Prime Minister, for one thing....).Skookum1 (talk) 16:47, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I'll have a go at welcoming him. I think the CBC links do have good value but I also agree that the number, variety of topics, and the fact that all of the user's contributions are purely of these EL additions makes it look pretty suspiciously like promotion. DoubleBlue (talk) 16:58, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

One thing that's at issue, for me, which such content, is that CBC material is often archly POV while presuming to an NPOV authority; as if moral judgements were facts, basically, and as if their editorial agenda were the "correct" one. And yeah, hit-flow for any site does generate web income. When it's sites like http://www.britishcolumbia.com, which is privately run but does have NPOV (if somewhat amateurish and occasionally inaccurate) content, they're also somewhere that desipte having ads (limited) is also where some of the only content on given locations exist. CBC documentaries, like all documentaries, have a point of view to advance; so it's not just commercial hit-rates, it's POV promotion....this is a very common and deeply structural problem with all websites; again in some cases like http://www.ecotrustcanada.ca once again, they're the only source on many details of the people/events they cover (see Ahousaht First Nation and various other Nuu-chah-nulth]] pages). CBC is different though, and the focus on BC 150 is part of a p.r. campaign with clear political background....NPOV presentation of POV sources....tricky issue. There is no objectivity in media of any kind; McLuhan must have said that, or something of the kind. Everybody seems to ahve a tub to thump - especially those who disavow tub-thumping and pretend to objectivity while at the same time advancing historical/social criticism as a "public service".....Skookum1 (talk) 17:13, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not fussed with having links to CBC archives, but agree with DoubleBlue's comments. We should keep an eye on it. As for the alleged POV of the CBC, this issue routinely comes up with just about all media/news outlets, and I believe that the accepted approach is to treat all mainstream news media as reliable sources, unless there is consensus that a specific news item has a POV problem. I don't see any reason to approach the use of CBC archives, either as sources or external links, any differently. I don't disagree with Skookum's concerns about the neutrality of all news media, but I am not sure that we can get into assessments of the POV of mainstream news organizations without getting into huge battles among editors and, frankly, imposing the personal POVs of editors. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 19:02, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. What I'm trying to warn against is mistaking opinions/OR in reliable sources as if they were facts, which happens often enough around here. i.e. to distinguish between objective fact and subjective finding; it's even dicier in current politics than it is in historical documentary/analysis, whether in regard to things like the so-called parliamentary dispute (or whatever that's called now) and the BC Legislature Raids and accompanying court case, or historical accounts. I don't think being weary of the moralizing of the CBC, or for that matter of a media outlet on the other end of the perceived political spectrum, is a POV issue; I'm just asking that such documentary materials not be taken as sources if the facts are presented - misrepresented - without substantiation from true primary sources; modern accounts in Global's papers of the Solidarity Crisis of 1983 are wildly false, for instance (as are the CBC's about Oka, Meech and Charlottetown, in fact.... for those of us who watched the events unfold). The mingling of fact and opinion is stock-in-trade of journalists, it's what they do; this doesn't mean their "conclusions" should be taken at face value; ditto with the now-copyvio-blanked claims made by the Museum of Civilzation on the Haida page....Skookum1 (talk) 19:20, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

"The most skilled liars are those who bald-facedly present lies as absolute truth". I don't t hink that was Goebbels...it may have been Edgar Rice Burroughs, in fact....Skookum1 (talk) 19:21, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Update:Schmidtmandaddy replied that he does indeed work for CBC Digital Archives as a digital archivist but adds these links on his own time and out of his personal interest after researching the subject matter. His answer shows that he has reviewed and understands the WP:EL, WP:SPAM, WP:NPOV, and WP:COI policies and I am not too concerned. Any inappropriate links should be removed as a matter of course just as any other but these CBC links tend to be exactly the kind of thing intended by the External links policy of things that cannot be incorporated within the article but are of interest to readers; often showing a contemporary view of a person, thing, or issue. I think that readers benefit from their inclusion. DoubleBlue (talk) 21:12, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Navigation templates

Was there ever any consensus on the provincial/territorial order for navigation templates? We appear to have a right mixture at the moment. It would appear that we have several options.

1. Alphabetical, provinces and territories mixed together
2. Alphabetical, provinces first and the territories next or on another line
3. Geographical, west to east, provinces first and the territories next or on another line
4. Geographical, east to west, provinces first and the territories next or on another line

Of course a Government web site can probably be found to support any of the given options, such as Statistics Canada who use east to west for the provinces and west to east for the territories, but we don't really have to follow them. My preferences in order is, 3, 4, 2, 1. Any thoughts? Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 16:50, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

The templates need to be as intuitive as possible to the broadest range of users — and that includes users who don't know the west-to-east or east-to-west order of the provinces and territories at all. Our audience for these things isn't just Canadians, it's also people in Europe and Africa who don't really know a New Brunswick from a titmouse in the first place, let alone where a New Brunswick would be located in a list that was arranged geographically — so those people realistically need the arrangement to be alphabetical. Whereas conversely, I can't think offhand of any potential purpose of the templates that's better served by arranging them geographically instead. YMMV, I suppose. I fully understand where the Canadian tendency to arrange such lists geographically comes from — the Canadian provinces and territories do happen to be arranged in an almost perfect west-to-east line that dovetails neatly with the left-to-right arrangement of a template — but I don't fully understand why that seems to be preferred over alphabetical arrangement by so many in the Canadian contingent. Bearcat (talk) 17:15, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, alpha makes more sense. My preference would be 1,2,3,4. //roux   21:40, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

The reason I said geographically is that there was another discussion, which of course I can't find now, that suggested it was the better way. I happy enough with alphabetical. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 23:12, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sudbury Community Foundation

Submitted for your approval (or not). - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 18:32, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

The Pas, Saskatchewan?

The location map on The Pas, Manitoba was displaying its red dot as being on the wrong side of the MB-SK border. I've temporarily commented it out of the infobox, but could someone who knows how to fix that (I couldn't find the coordinates to manipulate the dot's location at all) give it a whirl? Thanks.

This brings up a larger discussion we need to have, however — we have an absolute ton of different location map styles across Canadian city and town articles. Some place the location dot on a map of the country, some place it on a map of the province (and not always the same map, either: we have at least three different maps being used for locations in Ontario, one of which is distinctly inappropriate for use as it's proportionally deformed but is still being used nonetheless), some only use a county/region/district-level map and some use none at all. And the same issue is present on electoral districts as well.

The location map style needs to be consistent from one article to another. Either we always use a national-level map or we always use a province-level map, not a mishmash. And whichever we choose, it ultimately needs to be the same map(s) from article to article, or maps drawn in the same style. I know perfect consistency about this is a long way off, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't even try to work towards it. Bearcat (talk) 17:31, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

On the issue of which map to use, I favour the provincial map for city articles. Putting a pushpin on a 250px national map to show the location of a city is pretty ham-fisted and does not convey the location well at all as a community. Once we've gotten down to the level of a city article, the map should show its location within the province and the reader can follow links to to learn more about the province if that is desired. DoubleBlue (talk) 18:46, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

The problem with the locator data in The Pas can be traced to Template:Infobox Settlement, starting at the following code:

#if:{{{pushpin_map|}}} ...

It's causing a different set of problems on the Estevan article. Essentially, it picks up the map to use from the pushpin_map parameter, then uses that to create a template link to the generic {{Location map|Canada Saskatchewan|...}} (in the case of Estevan), which is then parsed to create a template link to the specific {{Location map Canada Saskatchewan|...}} (note there's no pipe in this one). The parameters for coordinates are automatically passed along from Infobox Settlement along the chain of templates. For The Pas, the infobox contains the following (near the end):

|latd= 53|latm= 49|lats= 30|latNS=N

|longd= 101|longm= 15|longs= 11|longEW=W

I've updated them to the coordinates from the Atlas of Canada Gazetteer, but the pushpin still shows up in the wrong place. It may be that for The Pas, the template mis-specifies the edges incorrectly, but after a quick perusal I didn't find anything. Mindmatrix 19:01, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I've resolved the issue for the Saskatchewan template - a bot added interlanguage links to the template directly, outside of the noinclude section. Mindmatrix 19:11, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I've also resolved the problem on THe Pas by using a more specific geolocator, specifically, Template:Location map Canada Manitoba. Mindmatrix 19:15, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

By the way, there's a list of available templates on the generic location map template; see Template:Location map. Mindmatrix 19:18, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

And the BC map listed there is exactly the wrong map, as I've been removing all morning, from BC articles; User:Qyd explained to me a while ago that the projection is critical; it has to be orthometric or whatever, i.e. the lines of longitude have to be parallel. I'd wanted a terrain/landform map that pushpins could be used on, but there's no such beastie available because none of the available terrain maps or sat photos are in that projection. And as far as city-locators in BC go, there's no more point in using RD=based maps than there is in using electoral district or parks maps; it's irrelevant; if a British Columbian looks at such a map and it's meaningless to them, why should it be used by anyone else? Lately a highway-grid-based map, in orthometric, has been showing up; THAT is how we "see" our town/places, and should be the basemap; it may not be as much the case in provinces that aren't so dominated by their terrain, but in BC it's truism that highways follow the valleys and have to, and towns tend to be located at junctions. The highway grid map currently in use is of the same design as teh regional district map - grey on grey - and usually isn't stated as being a highway map; but it's far more useful and recognizable. This gets into my whole oppostion to the use of regional district categories as geographic regions, but I'll leave that discussion for now, except to re-stress that the use of regional district-based locator maps shouold be phased out as meaningless and very much "original research" or at best WP:UNDUESkookum1 (talk) 16:45, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Further to previous, the national-level map just won't do; we're too big and complicated a country for that, except for only the most major cities. And within BC there are good cases-in-point for an inset-style map within the BC map for certain areas - the East Kootenay, West Kootenay, Okanagan, Hazelton-Bulkley, Omineca-Prince George, Cariboo, Fraser Valley, Queen Charlotte Strait, west coast of Vancouver Island etc etc - as the province is just too large and complicated in layout, with clustered details, for a province-wide map to be useful for anything but giving context to the desired/relevant inset.....Skookum1 (talk) 16:51, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Yet again, the map in question was created by a British Columbian. So obviously somebody in British Columbia thinks differently than you do about the utility of RD-based locator maps, and I'd consequently remind you yet again to stop with the assertions that anybody who thinks the RDs are relevant at all must necessarily be a blinkered Ontarian who refuses to understand British Columbia reality — which obviously isn't true if it's British Columbians who are starting things that way in the first place. Bearcat (talk) 01:13, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Regarding location map styles, I'm quite fond of the simplicity of the style used by {{Location map Italy}}, {{Location map Denmark}}, {{Location map France}}, and {{Location map Greece}}, among others. We need something that highlights the area considered, shows the surrounding area in a neutral and non-distracting fashion, and allows for other features (eg - water) to still be visible.

I'd prefer provincial locator maps for most cities and towns, which would allow better resolution. Further, we need a way to handle Ontario, which is awkwardly-shaped; a regional split may be needed. For neighbourhood articles, a city locator map (such as those for Edmonton and Calgary) may be suitable, but I'll note here that none of the city locator templates I've found are appealing. Mindmatrix 19:46, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I like style of locater map the ones they have for US states, like {{Location map USA Nevada}}, but the one thye use for British Columbia is nice, it is in use at Phoenix Mine. I also liked Franamax's idea for Ontario where we split it into northern and southern portions as they do with the road map. Also I can't seem to find a locater map for Quebec, is there one?--kelapstick (talk) 15:52, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I think splitting Ontario into north and south might be a reasonable compromise. There's no Quebec locator map of which I'm aware. Mindmatrix 17:48, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm fond of this File:Ontario Locator Map.svg map by Vidioman. It has attractive colours matching those used by the USA state locator maps. --NormanEinstein (talk) 16:06, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I like it too, but I found the darker colour of the US portion of the map very distracting. It keeps pulling my eye toward it, instead of allowing me to focus on the primary subject of Ontario. I have the same concern with the US state locator maps, such as the one for Nevada linked above. In the Nevada map, an inset US map is included, which I really like; I think we should do this with all provincial locator maps we create. Mindmatrix 17:48, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I see what you mean, maybe changing the colour of the US to the same shade as the Quebec and Manitoba?...I find that Italy, Denmark etc have too much white (example Aakirkeby), the entire screen is white so the maps show up nicer if they are off white, I think the country inset is a good idea too.--kelapstick (talk) 17:58, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

When the news dictates the agenda

In the mad rush to keep Wikipedia on top of the Natasha Richardson tragedy, I've noted that numerous editors have incorrectly conflated the Mont Tremblant Resort with the town of Mont-Tremblant where the resort happens to be located. Just a request for a few extra volunteers to keep an eye on this for the next couple of days. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 01:24, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Assessment of Lachine Canal

Lachine Canal is currently rated as "Low" importance. This seems odd to me, as it represents the industrial heartland of 19th century Canada. 76.66.201.179 (talk) 06:12, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

We assesses importance by class of topic, not by subjective assessments of the topic in isolation. Bearcat (talk) 10:42, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Duplicate quality and importance categories for WP:CANTV

Just wanted to let you know that there are dupe categories for quality and importance in Category:WikiProject Canadian TV shows articles. It looks like Category:Canadian TV shows-related articles by importance and Category:Canadian TV shows-related articles by quality never were populated and I can't tell if there is a corresponding template for those categories. The populated categories run off of the WPCANADA template and not the WPTV one, I don't know who else to notify about this problem. Thanks. --Funandtrvl (talk) 18:47, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Another reason to hate locator maps based on regional districts

I've been adding this edit comment to a series of map-deletions this morning (2hrs worth so far and counting):

remove incorrect location map; not the proper map-projection and the pushpins don't show in anything near the right place...

I'm exhausted and need lunch, and wish my time on wikipedia weren't having to be spent correcting such mistaken materials; the file-image in question is File:Location_map_British_Colombia.png and there's a whole bunch left to go. Regional districts are not even worthwhile or relevant from the BC point of view especially for landforms where terrain maps are more suitable; for towns a highway-grid map is of much more relevance. Regional districts mean nothing in BC as far as location goes; it's no more relevant, as one other Wiki editor from BC has pointed out to me via email, than using electoral district boundaries. But when the wrong map projection is used, the results are really silly; Vancouver Island's pushpin was near Squamish, Fort St. John's was in Alberta etc....it seems from the section above it's not just BC that has this problem; I left a note on user talk:Dr. Blofeld about this, as it had been him who'd been placing the map without looking at, or perhaps even knowing anything about, the results.....Skookum1 (talk) 16:26, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

To "mean nothing as far as location goes", a regional district would have to actually have no physical location whatsoever. There's a big fat difference between "not being how British Columbians choose to denote the various regions in conversation" and actually "meaning nothing at all". Our responsibility on Wikipedia is to display correspondences to geopolitical entities with precise legal and physical boundaries, not necessarily to people's mental maps. The only way using a highway grid map would be the appropriate solution would be if the highway grid was the government's official method of geopolitically subdividing and classifying the province's different areas — it's far more WP:NOR-violating to insist that we privilege some other method of subdividing the province over the one the government itself has actually implemented under law, especially when the alternate method you're proposing doesn't even have an article to explain it.

"You can't possibly understand how we actually conceptualize things here if you're not from here, so don't bother trying" is almost the textbook definition of original research — if you want these things done differently, you need to actually provide a coherent explanation of what the alternative scheme is, and document with actual reliable sources why it needs to be done that way instead. You've never actually done either of those things; you just keep ranting and raving anytime anybody actually tries to make use of the only geopolitical division scheme that the BC contingent itself has ever actually documented on here.

As just one example, you keep creating categories for subjectively-defined regions that don't even have articles to explain what is and isn't part of them. If you want Category:Vancouver Island to be subdivided into Category:Southern Vancouver Island, Category:Mid Vancouver Island, Category:West Coast of Vancouver Island and Category:Northern Vancouver Island instead of by the various regional districts, frex, the new regions have to be supported by actual articles about those regions so people who aren't already in the loop know what the hell they are — where is the boundary between mid and south, for instance, or the boundary between mid and north? Bearcat (talk) 01:32, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

NOBODY ELSE BUT WIKIPEDIA CLASSES LANDFORMS ET AL. BY REGIONAL DISTRICT. ALL Sources use the Land Districts for landform/placename locations. Census Canada only uses them for head-counting, they don't use them for defining the locations. There's a big diffrerence, and somebody or some group of people a long time ago in Wikipedia made a wrong choice. Regional districts do not work for classifying BC placenames, histories, biographies, for a number of reasons; they are NOT like counties and are considerably less powerful and "in use'. than the Forests regions or even the MoEnv regions. EXCEPT in Wikipedia and its mirrors. Provincial parks, Indian Reserves and more are NOT under their jurisdiction; classifying and sorting things by regional district is a wiki-obsession that has no practical applcation/relevance to British Columbians; it's an artificial classification. As someone else has commented, it's no more relevant than saying which electoral district a park or Indian reserve is in or where a person is from; the original research was the mistaken assumption they were somehow a relevant subdivision of British Columbia for a host of things taht are regular classified according to other region systems; Many of which make a lot more geographic and cultural sense, and which are at teh core of other region-breakdowns of BC than the one used by the mandates of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs. They're not something people to refer to where something's from; until Wikipedia and its mirrors came along and started mis-classifyhing thing based on a misapprehension of what RDs were about. They are ONLY relevant to things relevant to RD jurisdiction; and agencies and policies of the RD; they are not relevant for lakes, historical communities/lcoations (mines, ghost towns), or for historical personages; only communities that are "member" componenets of the RD are really relevant, ghost towns and IRs are definitely not. Insisting over and over that "well, they're in the RD now" is poppycock; they're also in this or that MoE region, or this or that MoF or EMR region or MoTourism region. Using RDs as a "county breakdowns" from BC was a mistake from the start, and it causes more complications and misidentifications than it's worth . And the maps look totally out of touch with other graphical representations of BC, which are highway and terrain based. 80% of land in nearly within the boundaries of any regional district is under the governance of a different arm of the provincial govenrment than the RDs are (teh RDs are only proxies of certain elements of provincial power, and are not truly municipal and certainly do not share teh same boudnaries as school, health and other district-distinctions as in Ontario, as you once compared was a valid comparison. The Fraser Health Board does not share the same boundary as the GVRD, the Thompson-Nicola Regional District has its Moe/BCParks correlation with the Thompson-Okanagan couplet; and so on. And to see, for example, "the Kamloops Indian Reserve is in the Thompson-Nicola Regional District" is wildlly inappropriate, not the least because IRs are excluded from the regional district system. It's like saying the Thompson-Nicola Regional District is in the Southern Interior region of the Bureau of Indian and Northern Affairs. conflicting jurisdictions, and boundaries nobody uses (except Wikipedia, and statistics-keeperes of only one arm of the federal government. The sources use the Land Districts, period (partly as a "neutral platform" so as to avoid said conflicting jurisdictions). Imposing RDs as a classification system is beyond what Wikipedia is supposed to be; that it was evolved early on doesn't mean it is cast in stone.....too much importance has been attached to the RDs for too long; WP:UNDUE applies in extremis....Skookum1 (talk) 03:11, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

All that was wrong was that the coordinates needing tweaking. A lot of trouble could have been averted with a litte friendly discussion with me before hand. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 17:53, 16 March 2009 (UTC) "Tweaking them" manually is dangerously close to OR, when the map's code-language suggests that the point will be correct it's not, i.e. if those coordinates inserted, unless noted in the tat for reference purposes, adjusted to deal with incongruities of the map projection only. Otherwise why either with the coordinates - unless the maaprojection is alsona a raw x=y axis, which it's clearly not (curved lines of latitude and longitude). And if it's am atter of hand-drawing points on maps, then any rationale for using a common RD-based map evaporates; it's not a recognizable map of the province, unelss you work in municipal affairs or for an RD, not at all. It looks all neat and tidy, but it's a mis-classification and again WP:UNDUE is the issue. Creating an importance for it not shared at hte public level (other than by users/readers of Wikipedia) IS synthesis/ORSkookum1 (talk) 03:11, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Post edit conflict to Bearcat; You're very wrong about the relevance of the legislation establishing the regional districts as subdivisions of the province being the only relevant system. BECAUSE IT'S NOT THE ONLY SYSTEM. Forests districts are far more powerful, with as I pointed out above generally control of 80% of any region, and each ministry has different region-systems. RDs only apply to certain municipal-type powers but to nithing else. particularly not to IRs or to health operations or school districts or even electoral districts. The ONLY common, binding system is the Land District system, as any BCGNIS or Canada GeoNames Database/Atlas of Canada ref quickly demonstrates. They are the only citable system. As for my "subjective" categories, most have articles, others I've been looking for material for the definitions; within BC the definitions are well known, in fact the Forest �Reginos are a close approximation because of hte realities of landscape/economics/community Here is the MoE map, these are the Ministry of Environment regions, these are the tourism regions; I could easily continue with BC Parks (which has a different system than its parent Ministry, MoE), and EMR (Energy Mines and Petroleum Resources). MoF and MoE regions are both established by legislation; how does the municipal act take precedence over the Mines ACt or the Forests Act when, in fact, both those acts suspend municipal rights (Mines in particular is sweeping in its powers....). The ONLY sourcxeable, common binding system is the Land District system; the "subjective" items/categories are part of BCs historical reality, part of its literary and local-identity cultures and abound in "subjective sources" liek works of history and travelogue; they are also the basis of the combined-form RD names, e.g. the Squamish Country and the Lillooet Country form the Squamish-Lillooet RD, the Thmmpson-Nicola combines the Thompson Country and the Nicola Country, which are historical and also currently palpable realities; likewise the Shusawp, Boundary, Okanagan, Dimilkameen, East and West Kootenay, and attendant regions (Slocan and Arrow Lakes within West Kootenay, Elk Valley and Columbia Valley and Creston Valley within East Kootenay. These are definitions rooted in the land, and in community. Not the transposition of an abstraction on something resembling a binding "subdivisions of BC". Picking REs only and exgtending their appliaction to things that the BC government itself does not use them for is CLEARLY OR.....by wayt of mis-citation and mis-appication of an artificla classification system. Evne regional districts themselves are classified by land district, for pity's sake; pretending that swomehow StatsCan usage of them for head-counting/statistic keeping means that it's a priori meant also to classify lakes and mountains and rivers with is beyond the bounds of logic, or citability. The "subejctive" regions/catgegories are citable, if not all in a consistent place then scattered through works of BC history and geography, and hyou'll also find them within name-origin descriptions in BCGNIS; they coincide closely, also with the origianl mining districts; and those were what Census Canada originally used, and were in fact the core of governance in BC outside teh Lower Mainland/South Island. Oh - Northern Vancouver Island is the govenrment's new pastiche for what has always bgeen called "the North Island", and "Mid Vancouver Island" is an attempt to deal with ar egion widely know nin print as "Mid-Island"....."West Coast of Vancouver Island" likewise has a clear meaning, if you've ever been to Vancouver Islan d or bothered looking at its map....Skookum1 (talk) 03:11, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Current mines regions, the listings within each section are those of teh "districts" or "countries".....note "Boundary District" is separate from "Okanagan Valley", Okanagan Boundary and Okanagan Similkameen, which are RD names, are simply combinations of the two "subjective" regions; they are synthetic political constructs which ONLY have to do with building permits and septic fields, they do not have to do with roads, with hospitals, with schools, with history or bios. The Mines Act is also legislation and happens to have the power to expropriate any municipality or single dwelling sitting on top of it, it's that powerful. OH, and this pre-2002 MoF regions map is very similar to its counterpart, otehr than the reshuffling of these smaller areas; precisely because it's the terrain and economy/transportation that define their shape; RDs are defined by expediency.Skookum1 (talk) 03:23, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Aren't RD's a form of municipal incorporation? As such, they would be as official as it gets. That being said, I consider a road base map would be more informative for maps of communities, and topo base map more appropriate for geographical features. --Qyd (talk) 03:34, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Skookum, I did not say that RDs are the only classification system that exists; I said that they're the only classification system that anybody has actually written articles about on Wikipedia, meaning that they're the only system that a Wikipedia user who isn't already intimately familiar with the complexities of land division in BC actually has access to any information about, with the result that until somebody actually posts articles about the other systems, they're the only one whose use puts the system, its geography, its organization and its relationship to other topics into an actual context that actually provides the reader with the necessary information about where such-and-such a topic is. It simply doesn't improve a reader's understanding of anything to say that a mountain is located in a land district, instead of the particular municipal body that happens to govern the area that the mountain is located in, if there aren't any articles explaining what the land district system is, or how it maps geographically to anything.

And as I've pointed out to you before, every single thing you dislike about the way BC articles are currently categorized and mapped by RD was started by BC-based editors, and yet, mystifyingly, every time this discussion comes up you rant at dumb BC-ignorant Eastern Canadians instead of at the people who actually initiated RDs as a classification system on Wikipedia in the first place. By the way, your attitude of constant condescending rantishness is getting absolutely tiresome, and you really need to start dialing it back if you don't want to find yourself on a one-way cruise toward an RFC — like I've said to you before: Wikipedia has a nifty little policy called WP:SOFIXIT, so if you don't like the way it's being done now, spare us the vitriol and FIXIT. Bearcat (talk) 03:40, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

And RD is not a municipal body, it is a para-municipal body administering municipal-type affairs across broad regions, typically in application only to private residences, not to corporate undertakings, certainly not to mining and forests interests or ranching etc. It applies only to buildings and septic fields/etc, not even to water rights (which is another branch of MoE) or roads (which are either DoH or Forestry/Mining/Agriculture (ranching) licenses). Because a mountain is inside an RD boundary does not mean the RD governs the mountain. It could only govern the right to build a deck or dig a cesspit if there was a private holding on the mountain. If that mountain is in a provincial or national park, or on an Indian Reserve, it's the same equation; buildings in national parks or Indian reserves are not under the governancne of the RDs, esplicitly, neither are IR populations counted in RD-census figures, "census apartheid" applies for various many-sided political reasons. In academic writing, e.g. one thesis I know of on the paleobotany of the Fountain Lakes which a friend of mine, begins with the description of the lake(s) being in whatever forest district, and this is typical of said writings; mines/prospector reports use the terminology of BCGNIS (i.e. which officially-named mountain range) etc. That mountain you think is governed by the regional district is far outside the reigonal district's control; "govern" is a non-operable word. RDs are only innocent bystanders at Land and Resource Management Planning Board meetings, and are regularly overruled by Forests, Energy/Mines, and First Nations concerns; they are not a government not even to the degree a municipality is within its boundaries, they are an extension of municipal powers outside the boundaries of munipalities, but only of municipal powers, and even then only al imited range of them. Yes, the Forests Districts, the MoE and Parks regions, the Mines Districts, they all need articles; some of them esp. the mining districts coincide with the shape/geography of items like Lillooet Country, Similkameen Country, Boundary Country (where "Lillooet District, Similkameen District, Boundary District" are optional names, ditto Chilcotin, Cariboo, Omineca, Peace etc.). The "Country" appellation is historically entrenched, not a recent invention like the RDs, and the names of the RDs themselves are rooted in the traditional regions (Columbia-Shuswap, Squamish-Lillooet); in some cases like Atlin District/Atlin Country they are virtually identical with the mining district (which for a good 50 years was the most important land-subdivision in BC, with most powers of teh provincia government held by the Gold Commissioner for those respective areas); mining-based ghost towns, for example, are more relevantly described by which mining district they were loated in; most died long, long before regional districts were come up with. Subcategories like "people from" and "settlements in" are problematic with historical entries re the RD categories; it's why I created Category:Settlements in the Chilcotin and Category:Settlements in the Similkameen, as it's inappropriate to refer to somewhere like Anahim Lake as being in the Cariboo Regional District....because some editor will truncate that to "in the Cariboo" or "in the Cariboo region/district" as if "region" or "district" on their own meant the same as "regional district". And it happens to be (Anahim Lake) an Indian Reserve community, and defeinitely NOT under the governance of the RD.....this isn't complicated, it's very straightforward. A lot of inertia in Wikipedia has focussed undue weight on regional districts and wound up with a lot of articles having RD-based descriptions which are unsuitable to the content and irrelevant to the context. Defending them because "that's all we've got" just doesn't wash. Saying that regoinal districts are somehow more relevant than land districts is purely theoretical; determining which RD a provincial park is in requires original research; describing a mountain peak miles from the nearest building inspector as being in an RD is no more relevant than syaing which electoral district or health region it's in; it's outside the purview of the regional district and things should not be categorized by systems which do not relate to them, and which do not govern them....Skookum1 (talk) 15:32, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

The British Columbia provincial government's own website describes RDs as municipalities period, not "para-municipal bodies". And I'm generally inclined to consider them a more authoritative source on that subject than your eye-glazing rants. But I digress. What you're continuing to miss is that I did not say that RDs were more relevant than any other system — I said that if you want to use another system, write articles about that system so that we can use it. Defending them because "that's all we've got" is a complete misrepresentation of what I said — we can't use content that we don't have, but that doesn't mean that we can't create new content if and when it's needed. And I didn't say that RDs govern mountains, either — no level of government does that anywhere on earth, because mountains aren't political entities. But a mountain can be located within the geographic territory of a municipal government, which is not the same thing at all. Bearcat (talk) 15:47, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

If the BC government site describes them as that now, it's a departure from how they were created and AFAIK they hav considerably less power than conventional municipalities; whether those powers have been extended under legislative redefinition I'll have to check on with legal buddies, I don't think much has changed. They're largely toothless and, as I said, their jurisdiction/powers are very limited; municipalities of the regular kind are also weak within BC to start with. Quite a while ago you averred that they were similar to how counties are in Ontario, to whit in relation to health, schools, policing etc; nothing could be further from the truth of the matter. Not even municiapilites ("real mniciapalities") have jurisdiction in those areas, just as they have no jurisdiction over IRs, or over forests, certainly not over mineral rights or water rights. They're not equal players at the table, and not that important a subdivision of BC. I'll get busy on the other article-series, as they are needed. My big problem with them is the way they're used in locator sentences in ledes, as well as re categorization of "unrelated objects".Skookum1 (talk) 16:25, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

[undent]List of Land Districts of British Columbia has been started; somewhere out there is an 1896 map of the arrangement of the districts as they were then (less numerous); it was on an elections article and misconstrued as being electoral districts. Why there were and are so many on Vancouver Island vs the much larger land districgts on the Mainland, I'm not certain; perhaps to do with the Island's system being derived at an earlier date, during the days of the Island Colony, all Mainland LDs are much larger than any on the Island; larger than the Island itself, in fact.Skookum1 (talk) 18:31, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Wrong image

On a related note, using Image:Location map British Colombia.png for {{Location map Canada British Columbia}} is a mistake, {{Location map}} only works with orthographic projection maps, sorry Blofeld, using the nicer lambert or other equal area projection maps just won't work. Please revert if you want {{Location map Canada British Columbia}} to have any relevance. --Qyd (talk) 02:37, 20 March 2009 (UTC) PS: Considering that the template is used in so many pages, and using the new map image was so far off, I've reverted myself, feel free to discuss here. --Qyd (talk) 02:41, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Qyd, is it possible to "stretch" one of the terrain maps to orthographic dimensions, e.g. by musing a morphing program which selects key-points and then places them, "taffy-pulling" the map accordingly to the "shape desired"?. Other than that, as noted somewhere above or in a discussion with Franamax on my talkpage, there's a GeoGratis free-data outlet where topographic maps could be constructed from. Another point is that the boundary between Kitimat-Stikine has changed but I haven't been able to find a map of it; Dease Lake is now in the RDKS but the BCGNIS page which stated that didn't describe the new boundary; it doesn't seem likely the "tongue" or panhandle of the Stikien Region that extends down to Bear Lake (the southeast extremity of the "region") is still in teh same administrative unit as Atlin and Lower Post, given that Dease Lake is in between; Bear Lake may now be in Nulkley-Nechako but again, I haven't been able to (so far) find anything on BC Govt sites indicating the new boundary/boundaries, nor on the RDKS site.....Skookum1 (talk) 12:59, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it is possible. Some rotating would also have to be done so that the meridians are vertical. I did that with file:Nova Scotia base map.png; the result is not perfect. --Qyd (talk) 19:01, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

{{Location map skew}} seems to work reasonably well for equal-area maps (whatever the ones are where lines of longitude converge). I've done some testing on it (note that my base map is a bit wonky). I've proposed at {{Infobox settlement}} that a "skew" parameter be added to use the skew template, but no-one commented. Franamax (talk) 17:34, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Examples of map use

I have put 13 Template:Infobox Mine here to see what happens when you type each province/territory in the "location" field and enter coordinates in the lat/long fields. Also now we have a place to compare the maps side by side and see just how dramatic a difference there is between them (and to see what we don't have, looks like QC/PEI/NWT/YT/NU and Labrador). It looks like the maps that we do have "work" when you enter a latitude/longitude into the lat/long fields (although I don't know how accurate they are).

What I would like to see come out of this is a consistent format for the maps (the AB/SK ones look good to me), and be able to use them with templates that allow you to enter the lat/long and put a locater dot in the correct place.--kelapstick (talk) 16:58, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

To continue on my theme of "inappropriate maps", this case strikes me as very important; mines are not relevantly located on a regional district-defined map for BC; they belong either on a terrain map, or on a map of mining districts (I'm currently trying to find one, or the basis for one, on BC Government sites, similar to the ones available for Forest regions/districts which can be found on the Ministry of Forests websites). The main issue with any such map is they must be orthographic/rectilinear, they can't be from a conical projection, or the pushpin system won't work; so much easier to simply make a distinct map for each mine, partly because given the scale of terrain/country involved even in the case of a single province, it will be much more illustrative to have a local-region map with a full-province inset, or a full-country inset if people insist on showing the whole country, despite the diminution of relative scale. Otherwise location maps for many mines are going to pretty much resemble each other, especially once the many mines in areas like the Boundary, Elk Valley, Cariboo etc are all eventually made; other than that issue, I must stress again that things not in the jurisdiction of regional districts, and never in any other source mapped according to those boundaries, is of any use or relevance. By continuing to use the RD maps Wikipedia is establishing a standard of its own, at odds with the "public reality"; yes, mirror sites and sites which reference Wikipedia articles are now saying things like "Highland Valley Copper is a mine in the Thompson-Nicola Regional District" when the normative usage would be "on the Thompson Plateau" or "between Ashcroft and Merritt on Highway 8". The TNRD has no role in the mine's operations or governance, none at all; the community of Logan Lake, which is the adjacent ex-company town, is a member municipality of the TNRD but otherwise there's no association, not for water permits, not for permits of any kind; all mines operate under the Mines Act, which more than pre-empts any powers granted under the Municipal Act....Skookum1 (talk) 17:40, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Extending that further, historical issues come to play; a phrase like "the Bullion Pit is an historic hydraulic mine in the Cariboo Regional District" is meaningless; the Bullion closed before the Regional District came into being; "in the Cariboo goldfields" or "In the Cariboo Mines District" is the proper and not anachronistic usage. And for the same reason, placing that mine (if it has an article yet, which it may or will soon/eventually because of its notoriety) on a map of regional districts which did not come into existence until decades after the mine closed is beyond any sort of relevance. RD maps were a bad way to go, other options should have been considered instead of just transposing them onto all kinds of subjects where they do not belong.Skookum1 (talk) 17:45, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

I have copied the specific issues to deal with mining to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mining, the purpose of this discussion is to decide on what provincial maps we should be using for Canadian articles, not to decide what maps should be used in the Mine Infobox. I only included the Mine Infobox because it was the only template that I knew with a location field and a lat/long field, and my primary interest in this is having a standard map that will utilize both.--kelapstick (talk) 18:01, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Also Skookum you are welcome/encouraged to be bold in your editing and fix/change the content of the article with an explanation in the edit summary or talk page rather than coming to WP:CANTALK to explain why the article is wrong.--kelapstick (talk) 18:04, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Canadian electoral districts

I am not sure when this happened, but there was a reorganization at the Parliament of Canada web site which affects some URLs used as references. It seems a pretty robotic task but:

• I'm not sure how to connect with a robot here
• it seems like such a task should be coordinated through Canadian Wikipedians

Essentially, the old URLs look like "http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/about/process/house/hfer/hfer.asp?Language=E&...." and the new URLs look like "http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Sites/LOP/HFER/hfer.asp?Language=E&..." The old URLs all redirect to the same page now [13]; I don't think that they provide any indication that the old links are now non-functional. I did some updates myself, see [14] for example, and the process seems pretty robotic and well-defined. --Big_iron (talk) 10:04, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

As long as there is a predictable and consistent conversion pattern for the URLs, then a request could be made at WP:BOTREQ to fix the links. This seems to be a bot-friendly conversion, unlike the painful manual conversions needed to complete Wikipedia:WikiProject Canadian music/Chartattack update. Dl2000 (talk) 22:50, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

OK thank you. I have put a request in the queue. I did some more manually but this is a fairly pervasive change. --Big_iron (talk) 11:48, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

This issue would also affect some entries on the French wikipedia. I did a quick check and found that some have already been updated & some have not. Is there someone here who has an account or contacts on the French wikipedia in case the issue of updating those entries comes up? --Big_iron (talk) 11:18, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I have an account on fr:, though I'd like to mention that if you or anyone else clicks on your "My preferences" tab and activates the "global account" option, any other language Wikipedia that you click on, either through an interlang link or through double-checking a situation like this, will automatically set up an account for you on that language server with the same name as you have on here, if that name isn't already in use by someone else. Even if you don't actually use it very much, it simplifies situations like this and has the added bonus of mostly locking your user name in to your own exclusive use (whereas without it, somebody else could be "Bearcat" or "Big iron" or "Dl2000" on another site, and maybe even cause trouble if they were disruptive). Bearcat (talk) 20:44, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for that. --Big_iron (talk) 10:05, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

New Canadian dollar value template

{{CAD}} was created to render Canadian dollar values with a linked C$ prefix. This is similar to {{USD}} and {{GBP}} templates. An outstanding issue to consider for WP:CANSTYLE is whether Canadian dollars should be indicated as C$, or rather something else such as CDN$, CAD$ or CAN$. WP:$ (currency style guide) left the specific national currency prefix question open. Dl2000 (talk) 03:59, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I think CDN or CAN should be used. 76.66.193.90 (talk) 08:22, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I would use the ISO 4217 Code, CAD$, which seems to be the prefix used by the Canadian dollar article. Although the likelihood of confusion is extremely low, C$ apparently can also refer to the Nicaraguan córdoba, so I would avoid it. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 13:09, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Domestically I think we see CDN and CAN most commonly; internationally, i.e. at currency exchanges worldwide, it's near-invariably CAD....Skookum1 (talk) 13:25, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

CAD$ would appear to be official, with C$, CDN$ and CAN$ being some popular uses. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 15:29, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

CAD$ would unabbreviate to "Canadian dollar dollar", I presume. Just a minute while I find an ATM machine that isn't being blocked by one of those big, awkward SUV vehicles... CAD is an ISO standard, based on the .ca from the ISO3166 country code series, but CAD$ is redundantly redundant. --66.102.80.212 (talk) 19:42, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with 66.102, ISO 4217 specifies "CAD" without the dollar symbol [15] and that's the only way I've ever seen it used (except when I put the $ in by mistake in my own notes). If the article is on a Canadian topic, why shouldn't it just be "$"? For Canadian dollar amounts in international articles, CAD would seem to be the preferred notation (and should link to Canadian dollar). C$, CAN$ and CDN$ are all OK but not correct in official (ISO) terms. Trying a Google search to estimate how other reference works address the issue seems to founder on the dollar sign Franamax (talk) 20:48, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Moving towards a CANSTYLE statement

Some notes from the above discussion:

1. With abbreviations such as C$, CAN$, CDN$ in play (and CA$ wasn't mentioned), there is evidently no common English abbreviation or symbol to specify the Canadian dollar. WP:$ recommends in such cases that ISO 4217 be used e.g. CAD 123.45
2. Concur that CAD$ is a redundant construct, in which case we might as well use pure ISO 4217.
3. However, for strictly Canadian-topic articles, the $ sign would seem more common and practical and in keeping with domestic use. Going back to WP:$, it does request currency formatting to "[f]ully identify a currency on its first appearance", presumably for the benefit and context of international readers. What about this for a first-usage domestic format?: $123.45 (CAD)
4. Since US$ is frequently referenced in Canadian sources, care should be taken to always identify American currency values as such.
5. Of course, coming real soon now, there's this format at http://i.am.ca/copyr.html <g>...

Does this (at least the first 80%) form a reasonable proposal? If so, the {{CAD}} template can be updated to use CAD, and an appropriate statement added to CANSTYLE. Dl2000 (talk) 02:37, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

After a quiet week, WP:CANSTYLE and {{CAD}} have been updated accordingly. Dl2000 (talk) 04:20, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Advice on image license - "The Cave", nightclub memento

Hopefully somebody here is familiar enough with image licensing to help me with this one. Orphanbot just notified me that Image:Cave1.jpg is about to be deleted for lack of license/copyright information, and I'm at a loss to know what applies, mostly because I'm not that familiar with the full range of licenses. See here on my talkpage although it's just bot-boilerplate. The Cave was a (very) famous Vancouver nightclub on Hornby Street, formerly the main entertainment strip in Vancouver, which was a dine-and-dance place decorated with papier-mache stalactites and stalagmites, it was the place to go out, and something of an icon in the history of hte city's nightlife, even more than the Commodore is now; it only closed in the 1970s. My parents went there when in town, and this image is from the front of a souvenir-photo "album" made by the Cave's in-house photographer; the kind of photo where people seated at a table, sometimes with the visiting entertainer, had their (drunken and smiling) photos taken. There's no copyright marking on the image, or on the graphic that's represented here, which is the cover, and this particular copy would be from the 1950s, perhaps the late 1940s.....I imagine this is in the public domain, but it's not an archive photo and was a freely-distributed albeit commercial graphic, thousands of these would have been made and kept in people's family-photo boxes (ultimately). So what's the license on this? I think btw the Cave's menu was in the same script, though with a different graphic; there was one of those in the family collection, which is about 4500 miles from me now.....Skookum1 (talk) 12:23, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

"Evidence of permission" has been requested. To my knowledge, there would be no one alive who could grant it....Skookum1 (talk) 12:24, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Just because there is no copyright symbol does not mean that it is not copyrighted. This is a great flow-chart for helping determine if something is in the publi domain or not in Canada (I believe User:Padraic first found it). Remember, however, that because the Wikipedia servers are located in the U.S., Wikipedia requires that an image be public domain in the U.S., so U.S. copyright law also needs to be considered (check here for a helpful chart, which would suggest that the item would enter the public domain 95 years after first publication date, unless it was also published in the US less than 30 days after publication in Canada, which seems highly unlikely). So, while there is a possibility that the item is PD in Canada, it would appear to me that you can't meet the U.S. requirements. Of course, you can still seek permission to use it, but at this point I think you'd end up chasing after heirs. Hope that helps. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 13:30, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Too bad, it's a nice graphic, huh? No clue who the graphic designer or his heirs might be; I'll forward this to the Vancouver Archives and/or VPL, maybe they have something on-file e.g. a newspaper ad for a night out at The Cave, that could replace it....the other option is some pictures of my parents and their friends out for the night and "in their cups", with the entertainer-of-the-night who must have been somebody famous at the time but I have no idea who it was; it was what was inside one of these; not readily accessible just now or I'd post it; but it's not really illustrative of the club per se.Skookum1 (talk) 13:46, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

You can try using a fair use justification (see, for example, File:Story.crash.sequence.jpg or File:Ben Johnson 1988 Olympics - LAC a175370k.jpg). If you find any other images, the general rule of thumb on the Commons (where all non-fair use images should generally be uploded) is pre-1946 Canadian photographs are usually okay, post January 1, 1946 Cdn. photos can have copyright issues.--Skeezix1000 (talk) 14:04, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I believe it should be January 1, 1949, not 1946. Mindmatrix 15:35, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

In Canada, yes. But Commons requires that an image be PD in the source country and the U.S. Images that were public domain in Canada prior to January 1, 1996 (the URAA date) are considered PD in the U.S. (subject to other criteria), but images from 1946 to 1949 had not come into the public domain in Canada by January 1, 1996, so typically fall subject to the longer copyright terms in the U.S. Thus the 1946 rule of thumb. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 17:53, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I've seen great online write-ups, and even photogalleries of the now-abandoned Cave. It'd be fairly easy to get permission from such an urban explorer. Sherurcij ^{(speaker for the dead)} 02:54, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

NHSC province cats

(continuing discussion from User talk:Dl2000#Category:National Historic Sites in British Columbia)

The reason I was concerned about this is that "National Historic Sites of Canada" is a noun phrase, i.e. in itself it is a name of which "of Canada" is a component of the phrasse; i.e. it's a title/name and doesn't "feel" like it shoudl be abbreviated; it's not a question of disambiguating "British Columbia"; it's a question of whether or not "National Historic Site of Canada" can exist as a title/term without part of its name. Perhaps it can; my impression is that it can't be broken; otherwise it's not a proper name and the cat name should then be, um, Category:National historic sites in British Columbia. but then that could include non-formally NHSC-designated sites. So it wasn't a question of disambiguation; it was not breaking up a title/noun phrase/proper name....Skookum1 (talk) 22:01, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, They do all seem to be called, in full, "National Historic Site of Canada" http://www.pc.gc.ca/progs/lhn-nhs/recherche-search_e.asp?s=1 DoubleBlue (talk) 22:16, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I had been going through and subcategorizing them, but stopped when I checked the above link (until we decide what the subcategories should be called). Just a note that after this is decided we are going to have to remove Category:National Historic Sites of Canada from Template:Infobox nhsc.--kelapstick (talk) 22:49, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Some notes on all this:

1. It's not a huge difference either way - this depends on whether category names should strictly incorporate the full naming which seems recommended by the main article, List of National Historic Sites of Canada, or whether this would be deemed over-disambiguation for the purpose of a category (e.g. Category:National Historic Sites in Alabama is not named Category:National Historic Sites of the United States of America in Alabama).
2. Development of the provincial subcats is appropriate given the number of NHSC articles in place, not to mention the numerous redlinks still waiting at the aforementioned list.
3. Kelapstick: For the infobox the provincial subcategory might be generated based on the {{{province}}} field; on the other hand, burying categories into an infobox may not always be a best practice, given that it can be difficult for editors to find a category and trace which template is creating it. MOS:INFOBOX says nothing about such embedded categories in any case.

Dl2000 (talk) 02:15, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

I will keep working on it, if we have to change the categories in the future that isn't a big problem once they are initially sorted. I just wanted to make sure that we did remove the parent category from the infobox to avoid redundant categorization, but that we waited until it was finished so that articles with NHSC infoboxes don't loose Category:National Historic Sites of Canada--kelapstick (talk) 02:27, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

I have to agree with Skookum on this one. Those who know me know that I am not a fan of unnecessary disambiguation, but here the proper noun is "National Historic Sites of Canada". I'm not sure that truncating the actual name is ever a good idea, but here it also raises a huge ambiguity problem with the "National Historic Sites in Quebec" subcat, where national could very well pertain to a designation of the provincial government. It think it causes ambiguity problems in the rest of the provincial subcats, but Quebec presents the biggest problem. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 13:15, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Completed

I have just finished going through every article in Category:National Historic Sites of Canada adding the proper provincial category to it. I also removed Category:National Historic Sites of Canada from:

• Template:Infobox National Historic Sites of Canada
• Template:Infobox nhsc

Any reason there are two of them...Anyway after I removed them from the template I had to go back and manually resave the pages that had the template to remove them from the category (it let me catch a few of my mistakes). There were a few other questions I came up with:

• Canadian Bank of Commerce - Seems national so might make sense to keep it in the parent category
• Canadian National Vimy Memorial - Overseas, makes sense to keep it in the parent category
• Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial - Overseas, makes sense to keep it in the parent category

I'd categorize the overseas sites as overseas or in France. it's not really a big deal either way though. --Labattblueboy (talk) 00:38, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Branches of military or orginizations

• Logistics Branch (Canadian Forces)
• Military history of Canada
• Organization of Military Museums of Canada
• Royal Canadian Armoured Corps
• Royal Canadian Infantry Corps
• Training Development Branch

I wanted to have someone else take a look at the military pages to see if they should be categorized like this. If we do decide to go with the "of Canada" in the end, it will be easier to recategorize now that they are sorted by province.--kelapstick (talk) 05:08, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Time to split/rename BC Legislature Raids?

I've been puzzling over this since before the last week's revelations and mounting questions; one reason the article hadn't expanded was because of its title, which was arbitrarily chosen quite a while back out of several options; it's now much bigger than the Basi-Virk trial, and also far-gone from the long-ago raids themselves (which for thos who don't know were in 2003). "Railgate" and "Sale of BC Rail Scandal" are the two rising terms for the central scandal at this point, but the mounting lobbying scandal around the activities of Patrick Kinsella promises to be even larger; because of WP:BLP I'm wondering if, other than Kinsella's bio as such, Kinsella Affair might be suitable, and that invovles a lot more than just the BC Rail/CN Rail privatization - see this latest item from The Tyee's The Hook "news blog" - BC Hydro/Accenture, BC Hydro/Plutonic-GE, Alcan/Kemano II, payday loans industry.....and Kinsella's functioning as a lobbyist while being Liberal campaign manager and not having a lobbying license and successfully resisting investigation by hte province's lobbying regulator because of delayed amemdments to lobbying regulations....other scandals in BC's history, some nearly as large/highly-ranked like the Bonner Scandal (see Robert Bonner, though what's there is incomplete) and various 19th Century scandals don't have much coverage. But this one, on the eve of an election where the Supreme Court only just struck down Bill 42, which was a gag law directed at third-party advertisers and even political columnists, and which seems to have not been struck down quite quickly enough - see here - account for why I changed the Ledge Raids article priority to "high". I'm not sure which other BC editors are interested, user:Moonbug has taken this on admirably single-handedly these last few days, and I admit to a very anti-Campbell POV (though I'm a member of no party and have no vested interest other than democracy and truth/open-ness of public affairs) and I don't know if Canadian editors beyond the Rockies even give a damn. Some columnists out here have opined that BC is a "rogue state", it's gone that far..."no longer subject to the rule of law" and that a (to me) clearly corrupt government is very ironicall hiding behind teh courts (for things taht have nothing to do with the current court-proceeding other than the players themselves, indicted or otherwise).....though "reliable sources" such as t he Canwest papers have largely pooh-poohed the whole affair (until this last week, that is). Moonbug has been keeping as NPOV as possible, and though adding additions myself I'm trying to be NPOV about it, despite my distaste for the way BC is run these days, and who's in charge of it so far.....I'm just hoping the rest of you might take an interest and, after reading the article as it is right now, and also the referenced materials, might assist in determining wiki-appropriate possible splits/renamings while avoiding POV forks and also minding issues such as keeping a Patrick Kinsella article from being too mcuh an anti-Kinsella diatribe; also connected bio articles such as Mark Marissen, as noted in the RFC section on the noticeboard, are obvious p.r. shells/resumes and need revamping, and other bio articles will need attention (there's still no David Basi article, for instance). It's so much easier to stick to geography/city articles and such huh? Anyway, takers? ideas? thoughts/comments? I've partly, btw, not posted this until just now because of drawing "spin doctor fire" as happened at the constitutional crisis article, but my wiki-conscience finally got the better of me....Skookum1 (talk) 16:34, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Joseph-Armand Bombardier

Joseph-Armand Bombardier was requested to be speedily deleted, then proposed for deletion. I have removed the PROD request. 76.66.193.69 (talk) 04:43, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

URGENT: BC ridings need updating before election

Please see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Electoral_districts_in_Canada#URGENT:_BC_prov_ridings_need_updating_before_election.Skookum1 (talk) 14:06, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Featured List Removal

I have nominated List of premiers of Saskatchewan for featured list removal here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured list criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks, where editors may declare to "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Cool3 (talk) 03:57, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

This also seems to be a merger discussion (who knew?). -Royalguard11(T) 03:42, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Lists of universities of Canada

Several Canadian university lists have been nominated for a procedural Featured list removal here. After discussion at a couple venues, consensus emerged to delist these Featured lists and merge them into one large list, which will be submitted to FLC. Dabomb87 (talk) 17:35, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

PPAP and BC switches on Jack Weisgerber

I just tried adding these to the WP:Canada template there....why didn't they work?Skookum1 (talk) 14:12, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

There were a few typos. I've fixed 'em. Mindmatrix 14:19, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Merge Canadian regions articles

I think the articles about regions of Canada like Eastern Canada, Western Canada, Central Canada are have many misleading links to them, and I think we should have one article to better explain how these terms are used.

I think Eastern Canada is the wost offender, and many of the links to it are misleading and are giving undue weight to the significance of that region. The article groups together Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes, and Newfoundland. While this is true in terms of where the provinces are physically located, it is not how the country is usually grouped. People in this Eastern Canada grouping tend to think of Eastern Canada as being just the Maritimes and Newfoundland, with Ontario and Quebec being part of Central Canada. Only people in Western Canada seem to use the term Eastern Canada to refer to the larger grouping in a political or historical scene.

Since these geography articles are mostly stubs, and have overlapping information, I would like to see most of them, along with List of regions of Canada merged into one larger Regions of Canada article where we can explain better how these terms are used in real life. I figured that it might be better to get some oppinions here before tagging them all with merge tags. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 14:32, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. With the caveat that BC folks basically consider anything on the other side of the Rockies to be Eastern Canada ;) //roux   03:04, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Category:Conservative parties in Canada

Well, this may be only a British Columbia problem, though there are those on the left who might aver that it's really nation-wide, but it's likely to be controversial and someone down the line is going to want to remove Category:Conservative parties in Canada from British Columbia Liberal Party, where I just placed it after seeing Bearcat put it on a few things on my watch list; I went through the BC political parties cat and add it, also, to as many as I was sure of, but the first one I tacked it onto is the Liberal Party, as the context here is small-c conservative (but, as in my edit comment, big-N neo-conservative) and not branches of the big-C Conservative. It doesn't apply just to the current regime/incarnation of the party, it was also the case with the pre-1975 BC Liberal caucus, which was about as left of centre as first base....the remaining Liberal MLAs became Socred cabinet ministers after the unofficial merger; only Gordon Wilson was anything like a true centre-liberal (and he was really left of centre anyway) adn we all know what happened to him. Before the Socred-Liberal merger, or rather before the birth of the Social Credit regime in '52, there was no doubt there were two conservative parties in BC, so much so that they saw eye-to-eye enough to become the Coalition (1941-51), which didn't hold together because they didn't see eye-to-eye quite enough...the rhetoric of BC political history/polarity, on both sides, speaks of "uniting the right" and "splitting the (conservative/anti-leftist) vote", with the Liberals being a necessary part of that. I suspect I'm preaching to the choir here, unless some of us are devoted centrist big-L Liberals who may take umbrage with the notion that a Liberal Party is really a conservative party; not just any conservative party, either, but an arch-conservative one, Liberal in name only. POVizing a bit more htan previous, "power for the sake of power" is an old criticism of the national Liberals; it's even more true of the various rightist coalitions which have ruled BC for most of the last 100 years (except for the Barrett and Harcourt-Clark-et al. eras). I just wanted to explain why I added the category; not out of mischeviousness, but out of accepted facts concerning BC's political culture/history - it's not just a stab at the current government; it's an accepted reality of BC's political milieu and standard in BC political commentary....Skookum1 (talk) 23:33, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Categorizing political parties based on their perceived or claimed values (socialist, conservative, left-wing, right-wing, etc) seems like a clear route to non-neutrality and conflict. Why can't we simply have a Political parties of Canada/Alberta/Ontario categorization? --NormanEinstein (talk) 12:51, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Category:Provincial political parties in British Columbia is a parallel cat. I agree there doesn't seem to be an easy route to categorizing parties on the political spectrum - even though the BC Liberals are decidedly and historially well-known-to-be very different from the federal Liberals, despite some common membership and a recent rapprochement (in handshakes if not in substance). "Spectrum-label" categories should probably not exist; the NDP claim to be both centrist and leftist, depending on which wing of the NDP you come from; the Communist Party considers the NDP only mock-leftist, even rightist.Skookum1 (talk) 13:34, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

I seem to recall that there was a debate over inclusion in this category a year or so ago -- I just can't remember the circumstances. I agree that political spectrum categories seem inherently WP:OR. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 14:01, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Very wisely, somebody took Category:Moderates off of Gordon Campbell (Canadian politician), where it clearly didn't belong. Presumably it had been placed there because he's a Liberal, at least on paper. I think this is just one more reason why political-spectrum cats shoudl be ditched.Skookum1 (talk) 16:34, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

For the record, this wasn't a new creation on my part; many of the articles were already sitting in the more general Category:Conservative parties and my only action was to sift them into a Canada-specific subcategory instead. I agree that categorizing political parties ideologically is at best questionable (and categorizing people ideologically is a definite no-no), but as long as any article in this category could simply get reinserted into Category:Conservative parties again by absolutely anybody on Wikipedia, there's no value in killing Category:Conservative parties in Canada while leaving the parent intact. If somebody's prepared to nominate the whole shebang for deletion, I'd happily support that — but as long as the general parent still exists, there's no useful reason for a Canadian subcategory not to. Bearcat (talk) 16:49, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, the delete-category question boils right back down to the Liberal Party of BC, which is clearly a conservative party.....but other than that thorny and not-really-POV issue I noticed that there's a whole Category:Green Party of British Columbia for no good reason at all......(one article does not make a category).Skookum1 (talk) 16:59, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Another one for the watchlists...

User:Neoliberal Scum (that's actually their username, not a statement of opinion on my part!) is repeatedly inserting unsourced, politically motivated commentary into the article on Arthur, the student newspaper at Trent University. The article does need some improvements, but this user's editwarring is in violation of the holy troika of WP:RS, WP:V and WP:NPOV. I'm keeping an eye on it, but could use some assistance. Note also that I've already stepped it up to an editblock warning. Grazie. Bearcat (talk) 02:30, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

I see you have since editprotected the article, but I have watchlisted it for when the protection comes off. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 18:04, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Toronto neighbourhoods

As some of you may know, the Toronto Star recently published a Toronto neighbourhoods map, which gave names for various areas in the city. Although they acknowledged that some neighbourhoods might be subject to a certain degree of subjectivity as to how they're named, I can't help but note that some of our Toronto neighbourhood articles on Wikipedia are unreferenced or poorly referenced stubs, some of which are permanently unexpandable because they're too granular to be useful.

I was wondering, consequently, if there's any possibility of establishing a consensus to reorganize our Toronto neighbourhood articles to match those mapped by the Star earlier this month — the titles mapped by the Star would be the primary articles, and any article that describes a mini-neighbourhood located within one of those neighbourhoods would be redirected to the map title instead of standing alone. The only time we would keep a standalone article about a neighbourhood not present on the Star map would be where the article describes the neighbourhood as being in an area which the Star map didn't give a name to at all, such as the "Garden District".

This would have a few advantages, to my mind:

1. It would mean that almost every neighbourhood article would actually have at least one genuinely reliable media source supporting it, which would be the first time we could actually say that about this particular set of articles.
2. It would minimize arguments about whether such and such an area is a "real" neighbourhood or not, as well as naming disputes about what neighbourhoods are called.
3. It would minimize the accidental creation of multiple articles about the same neighbourhood at different titles, per the current Clanton Park vs. Wilson Heights thing.

Any input? Bearcat (talk) 21:11, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I very much like the idea of having an "authority" on Toronto neighbourhoods that we can look to as a guideline and support the Star taking up the mantle. DoubleBlue (talk) 21:20, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

• support consistency is key, and following the Star model makes sense to me, I would think that most "sub-neighborhoods" would be better served as being a section within the main neighborhood article as there is little chance of their expansion beyond stub class without straying from reliable sources and without using original research. Not that there is anything wrong with having stub class articles, but I think they would be better served in a larger article. I seem to recall you doing something similar with regions of Greater Sudbury.--kelapstick (talk) 21:27, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
• Support. It's good to have a referencible framework to work within. It would be good to have a list article created based on the map, btw. PKT(alk) 22:15, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
• Support, with the caveat that we should also find other such listings. The city itself maintains a neighbourhoods list (see the map too); moreover, it provides demographic data for each neighbourhood (for example, Dorset Park), as well as a map delineating wards. There are other resources too, such as Toronto Neighbourhood Guide and Illustrated Toronto Neighbourhoods Guide, both of which have some promotional quality. I assume the Star used the city's list as the basis for the map you've noted. BTW: The Star also mentioned in that article that they're preparing a map for the 905. Mindmatrix 22:45, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd just like to note that the city of Toronto neighbourhood map is really bad, and I would discourage anyone from relying much on it. In my part of town the city has areas like Woodbine Corridor, East End-Danforth, and Greenwood-Coxwell, which are names that no one ever uses. At the same time they completely ignore well established names for the same areas. - SimonP (talk) 23:10, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

• Comment: we need a History of neighbourhoods in Toronto, or something similar. Mindmatrix 22:54, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

  That is a really good idea. I've put together a basic article outlining the history of Toronto neighbourhoods. It still needs a lot more info. What I would love to have more on is neighbourhoods like The Ward that have vanished. - SimonP (talk) 01:41, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

  That was fast! I'll go read it right now... Mindmatrix 01:53, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

• Support with caveats. The Toronto Star map is good, but they do leave out many things. They seem to have made a conscious decision to leave out ethnic neighbourhoods, they don't even include Chinatown (Toronto) much less Koreatown or Little Portugal. I would certainly oppose merging Chinatown into an article called Grange Park. It also seems to be purely a map of residential neighbourhoods, ignoring areas like the Fashion District, Port Lands, and North York Centre. There are also some areas that I have never heard anyone referring to, Tritown at Wellesley and Sherbourne for instance. - SimonP (talk) 23:03, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Some of those names were based on reader feedback. See this explanation (Tritown is in the list of reader-suggested additions). I'm sure there's some marketing involved there. Mindmatrix 23:22, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, "Tritown" didn't exist on the map the last time I looked at it; it's a later addition. It's definitely marketing — the redevelopment project (Verve condo/Fife House/Rekai Centre) that's taking place on the former Wellesley Hospital site, right at the centre of what's being labelled as "Tritown" just so happens to be the work of a real estate developer named Tridel. Bearcat (talk) 09:02, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

• Whoa. As we all know, there are no official neighbourhood boundaries in Toronto. They are unofficial, evolving, based on convention and people's varied understanding, and how been known to be the subject of much debate. I'm very much opposed to reorganizing the Toronto neighbourhood articles based on this one endeavour to map the neighbourhoods -- essentially elevating the Star map to an official and/or authoritative source - which it is not. The Star map is an interesting exercise, and it certainly ranks among a number of sources that should be cited in the various neighbourhood articles, but it should not be taken as gospel (which would be the result of this proposal). There are other sources that should also be considered (Mindmatrix has identified the general ones with which I am familiar), as well as the standard panoply of books, articles, etc. Certainly, toss the Star map in the mix of sources, and we should use it (and the other sources) to ensure that some of these neighbourhood stubs are more in line with WP:V and WP:OR. It's only one source, however, the contents are still open to dispute (as the discussion pages on the Star attest). We also have to be cautious about using the neighbourhood map on the City of Toronto website; it was produced at the staff level, based on criteria such as census tracts and service boundaries of community agencies - it has never been adopted by City Council, and it has no official status. It's effectively a bureaucratic tool used to assist in the provision of services, with boundaries that were chosen to assist in that goal, and it should be understood in that context. Again, it's very helpful, but like the Star map, it is only one interpretation of neighbourhood boundaries. Given the unofficial nature of neighbourhoods, no one source is going to be entirely reliable.

  I do support a concerted effort to organize the chaos that exists right now with the Toronto neighbourhood articles, but it should not solely be on the basis of the Star map. We should be looking at all of the main sources that have been mentioned - in many cases, the sources will compliment one another, with perhaps minor differences in views on boundaries (differences which can be set out in the article). Where there are "sub-neighbourhoods", boundaries that conlfict or overlap, or differing views on neighbourhood names, then I also fully support merging articles -- the differing views can be set out in the merged articles, and we avoid conflicting and unsourced stubs. I believe that this is the more defensible approach, whereby we balance the various available sources, and we do not rely solely on one source, ignoring all others.

  I'm thrilled that this issue was raised, because the neighbourhood articles are a bit of a mess, and an organized, concerted effort would be helpful. I just don't think we should be elevating one source among many to some sort of bible. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 13:07, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

  • It wasn't my understanding that this would become the "bible" or unquestionable answer on the neighbourhoods but rather the guideline or starting point and diverting from that would require a good enough argument and sources to overrule the general guideline. DoubleBlue (talk) 13:17, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

But moving forward as you've described would effectively render it a bible. How would you ever have a good enough argument to "overrule" it? There are no official sources, and the other identified sources are as imperfect as the Star map, so I can't see how you could ever refute it. Even the editors' own knowledge of the area would be WP:OR. The Star map is no more valid that the other sources - why would we elevate it to some guideline for which we need a "good enough argument" to overrule it? That's not how WP:V works. We are supposed to be looking at all the reliable sources, not just one, and then creating some huge onus on editors to cobble together other sources just to question the one true source. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 13:43, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

• Comment I would definitely go with the official neighbourhoods from the [City of Toronto webpage. It links to pages about each neighbourhood, which contain demographic data and maps with clear boundaries. Every other "dynamic", ethnic, or otherwise popular neighbourhoods could be added in this easily referenced frame. The Toronto star is not the authoritative sourvce in this case, but can be used to further expand articles. --Qyd (talk) 13:34, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to modify my original comment a bit. It's not necessarily critical that the Toronto Star map be privileged over other sources if there are other suitably authoritative sources available — it was just a proposal put forward for discussion, and if the consensus is that the city has an official neighbourhoods list that suits the purpose better, then by all means we should use that instead. What is important, however, is that we not be so lax about sources that Wikipedia becomes a place where a condo developer can invent a Tritown, or where we can have multiple articles about different names for the same neighbourhood, because we don't have any outside references that we can look to. Bearcat (talk) 14:09, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Many of the existing neighbourhood articles are actually about developments. Some have indeed enough character and/or history to warrant a separate article. Some don't. --Qyd (talk) 14:48, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I would agree with Bearcat's comments. The City of Toronto neighbourhood map isn't official, and even contains caveats stating that it is not intended to be treated as a statement or judgment about where a neighbourhood starts or ends. However, it's a useful tool, as is the Star map and the other sources Mindmatric identified. Based on those sources, I think we could do a pretty good clean-up job. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 15:34, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't want to criticize the Star's map, but I have seen many references to the City of Toronto's boundary designations as arbitrary or unofficial, and I disagree with that. The boundaries align with city, provincial, and federal electoral wards, and with census divisions. The disclaimer on the city's site which says census boundaries are not guaranteed to exactly match the city's boundaries, is not an indication that no effort has been made to align the two. On the contrary, I'm not aware of any instances of the boundaries being out of sync. I believe the disclaimer is there just there in case a mistake was made and a boundary somewhere does not match their maps, but I also believe the city has tried to put the boundaries in sync, and have been successful in this.

Regarding Little Italy, Chinatown, and the Fashion district, the first two are sort of "folk" areas without official boundaries, while the Fashion district (and probably the first two again) are more of a ratepayers / business organization's designation, and their boundaries are determined by whatever territories those groups choose to cover. They probably make an effort to avoid declaring territory already claimed by another similar business organization. So if one of these groups adds a little bit of territory that is outside the official boundaries, the next neighbourhood will exclude that area, and it may therefore look like there is some kind of official boundary agreed upon by the organizations. But these groups do not have any standing or interest when it comes to residences, utilities, and non-commercial real estate such as schools, not to mention electoral wards, so they really can't be used to determine neighbourhood boundaries.

I do agree that we should form a policy on how to decide which to make into an official list. And as you can guess, I think the city's map should be used. But I also think other neighbourhoods should be included in the main article of Toronto neighbourhoods, which is basically an index to other articles. Perhaps each former borough/sub-city could have a list of offial neighbourhoods, followed by a second list of other, unoffical neighbourhood names. We might also consider excluding the latter category from the template which appears at the bottom of pages, but add a note recommending the reader click on the link to the main article to see a more detailed list. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 16:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

One point of correction, the city neighbourhoods don't align with city, provincial, or federal electoral boundaries. The Beaches, for instance, extends west of Coxwell so it includes part of Toronto-Danforth as well as Beaches-East York. There is also a single area for the downtown waterfront, which covers both Trinity-Spadina and Toronto Centre. This is true of many other areas, they don't really pay any attention to electoral boundaries. - SimonP (talk) 17:31, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Inappropriate merge of region cat with RD cat

When was Category:Greater Victoria, British Columbia merged with Category:Capital Regional District, British Columbia? this is entirely inappropriate and no more suitable than merging Lower Mainland into Metro Vancouver or Regional District of Nanaimo into Mid-Island, or Cariboo into Cariboo Regional District, or the Sea to Sky Country and Lillooet Country into Category:Squamish-Lillooet Regional District. They are NOT the same thing, and people simply do not refer to geography in BC by referring to the regional district; when this occurs in ledes it sounds incredibly stiltled and very neologistic. Very, very neologistic, a "wiki-ism". Regional district categories should only be used for things pertaining to the jurisdiction of teh government of the regional district and should NOT (I repeat, NOT) be used as geographic-region categories and should NOT (NOT) including things like Indian Reserves, provincial parks, geographic objects, federal installations (e.g. CFB Esquimalt) all of which are "outside" of teh RD's jurisdiction. This was an ill-advised merger and I strenuously object to it as causing a precedent for similar mistaken combinations throughout BC, and flies in the face of what regional districts are about, vs actual REGIONS.Skookum1 (talk) 12:22, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I see in the history of the Greater Victoria cat that it was Bearcat, back in August. This is an anomalous merge and as noted flies in the face of what regional districts are and more expressly what they aren't. The Central Coast and the Central Coast Regional District aren't the same thing, the Thompson-Nicola Regional District is not the same thign as teh Thompson Country and the Nicola Country. Regional districts do not include Indian Reseres and their powers do not apply to provincial or federal parks or federal installations and all geographic objects in BC are classified by (officially) land districts and (in common parlance) by region-designations which do not donform to the boundaries of regional districts (though regional district names and often boudnaries are based ON those traditional regions). All regional district categories should be stripped of any Indian Reserves, provincial parks, and geographic objects located in them; they should only apply to regional parks, member municipalities, communities listed in the EA directories (and not older communities such as ghost towns) and other things which do not pertain to the government of the RD. They are NOT valid to use as regions, even though they've become a standard wiki-misapplication of a Census Area/Regional District parallel as if that applied to non-census information. Greater Victoria includes areas outside of the regional district, and is in any case a completely different usage in the way English is used in BC. "Hi, I come from the Capital REgional District" is just not the way people talk out here. "Hi, I come from Peel County" may be how things work in Ontario and other parts of Canada or the US, but such political-unit references do not apply in BC and sound really, really ODD.Skookum1 (talk) 12:32, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

If it offends you so much, fix it instead of coming to CWNB to whine about it. Wikipedia categories are not bound by any requirement to match "what people actually say in conversation" — they're bound by a requirement to be organized in a coherent system that is properly explained via articles to users who aren't already intimately familiar with the intricacies of land division in British Columbia. It does the reader a far greater disservice to use a system that doesn't even have a set of articles explaining what it is, and how it maps to anything else, than it does to use a system that may not match how the BC government organizes its administrative functions but at least has the benefit of actually having a coherent and clearly defined set of geographic boundaries that are adequately explained and shown on Wikipedia — so if you want to use something else instead, quit whining and write the damn articles about that something else so that we can use it instead. Until such time as there's an actual article explaining what Mid-Vancouver Island is, it's not an appropriate category for anything, because the reader who doesn't already have that background knowledge has absolutely no context for learning how the grouping is defined or what belongs in it. And until such time as you start actually doing that, I'm done engaging you in any further discussion about it.

And for the record, "Hi, I come from Peel County" is not how things work anywhere else, either — you're continuing to invent a much greater difference between RDs and other provinces' counties than actually exists in the real world. What would help you to understand that the point of any "People from X County/Regional District" category, whether in Ontario or BC or elsewhere is "People from places in X"? The implication is not "X is the primary geographic entity with which these people culturally identify"; it's "these people are from places within X which aren't large enough to have their own dedicated city-level categories", because the category title means that that the people are from places within the county/RD, not that the people would necessarily give you the name of the county or RD if you had a chance to personally ask them where they came from. That implication is in no way inconsistent with your statements about RDs, because the linkage being drawn is between the county or RD and the municipalities. And this has also been pointed out to you before. Bearcat (talk) 13:01, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Post edit conflict: Also noting that not only does Greater Victoria include areas not in the CRD, but the CRD includes areas not in Greater Victoria; namely, and especially, the Gulf Islands, which have their own category separate from Category:Greater Victoria, British Columbia. It's also why the communities, parks and beaches of hte Juan de Fuca region, west of the CRD, should not be blindly assumed to be in the Cowichan Valley simply because they're in the Regional District of Cowichan Valley......(and the ones nearer to Victoria are an extension of Greater Victoria, e.g. Jordan River).Skookum1 (talk) 13:22, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Re Category:Mid Vancouver Island. The term is actually "Mid-Island" see this google but because of other Mid-Island usages in the world including Long Island NY and Jamaica (see this google) User:KenWalker and I decided that "Mid Vancouver Island" was the best construction, given that the "old" "North Island" designation is now semi-officially "Northern Vancouver Island" and similarly re "South Island" (as in First Nations of South Island) Category:Southern Vancouver Island was the further corresponding geographic category; perhaps as with Northern Interior redirecting to British Columbia Interior (though that article may yet get broken up regionally) the thing to do is to have Regions of Vancouver Island as an article discussing the various region-references within Vancouver Island; for example Category:West Coast of Vancouver Island doesn't include Quatsino Sound, even though it's on the Island's west coast; it's in the North Island region; so, on the other hand is Gold River which is also west coast (inland waters of Nootka Sound, ditto Tahsis). Port Renfrew-Jordan River, likewise, is "West Coast" (a term in BC which refers to the outer coast, when not referring to the Vancouver-to-San Diego culture/corridor); "South Island" tends to refer to the corridor flanking the Island Highway, not to the western coast of the southern part of the Island, y'see. These are all common and well-known British Columbia usages, used in company names, tour guides, weather reports and also in government-agency regions. That no one's seen fit to write an article yet is not reason to fall back on using regional district categories in place of "proper" region categories. KenWalker, by the way, lives in the Mid-Island region (at Qualicum Beach); and certainly nobody in Chemainus, Nanaimo or Parksville would have any doubt about whether or not they were "Mid-Island" or not; cf the "Mid-Island Express", the Tsawwassen-to-Duke Point ferry run. It's not like we invented a name, but we did have to adapt it, inserting Vancouver before Island so there wouldn't be objections from Long Island NY, Jamaica or who knows where else. Would Category:Mid-Island (Vancouver Island) be, then, more desirable?Skookum1 (talk) 14:55, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

"That no one's seen fit to write an article yet is not reason to fall back on using regional district categories in place of "proper" region categories." Wikipedia most certainly does have a responsibility to privilege connections that can be drawn via content that we actually have on here over connections where the reader has to guess at what's intended because nobody's seen fit to write an article. We most certainly do have an obligation to ensure that things are put into a context that's actually explained and available to the Wikipedia reader — until such time as we actually have articles about the other types of geographic divisions, we most certainly do have an obligation to link the articles in question to something that we already do have on here. Our obligation is to put things in context for the reader. And yes, sometimes that does mean that we have to temporarily privilege a less-than-ideal description over information that nobody's seen fit to add to Wikipedia at all. Using an RD, while not ideal, at least has the benefit of linking the topic to an article that explains where the thing in question is — using a redlinked article to a topic that nobody's written about is not an improvement in that regard, because the lack of an article means that the reader doesn't have a context to understand what the thing that's being linked is. Which is why I keep harping on this point: if you want to use something else, write the damn articles so that we can.

If you still have a problem understanding my point, think about it from a reader's perspective for a minute: you're looking at an article about a geographic topic that you don't have any pre-existing knowledge about. What type of geographic information is more helpful to you in gaining some understanding of the topic: a permanent red link to something that even the province's or state's own residents couldn't be arsed to write an actual article about, or a link to something, whether it's the government's official classification method for that type of topic or not, that at least has an actual map and actual geographic location information on it?

Wikipedia has an obligation to put things in the context of content that we have. The audience for our articles is worldwide, not BC-exclusive, so we have an obligation to make sure that the geographic context in which we're placing articles is properly explained. We have an obligation to structure and organize our articles with an eye to what people in Mumbai or Johannesburg or Tristan da Cunha know about Chemainus or Nanaimo, not solely to what people in Chemainus or Nanaimo know about themselves — and thus, our obligation is to ensure that whatever context the articles are placed in is properly explained by linking to articles that actually exist. So if you don't like the context that it's being placed in right now, then create the new content. But no, you'd rather come here and pull a Billy Bob Thornton over this instead of actually doing anything productive to improve Wikipedia's coverage of BC. Bearcat (talk) 16:14, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Ahem, I'm the one who created the regional categories like Category:Southern Vancouver Island and its kin, and of which Category:Greater Victoria, British Columbia is only one subcategory, ditto Category:Lower Mainland and Category:Central Coast of British Columbia and all the "traditional-region" categories for the Interior (most of which now have lead articles). It's when someone else tries to upend that system that I have reason to complain/comment. Not just you; at some point User:Backspace, wherever he's/she's from, went through tons of geographic and park and IR articles and placed them in RD categories, and he's not alone. What I will do is come up with a boilerplate announcement for RD categories that they should only be used for items under the very narrow jurisdiction of the RD and NOT for things over which the RD has no control. "Settlements in the xXRD", yes, that makes sense (to a degree, with limits excluding IR communities and ghost towns etc) but "People from the xxRD" just doesn't work, though I haven't gotten to taking that to CFD yet. What I'm saying is I'm constantly working at this, but find people who work at cross-purposes on it, such as this category merge, or campaigns like User:Backspace's to categorize something because they need to find a parallel to a Washington county or an Alaskan city-borough (which are used as cats in those regions). Provincial parks, if anything, shoudl be categorized by which BC Parks region they're in (there's an argument to be made for BC Tourism, but curiously enough BC Tourism and BC Parks don't share the same region structure....and forestry campgrounds are of course in MoF regions). But I can't get on with creating all this so long as I'm always trying to fix it. You DID say "so fix it", right? Yeah, well today on Discovery Island (British Columbia) and Trial Islands Ecological Reserve I amended teh category to Greater Victoria only to find that that category had been redirected to the CRD one. Both are under the jurisdiction of BC Parks, and not under the jurisdiction of the CRD in any way; they only happen to be inside the RD's boundaries. But it's like putting something in a category for a diocese that has nothing to do with the diocese. The only consistent "system" in a pan-historical context in BC, which ties together fur trade, colonial, early provincial and post-war history is the "traditional region system", which even the RDs are based on, if only by using the old-regions' names, and which electoral districts also use. That they happen to overlap and intersect is a reality of the BC landscape, geographically and socially. But as per Ken's note before, RDs can be a parallel system, but they're subordinate to the geographic regions although sometimes a regional district will have more than one geographic category within it, as here with Gulf Islands and Greater Victoria; where the western/northern boundaries of Greater Victoria may lie - before or after Malahat, before or after Sooke or Jordan River, may be debtable somewhat but they're recognizable; and people in Johannesburg or Ougadougou would be well-educated to know them, instaed of to think that Canadians refer to places by which regional district they're in. By applying RD categories to things that no one else categorizes them by, Wikipedia is creating "false information" - effectively synthesis by way of a new classification system - and globalizing a misapprehension and making it standard when it shouldn't be. Mis-educating the people of India or South Africa is the effect of mis-categorizing things by regional district, that's MY point (apposite to the comparison you made). But there's so much inertia behind the RD-based system in Wikipedia that it's a LOT OF WORK to undo the damage, whether it's locational statements in articles ("is a mountain in the Cariboo REgional District" vs "is a mountain in the Cariboo district" and people piping "regional district" into "district" and "region" or saying that Tatlatui Provincial Park is "in the Peace River district" (t's in the PRRD but hundreds of miles from the Peace River Country aka Peace District aka Peace Block. The miscontruments are everywhere, and it takes time to unknot them; it doesn't help if people continue to tie new knots. My point in posting this here is to get regular editoros to STOP using RD categories as geographic categories; if that's being Billy Bob Thornton then you'r being Nurse Ratchet....Skookum1 (talk) 17:30, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Let me distill this down to the core point: Actual articles are required to support and explain WHAT the regions that you want to create categories for ARE. Without those, it's a contextless grouping that fails the very point about making sure the reader knows what the hell we're talking about. In other words, if you want to categorize things as Category:Southern Vancouver Island instead of by RD, there needs to be an actual article explaining what Southern Vancouver Island is, where its boundaries are, and on and so forth. You can't assume that the reader necessarily knows anything about Vancouver Island — if you want to create the category, you have to make sure that its scope is adequately explained by means of an article about it. What part of that fact are you having trouble grasping? Bearcat (talk) 17:36, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Assuming you are right about this (I have never heard of it before, is there a source for this assertion?) it seems to me that the better way to bring the situation into accordance with this requirement would be to create the articles rather than put them in an ill-suited category. --KenWalker | Talk 20:46, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Please read my comment below: the reason a grouping such as "Southern Vancouver Island" needs a supporting article is that if you're not already familiar with the way the term is used in BC, it's unclear what it refers to: the entire southern half of the island, comprising everything south of Courtenay-Comox? The entire southern third of the island, comprising everything south of Port Alberni? The entire southern quarter of the island? Just the southern tip? That's why an actual article is required: the term's meaning isn't obvious to the uninitiated if it isn't explained anywhere. Of course, anybody can create an appropriately referenced article at any time — but the crux of the issue is that somebody has to actually do it if it's ever going to get done, and the onus for doing that is on the person who wants things to be categorized that way in the first place. And the other thing I'm going to repeat one more time is that it was British Columbia-based editors who started categorizing people and mountains by regional district in the first place — my only "crime" here, such as it is, was simply extending what BC-based editors started doing in the first place. So if you don't like it, take it up with the BC contingent rather than pointing fingers across the Rockies. Bearcat (talk) 21:11, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I watch most BC articles so I have come across this issue several times in the last few months. As I understand it, the issue here is whether RD categories, based on the boundaries of one of the two systems of municipal government in BC (like CRD) should replace geographic categories (like Greater Victoria). My view is that they are two separate methods of categorizing locations that are bounded in different ways and for different purposes and neither should replace the other. The Regional District system of government in BC has a narrowly defined jurisdiction. While it may be tempting to merge the two together if one looks at Greater Victoria or Vancouver, those are a small part of BC geography. Where I am, for instance, in Qualicum, geographically I consider my town to be part of the mid Island just as Courtenay is. By RD categories, we would be in the Regional District of Nanaimo, Courtenay was in Comox Stathcona whicn included Powell River. Campbell River is in the new Strathcona District. Those boundaries may (or may not) make sense for the administrative purposes of the Regional District, but using them as a proxy for a geographic category doesn't make sense to me. If one is to absorb the other, the geographic category should absorb the RD categories rather than the other way around since the geographic categories serve broader purposes than just municipal services. --KenWalker | Talk 15:39, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

- I'm going to undo the redirect, and also return to writing up the Land District series, though I have doubts as to using them as categories given the ease-of-use/identification of the geographic regions as named; some geographic regions wil simply, also, be mountain-range names, as they are outside the "country" system (e.g. the Jennings River-Atsutla Range area....User:Black Tusk has already started creating the plateau/range categories, at last in the far north). I'll also get to List of political geographic units of British Columbia so as to put side by side all the various tourism, forestry, RD, environment, health, "counties" (law court system), mines and various other ways in which BC is subdivided and managed. INAC also has regions for band-management/administration which are outside teh tribal-council divisions (and tribal councils do not have geographic boundaries and are more like a checkerboard). it's a lot of work to re-sort everything that has to be taken out of RD categories, but if you insist, then so be it; so much for my writing up history articles in the next while.....and note on the new provincial electoral districts template talkpage a similar discussino of the provincial goevernment's regional breakdown, which includes Development Regions (as agglomerations of RDs); "Mainland/Southwest" and the like, vs yet another application of Thompson-Okanagan (of several using the same name, but with different boundaries)....I wish I was a mapmaker, but I'm not.....Skookum1 (talk) 17:55, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I've seen lots of categories that don't have main articles, in all kinds of fields. "South Island" would be the proper title of such an article for Category:Southern Vancouver Island for what I believe should be obvious reasons for Category:South Island (which may in fact exist re New Zealand, who knows....What seems more feasibly is to have a "regions" section on Vancouver Island, which lists South Island, Mid Island, North Island, West Coast, etc.....Ken and I have been having ongoing discussions about concepts like "Juan de Fuca region", "Pacific Rim region", "Queen Charlotte Strait region", those are all part of the same (very big) issue and article/category-creation project. Your argument still doesn't justify mis-applying RD cats as if they were geographic cats, or equating one category with another as you did in this case. And as per the Gulf Islands as part of the CRD, jurisdiction-wise, it happens that more powerful within the Gulf is the Islands Trust; jurisdictionally much more relevant re Saturn or Saltspring or Discovery or Prevost than anything the CRD has to do with it. An admininstrative boundary is not justification to put something in a category about that administration.Skookum1 (talk) 17:55, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I was going to say what Bearcat said but he beat me to it. But there is another point that should be mentioned, Wikipedia strives for verifiability, not truth, so no matter where people who live in Southern Vancouver Island (which is going to need to explain where the boundary line is) say they live, if the only verified name for that area is a Regional District, calling it anything else is original research.--kelapstick (talk) 17:58, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

No, applying the term regional district as if it were a geographical designation is what's original research. As for a boundary, there are overlaps in the regions; but Duncan is definitely South Island, Ladysmith is definitely Mid-Island. "the verified name for that AREA is not a regional district". That's a govenrment in that area, but it's not thet area.Skookum1 (talk) 18:17, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I have to go, but I've just relocated A-D in the CRD cat as apporpriate; in some cases the CRD and ordinary-Victoria cat were used for things offshore from Oak Bay, it's one reason why the Greater Vic cat needs to exist; as for coming up with an article on the South Island, that's easy enough later on, iven the plethora of webreferences to the term.....Skookum1 (talk) 18:18, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

The definition of original research is not whether it matches to official government usage or not; it's whether the supporting articles are properly referenced to reliable sources or not. And to be clear: the reason a grouping such as "Southern Vancouver Island" needs a supporting article is that if you're not already familiar with the way the term is used in BC, it's unclear what it refers to: the entire southern half of the island, comprising everything south of Courtenay-Comox? The entire southern third of the island, comprising everything south of Port Alberni? The entire southern quarter of the island? Just the southern tip? That's why an actual article is required: the term's meaning isn't obvious to the uninitiated if it isn't explained anywhere. Bearcat (talk) 20:36, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's about to be, since the terms "North Island", "Mid-Island" and "South Island" in omcbination with "British Columbia" turn up lots (and lots and lots) of hits. Because of the need to disambiguate such otherwise-general terms these are the proposed article titles:

• • • North Island (British Columbia) is an actual island, so North Island (British Columbia region) is needed
    • South Island (British Columbia region) (for the same reason, and there's more than one South Island in BC)
    • Mid-Island (British Columbia region). There are no Mid-Islands in BC, though there might conceivably (but unlikely) be "Mid Island but just for hafmonization of titles Mid Island (British Columbia region. Perhaps Ken might comment on wwhether the hyphenated or unhyphenated form is more common.

The boundaries may overlap, or there may be grey areas; on perusing a number of pages just now sometimes Duncan is Mid-Island, sometimes it's South Island, Campbell River is usually Mid-Island, but it's the gateawy to the North Island. Port Alberni is technically West Coast of Vancouver Island, but I'd venture (Ken?) that it's considered "Mid-Island" because of its proximity to Nanaimo-Parksville. South Island is directly defined by vancouverislamd.com and also a Victoria-area tourism site as Greater Victoria, the Saanich Peninsula and the Sooke-Jordan River area (which overlaps with Strait of Juan de Fuca region (British Columbia). Once the North/Mid/South Island articles are made, then a CFD can be started to rename the categories as Ken and I chose to name them when making them; West Coast of Vancouver Island likewise needs definition, and while as noted previously it includes Port Renfrew the term Pacific Rim, which is otherwise sysnonymous within BC contexts, does not (but it does include Bamfield and points norhtward to Kyuquot. If the dismabiguations above don't suit, please say so; it's a relatively easy thing to start an article for any saying "Mid-Island is a common term in British Columbia, Canada, used to refer to the settled region of the east coast of Vancouver Island from Campbell River to Duncan, and adjoining areas", adn then provide examples of use. Anyway for now I'm going back to taking out of Category:Capital Regional District, British Columbia what properly belongs in Category:Greater Victoria, British Columbia or Category:Gulf Islands.Skookum1 (talk) 22:44, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

The creation of the RD cat-system by other BC Wikipedians several years ago did not take into account the consequences of that decision, which was ill-considered. I just happened across yet another instance of the confusion-of-usages problem in "Districts of British Columbia" in Wikimedia Commons, which is a case-in-point of the "levelling" of the term and its inappropriate consequences; I've postecd comments about those wrong-name cats , which are part of teh "snowball effect" of creating mis-classification systems based on misapprehension of the meaning of the term. I've also posted draft boilerplate on Category:Capital Regioanl District, British Columbia - and it took me hours to clean out that category, one snowball at a time; a few of its subcats continue to be mis-named (not using "the" before the RD name) and the issue with the transportation cat is t hat none of the entries are udner the jurisdiction of the regional district; airports are under DoT, BC Ferries is a CC more powerful than the RD, in fact, adn any bridges that might be listed are likely to be DoH. Category:Transportation in Greater Victoria, British Columbia and Category:Transportation in the Gulf Islands are the solutions, I'll make them later, I've been culling the CRD cat for hours and need a break. Re the Transportation in Greater Victoria, I note there's already Transportation in Victoria, so likely Transportation in the Saanich Peninsula and Transportation in the Western Communities are the solutions there, i.e. to avoid teh wrong-jurisdiction problem.Skookum1 (talk) 00:05, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Amazing what can happen when somebody actually takes on the job of initiating change instead of simply insulting other people, eh? Bearcat (talk) 01:11, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Don't be so snide. Having to correct this mammoth snowball of accumluate4d misapplications is a gigantic waste of time; I'd come here looking for consensus on moving forward with transferring articles into appropriate categories adn to get some understanding/give some education on why RD categories are not suistable as geographic categories. I'm the one who's been insulted, simply for trying to bring this before teh group instead of acting unilaterally on the much-needed changes. Which now will take up most of my wiki-energies for the next while, at a time when political articles are much in need of POV watch and expansion and my long-ago activism in making sure Canadian POV and BC POV was present in regional history and geography articles is now (again) shelved. Yes, I'll make the remaining region lead-articles and yes, I'll clean out all the #$%^&#$%#^$%^$% regional district categories of what doesn't belong in them. But what a waste of wiki-time and I can't believe the obfuscatory posturing justifying them, when they're clearly not suitable and have been so clearly mis-applied over and over and over again.Skookum1 (talk) 01:48, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Read WP:SOFIXIT. Do it 100 times if you have to. And then get the hell over yourself: nobody here was being "obfuscatory" or "posturing" except you — I don't know what could possibly be less obfuscatory or posturing than "if you want it done a different way, then do it already." Bearcat (talk) 03:07, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I came here for consensus/discussion before acting unilaterally and for assistance in the mammoth task of moving articles to the correct categories, since so many have been (by now) mis-placed. And to explain the reasons why the changes are necessary, and to ask that the ongoing confusion of regional districts and actual regions cease. For all that I get insulted myself, simply for TRYING to discuss fixing it. And I know in establishing the Category:Geographic regions of British Columbia I caught a lot of flack for that, even though the terms are well-known and are in fact components of various jurisdictional names throughout BC, including for regional districts; yet I was accused of making things up "subjectively". Whereas the truth is, whether created by BCers or not, the use of RDs as if they were geographic subdivisions worth using was what was subjective, as well as incorrect and full of complicated consequences; on that note cf Talk:Greater Victoria, British Columbia where yet again the idea that a regional district is a region-as-such has surfaced and a merge has been proposed even though the boundaries of the two items are entirely different (as well as the context). All I know is it gets fairly pointless to ask for consensus around here without people getting their noses out of joint.Skookum1 (talk) 01:53, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

I rarely have any sort of problem asking for consensus around here, actually. Which might have something to do with the fact that I generally kick off the discussion with a respectful and polite "hey, guys, there's a problem here, what should we do about it?" sort of tone, I clarify or revise my point if I'm being misunderstood, and I'm willing to actually listen to what people say in response. Whereas you tend to go straight to a tone better described as "SOMEBODY WILL PAY FOR P*SS*NG IN MY WHEATIES!", and you rarely calm down from there either.

I've told you this before, but if you started coming across less like an angry lecturer and more like somebody who's at least trying to be constructive, you'd probably get a hell of a lot more positive feedback. Dial back the attitude, and you'll get a lot farther. Trust me on this one, because I speak from hard-won experience. Bearcat (talk) 02:41, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

You know Bearcat, you do a hell a lot of condemning and judging for osmeone who's calling someone else (a) lecturing a (b) angry. I'm not the one with the attitude problem. I'm just prolix at laying out issues, not "lecturing". I've been trying to talk common sense about region categories and have always beem met with obtuse rationalizations why the non-workable status quo is what it is. And when I set out to change things, I get shit on for it. I'm not the one with the attitude problem - you are. You've been projecting emotions on me that I just don't have, whether portraying me as "doing a Billy Bob Thornton" or susgesting that my tone has been (and I quote) <"SOMEBODY WILL PAY FOR P*SS*NG IN MY WHEATIES!">. I don't recall saying anything nearly as contemptuous - or anything contemptuous at all - in your genereal direction, or at all, period. Frustrated with poeple not "getting" the many problems of using RDs the wrong way, yes, but trying to be thorough rather than trivial.....and as it seems I'm the one left fixing all the geographic mayhem out there, I'll get back to it and give up on conensus altogether, if this is the treatment I get when trying to get some cooperative/collaborative effort/udnerstanding of the issues...go piss in your own wheaties OK?.Skookum1 (talk) 03:23, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

There's nothing "obtuse" or "rationalizing" about "we have to have the content you propose before we can use the content you propose". It's just simple reality: we can't use it until we have it, and therefore the solution to the problem is to put the rubber to the road and make the needed content, so that we'll have it, and can therefore use it. That you find it an "obtuse rationalization", and then insist that you're entitled to be frustrated about the fact that people aren't meekly submitting to your need to climb up on the highest horse in the field and pontificate in great depth about how stupid everybody else on here is while simultaneously misunderstanding or misrepresenting every single thing that's being said to you, is exactly what I'm talking about.

And the fact that I don't have the same problems you seem to have when it comes to building a consensus around the need to fix something that's being done wrong, but in fact almost always manage to initiate a really civil and polite and productive discussion instead, should be a clue that you're doing something to produce the static and blowback you keep getting. Exactly what reaction were you expecting from continually pounding and yelling and complaining instead of simply applying the really simple, straightforward and Wikipedia-best-practices solution — so fix it — that's been explained to you about 500 times?

One last hint, by the way: if you can honestly describe anything you do on Wikipedia as being motivated specifically by the need to "give some education" to other Wikipedians, then that's where you need to stop yourself if you really want to avoid setting off a conflict. Bearcat (talk) 04:09, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

It's THIS simple: - classifying places, Indian Reserves, provincial parks, historical articles by regional district makes NO MORE SENSE than classifying them by electoral district. It's like putting oranges in categories about cars. That this mistake was made a long time ago now means a lot has to be fixed- the use of RD articles as if they were geographic-region ones, the writing of the necessary geographic-region articles, the cleaning out of the clogged categories full of landform items that don't belong in RD categories, etc. If it means teaching other wikipedians about what RDs are, and what they aren't, that's the way it's gotta be. To me, it's the same as correcting statements like "Williams Lake is in the Fraser Valley", teaching them that no, it's not in the Fraser Valley, it's in the Cariboo. Same idea. Or perhapsa better example, explaining to other Wikipedians such as yourself that most government services such as health, school, transportation etc are NOT organized by regional districts in the same way as they are with counties (as you once claimed), and that there are a number of different regionalizations of government services, most much more important than the powerrs of any RD, even the GVRD/Metro Vancouver. Most land in nearly any non-Lower Mainland regional district, in fact, is under the governance of the Ministry of Forests; all is pre-emptable by the Mines Act, and provincial goeographers use either the Land District system or landform descriptions in S. Holland's definintive government-commissioned geography; historians write things up acording to "country"/valley, i.e. real regions. Jigging RDs into a pretense of being authentic geographic region-demaractos simply because they have identifiable boundaries (as if other parallel jursidictions also didn't) is a square peg, round hole equation, new playing board required. RDs are not meaningful units for describing BC geography, history, or biography. Not useful at all. Yes, they happen to have convnient boundaries; but no indepedent non-wiki-influenced source uses them to categorize those items. I note that there are no region categories for Alberta at all. I'm going back to the work of writing all those articles, correcting the catgory entries, cleaning RD articles of the non-regional district bumpf, and even fixing the mis-use of the RD names in the RD categories themselves (the omission of "the" in the category names is an ongoing eyesore).

And you knew of this issue when you merged the Greater Victoria cat with the CRD one, despite glaring evidence to the fact they are not synonymous (a quick glance at a map would have been a good idea). But you chose to merge them anyway, despite their parent categories being different and the geographic and political/cultural contexts being very different. Such a merge was no more valid than merging the Cariboo article with the Cariboo Regional District article, it just didn't make sense and was a-contextual, and you knew of the "dispute" over whether RDs were valid geographic-unit categories. I mentioned you in the opening of this discussion simply because it was you who was continuing the perpetuation of the problem. And in fact, taking it to a new level, given the precedent it formed for further jumbling of RDs and actual regions. Ill-considered, ill-advised, and rooted in fallacy.Skookum1 (talk) 13:53, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

I know what you think I've said over the course of this discussion, because you keep repeating it ad nauseam. Except that I've never said those things — you've either deliberately misrepresented, or completely misunderstood, me as saying an incredible number of things I didn't say, doing an incredible number of things I didn't do, and on and so forth. And it frankly gets tiresome to watch you constantly argue with strawmen instead of engaging or taking into account anything I've actually said.

And again, the bottom line continues to be: if it's wrong, then FIX IT. If you had put even one per cent as much effort into fixing the problem as you've been putting into ranting and complaining about everything other people were doing wrong, this problem would have been resolved years ago — and yet you'd still rather rant and complain than actually do anything to fix it. Bearcat (talk) 20:24, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

As an educator who lives in British Columbia, I agree with Skookum1's assertion that the merging of places within Regional Districts should not be adopted. As the ultimate goal of the Wikipedia is to make encyclodeic information freely available to the public, I believe that organizing content to fit Bearcat's clearly organized thinking with his contribution to Wikipedia does not fit the way the world (BC in particular) is organized in people's thinking. If I read him correctly, I think Skookum1 is guarding against "throwing the baby out with the bathwater". The world is a bit messy and the structure of the world should be reflected (but organized) in these web pages. Too much history can get lost when merging files because of a newly adopted convention rather than paying attention to how people and society actually use language. Perhaps a solution to this discussion could lie in including more place specific maps with each article and linking to the Regional District(s) one may find related to those specific geographic areas. In the article about a specific Regional District, one could then list/link place names of geographic and political entities that are found within but not truly a part of that Regional District. ~~Classic virtuesClassic virtues (talk) 18:28, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

If it's wrong, then go help Skookum fix it. Endlessly discussing the problem without doing anything to fix it isn't helpful; it simply means that the problem doesn't get fixed because nobody's doing anything to fix it. Bearcat (talk) 20:41, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't want to insult the Queen, but ...

I wanted to canvass thoughts on an issue that has arisen. The Centre Block, East Block and West Block articles all use the {{Infobox Historic building}}, and I noticed earlier today that the client and owner fields were filled in with "The Crown in Right of Canada" and "The Queen in Right of Canada" respectively, both of which were piped to the Monarchy in Canada article. Given that the entries struck me as impractical, I replaced them with Government of Canada (although in retrospect, the client would have been the Government of the Province of Canada for the East and West Blocks), but Miesianiacal reverted all of the changes with comments such as "Confusing; 'government' has more than one meaning", "What is 'government'? Snide edit summaries are not appreciated, either", and "The article states clearly 'The [term] Crown in Right of Canada... may also be used to refer to the entire executive of the government of Canada.'"

Give Miesianiacal his due -- I know that the references to the Crown in Right of Canada are technically correct (as a lawyer I encounter the terms regularly). However, the terms are not widely used and are not particularly helpful to the reader (and the piping to the Monarchy of Canada seems particularly odd). I believe it is far more straightforward and more to the point to refer to Government of Canada - a far more common way of referring to our federal government. Although the term government can also be used to refer to the current party in power, I think Miesianiacal overstates the potential confusion -- "Government of Canada" is widely used to refer to the legal entity, and its use causes very little (if any) confusion among Canadians. My view is not anti-monarchist -- the Government of Canada article goes into great detail about the nature of our constitutional monarchy.

An alternative would be to simply leave the fields blank.

I wanted to raise the issue here, because there are implications for quite a few articles on important government buildings in Canada. I have only noticed the issue over at the articles dealing with the Parliament Buildings, and the Ontario Legislative Building was similarly labelled a few months back, but there may be other instances out there. It would be nice to settle on a standard approach, whatever it is, and go from there.

What does everyone think? --Skeezix1000 (talk) 19:26, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

The Crown as an entity is separate from Her Madge the person. The Crown is the owner of those buildings, but the link should pipe to whatever the article on The Crown is, and not to Monarchy in Canada. Government of Canada is not the owner; the Government is reborn each election, while the Crown is the continuing entity. //roux   20:05, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

It's not that simple. Government has more than one meaning (as does, ironically, the word Crown), as discussed above, and while references to, say, the "Harper government" are usually understood to be to an entity reborn after each election, "Government of Canada" is usually understood to be a continuing entity and a synonym for one of the meanings of the word Crown. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 20:49, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps, but it is not the most accurate term. This is why decisions made by consensus are inevitably doomed to failure. In law and in reality, these buildings are owned by the Crown. That the Government is used as a synonym for the Crown is irrelevant; the Government truly is dissolved and reborn at each election. The mechanisms that continue are mechanisms of the Crown, period. Wikipedia is doing the readers a disservice when it uses the common term instead of the accurate term. The best analogy to what you are saying is the ridiculous notion of calling this lady 'Princess Diana.' While it's true that it's commonly used, it is woefully inaccurate. And the purpose here is to present verifiable accuracy, not the common usage. Else we would just be another urbandictionary.com, and who wants that? //roux   21:06, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

I would disagree that it is inaccurate, as the term government is not limited to the political leadership at any given point, and is properly used as a synonym. But we are just going in circles here. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 22:28, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Skeezix, thanks for drawing my attention to this discussion (I started one at Talk:Centre Block, but relied on an assumption that you'd notice it rather than directly notifying you; my apologies). Still, you've obviously picked up on some of jist of what I said there. In response to the points you've raised here, though - the immediately preceeding one in particular - it is the very fact that "the term government is not limited to the political leadership at any given point" that causes me to find the phrase "government of Canada" more than slightly vague; ie. the words have more than one meaning, so, when it's seen in an infobox, which particular meaning is it to be read with? I would suggest that a solution may lie in using the term "Crown in Right of Canada", but perhaps linking somewhere else; a section in Government of Canada may be apt (even if one has to be created). --Miesianiacal (talk) 00:07, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with Roux's interpretation that there is a straightforward definition of (g/G)overnment of Canada. There are at least several in common official and colloquial usage:

• referring purely to the current Ministry, ie PM plus cabmins plus secretaries of state (should we have any at the time). This, I presume, is what Roux is shooting for as a definitive definition, although it doesn't die and get reborn with every election, but only with every separate swearing-in of a PM. It, somewhat counterintuitively, does not include "government backbenchers."
• referring purely to those members of parliament recognized as "the government" under the various standing orders. This includes both the Ministry and the backbenchers that support them, and plays out in various parliamentary contexts.
• referring to the entire executive arm of the federal portions of the Canadian state, so starting with the Ministry and then working down the entire executive apparatus of government that reports to them, ie Harper plus the bureaucracy from Clerk of the Privy Council on down to Service Canada worker processing EI claims. My sense is that this is probably the definition that the Federal Identity Program uses--ie, when the feminine voice on TV says "a message from the Government of Canada" this is who it's coming from--and certain the one I imagine most Canadians would think of implicitly when told that "item X belongs to the Government of Canada."
• referring to the entire governance apparatus under the Crown that falls within federal jurisdiction, so the above plus Parliament, the Courts, the GG and so on. Under this definition, Michael Ignatieff is part of the government of Canada.
• referring to the entire governance apparatus under the Crown without separate regard for federal or provincial jurisdiction. Danny Williams and David Miller and so on are part of the government of Canada under this definition.

Also worth considering: something styled "Crown land" strikes me as very different that "Government land," although I'm not sure if the distinctions are legal or merely connotative. To say the Parliament Buildings belong to the Crown is not, at least to me, the same as to say the slopes of Mount Terry Fox belong to the Crown. The Tom (talk) 00:57, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

The Wiki-Monarchists strike again. There is no reason to refer to the Crown, it completely contradicts common usage and is confusing to non-Canadian readers. --Padraic 01:55, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

The fact that I am a monarchist is immaterial; I am resolutely neutral in any such discussions. The very simple fact is that, as I said above, common usage is immaterial when compared to the actual facts of the matter. Common usage would, as I said above, have this lady listed as 'Princess Diana,' which is so inaccurate as to be laughable. We should be striving for verifiable accuracy here, and not the usage of the common idiot in the street. //roux   02:07, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Your comparison isn't really all that apt, because common usage in respect of "Princess Diana" was inaccurate, but common usage here is a correct use of the term government. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 20:52, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

[Moved in from Talk:Centre Block#Ownership]: Just wanted to add to this. First off, Miesianiacal is quite right. The Queen in Right of Canada is the rightful owner of the Centre Block, not the "Government of Canada" (I assume, by saying that, your referring to the current political leadership?). Anyhow, even if you are referring to the current political leadership, the correct term would be Her Majesty's Government in Canada, as opposed to the loosely defined "Government of Canada". Legally, Parliament Hill is Crown land and the buildings on it are owned by the Crown of Canada (or the Crown in Right of Canada). --Knowzilla 15:51, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

No, not referring to the present leadership - the word "government" has more than one meaning, as the Government of Canada article and the Canadian Oxford Dictionary will attest. And, if we were imposing an easement or entering into an agreement of purchase and sale, Queen in Right of Canada could be correct (although given the era, I'm not sure what reference would actually be found on title). But there is no need for us to be legalistic here on Wikipedia when a more commonly-used, and equally correct term, is available for use. It is standard practice on Wikipedia to use the commonly-used name, rather than the legal one.--Skeezix1000 (talk) 20:52, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

No they are not equally correct, sorry to be terse but am having keyboaerd issues andhave to use the onscreen one.//roux   21:13, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

You'll have to explain that one when you have access to a working keyboard. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 12:56, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

It's my opinion that focusing on accuracy will only serve to mislead us; it is, after all, correct to say that one interpretation of "Government of Canada" is as a synonym for "executive authority of Canada", which, per the constitution, is the Queen. What I think we should be focusing on is the point that the term "Government of Canada" is open to interpretation; as such, how is a reader to know which particular definition is being used when "Government of Canada" is listed as an owner of a building or property? "Queen in Right of Canada" or "Crown in Right of Canada", on the other hand, are much clearer - even being deifined in law. Perhaps "Queen-in-Council" or "Crown-in-Council" might also work, to distinguish the monarch as the state from the person as a private individual. But "Government of Canada" just leaves too many open ends to be of value to readers. --Miesianiacal (talk) 16:09, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Canadian historic sites task force

I'm a member of Wikipedia:WikiProject Historic sites (shortcut wp:HSITES) which was created recently to support wikipedia coverage of historic sites world-wide, with task forces to focus on countries or regions. I'd like to inquire if there'd be interest now to form a joint task force to cover national, provincial, and locally designated historic sites in Canada. It would be a joint Task force of Wikipedia:WikiProject Canada and of wp:HSITES. It would have a Task force page, like any wikiproject has, and a discussion section, but it would share assessment, general discussion, and other services like article tagging and banners with the two parent wikiprojects. This would largely follow the wp:TASKFORCE guidelines and specificially the wp:MILHIST example involving many regional task forces that seems to work pretty well.

Would there be interest here? Would there be five or more persons who would participate in it? doncram (talk) 18:20, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Okay, no interest. Thanks! doncram (talk) 00:24, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

NATO project debut

There is a new WikiProject on NATO topics - WP:NATO. Dl2000 (talk) 03:13, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

First theatre in Canada/Quebec?

I wonder: can anyone here tell me when the first public theatre was founded in Canada? Perhaps it was founded in the French colony of Quebec? What was it called? I am interested in theatre history. Who were the very first Canadian actors and actresses? perhaps someone can give me some names to google?--Aciram (talk) 15:37, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

This article has some good background. Depending on your definition of public it could either be the New Grand Theatre opened in Halifax in 1789 or the Theatre Royal in Quebec and Montreal, both opened in 1825. - SimonP (talk) 16:04, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, that was an interesting article. You are very helpfull. I supose what I really mean is a theatre opened for the public, with professionall actors. I will read that link carefully. It does not seem to have been a public theatre of that sort in French Canada in the 18th-century? Thanks! --Aciram (talk) 17:37, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh: perhaps you, or someone alse, can also tell me the name of the very first professional actor and actress in Canada?--Aciram (talk) 17:45, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Campus Co-operative Residence Incorporated

I'm declining the db-corp "speedy" deletion on the theory that it's been around since 1936 so someone has probably written about it, but I'm getting zero Google hits suggestive of notability. I've WP:PRODded; anyone want to have a look? - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 19:11, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Could also use some help with another one threatened with deletion, see User_talk:Dank55#Harvey_Brownstone. - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 21:58, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Canadian Pacific Railway

I have nominated Canadian Pacific Railway for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Arsenikk ^(talk) 13:53, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Student Council President

Anyone have any thoughts on the Liam Mooney article? Liam's main claim to fame is that he was the recent president of the students' association at Trent University, and he was almost impeached. Before moving forward with a PROD or AfD, I wanted to gets some feedback here, because the article's main contributor, User:Griffineditorial, has clearly put a lot of effort into the article -- although it needs some work, the article is actually in much better shape than many articles on Canadian politicians. WP:POLITICIAN suggests that even politicians at this level can be notable if there is "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject of the article". The article is well sourced, but the Trent student newspaper, the student association website and a Facebook group account for 90% of the sources. The Peterborough Examiner did a couple of articles on Mooney's impeachment woes, as did the Ryerson student paper, and Mooney was also mentioned in another Examiner article on locals who had applied to be on the CBC's Next Great Prime Minister show. A Macleans.ca blog ("On Campus") links to an Trent student newspaper article that involved Mooney, but the blog itself does not mention Mooney and simply states: "Student politics is petty and stupid - Yet another example to illustrate that statement". The article cites the National Post, but the Post articles mentions neither Mooney nor Trent.

Any thoughts? --Skeezix1000 (talk) 18:42, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

User:Griffineditorial is a single-purpose-user, here to attack a particular person, and in an ideal Wikipedia would be blocked. Unfortunately, they clearly knows how to use and manipulate the letter of our policies, and stay within the lines, just enough, to do what they want (e.g. game the sytstem). They're too smart to write a pure-attack, which is guarenteed instant deletion. Some of the sourcing to trentarthur.ca opinion, is confusing facts with rants. An AFD would be helpful, but based on experience, we'll probably never get rid of the problem (article or it's creator), but maybe an AFD will improve the article. --Rob (talk) 19:37, 27 April 2009 (UTC) I also added a note on WP:BLPN. --Rob (talk) 19:45, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that the article is a subtle attack on the subject. If anything, I thought it might be a vanity piece. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 20:59, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I guess I made the assumption the author was very clever in putting out negative claims, but perhaps this is a clumsy attempt at refuting negative claims instead. Given that his picture is marked as "self-made" with Mooney as the author, and User:Griffineditorial as the uploader, you seem to be correct. I just didn't imagine somebody making something that would make themselves look so bad. --Rob (talk) 23:16, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Sourcing issues

Just a heads up: due to concerns about the reliability of the Internet Movie Database as a source, numerous articles on Canadian actors have been tagged as {{BLPunsourced}} if they don't cite additional sources beyond IMDb alone — however, there's one user who's taking it further than just tagging the articles, instead going so far as to strip out any references whatsoever to the actor's nationality, including from the categories, which thus leaves the people in question sitting directly in Category:Film actors instead of Category:Canadian film actors, Category:Television actors instead of Category:Canadian television actors, etc. This is explicitly in contravention of category diffusion rules, but the user in question seems unconcerned by that fact.

At present, the following articles have been affected by this:

• Clé Bennett
• Novie Edwards
• Kristin Fairlie
• Peter Oldring
• Rob Stefaniuk
• Rachel Wilson

However, there's a high likelihood of others following as well.

Could a few interested users help track down other sources to confirm these people's Canadian nationality, besides IMDb, so that we can avoid this turning into an edit war? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 20:24, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

It seems the user is really focussed on the idea of deleting all unsourced BLP material, which isn't Canadian specific, so I suggest everyone talk over at WP:BLPN#Sourcing non-contentious material, IMDB, and being Canadian. I think, either the contested articles need to be deleted (unlikely) or left in the appropriate category. I suggest editors be very careful about finding alternate sources, as most on the film credit and actor profile web sites are as bad or worse than imdb (often being based on imdb). I dont' want an edit war, but if we don't put these articles back in the appropriate categories promptly, I'm worried they'll be "lost", and less likely to be reviewed by people with a special interest in Canadian topics. --Rob (talk) 05:06, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I realize their issue isn't Canadian-specific, but Canadians are the ones most likely to know where to locate sources to fix the problem when it does hit a Canadian actor... Bearcat (talk) 14:59, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Highway 401

I've come across a few articles recently, each making claims that are a variation of "Highway 401 is the busiest highway in the world". This is a factoid, based on an extrapolation of a piece of data that may or may not be true. A more accurate statement is that "the stretch of Highway 401 between Highway 427 and Highway 404 is the busiest", and even then, it may need qualifiers such as "traffic lane density per hour" or similar. Anybody have better details for this? Anyway, we need to remove this factoid from a bunch of other articles, once we find 'em all. Mindmatrix 20:30, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

here is a statement about 62.4 km being the busiest in North America (no explanation about what defines busiest), that is the closest I could get to a "reliable source", here is one calling the Santa Monica Freeway the busiest at 300,000 cars per day, but I did see something (but it looked like a press release) that said the 401 carried 350,000 cars per day when searching "busiest highway in the world" on Google news. --kelapstick (talk) 20:53, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

After a bit more digging, which led me to (ahem) Wikipedia, I read the article Highway, which makes the claim "Busiest highway: Highway 401 in Ontario, Canada, has volumes surpassing an average of 500,000 vehicles per day in some sections of Toronto as of 2006", with the following ref: GTA ECONOMY DINGED BY EVERY CRASH ON THE 401 (Toronto Sun). The Highway 401 article links to an MTO press release. I've also found an article at Alphabet City, and at The King's Highway 401 (which doesn't cite a source for claims). Other sources indicate the M25 in England (citing only 270,000 vehicle trips though). As another aside, it seems the claim may have to be restricted to Hwy 401 between Weston Rd. and Hwy 400 ([16]). Mindmatrix 22:52, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Interesting, I saw something in a forum (clearly not reliable) about the 500,000 cars, and there was someone from Los Angeles that was disputing that a highway in Toronto could be busier than those highways. I was driving in the outskirts of Los Angeles a few weeks ago, and I think the difference there is there are literally dozens of highways going into/around the city, where as Toronto only has three that run east-west (401, 407 & Gardner, unless I am missing one).--kelapstick (talk) 23:06, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

We've certainly all heard this claim applied to the stretch of Highway 401 that passes through Toronto specifically — and Kelapstick is right, as well, that the reason it's busy enough for the claim to even be possibly accurate has at least as much to do with the paucity of crosstown freeway alternatives as it does with the overall volume of Toronto traffic as a whole. But I've never seen a source which actually showed the numbers for comparison's sake — I've merely seen sources that assert the truth of the claim without indicating what their sources were. And even if it is true, it certainly doesn't apply to the whole 401 all the way from Windsor to Curry Hill. Bearcat (talk) 23:38, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Truce terms

Can anybody help me please as to what truce terms are or were used in Canada - preferably with sources. Do you have a sort of etymological Canadian dictionary? Truce terms are words used by children under the age of about 11 to call for a temporary respite in a game. For example, in Scotland they use barley or keys. Pax is another well-known one. Thanks. Fainites ^barleyscribs 16:45, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Historical map of Lake Ontario and southern Ontario

I uploaded File:Upper Canada and the Iroquois Confederacy.jpg to commons. The image is from the Toronto Archives (Fonds 1231, Item 173), which records a date of 1860 for this image. This seems wrong to me - by 1860, Fort Frontenac would be listed as Kingston, Toronto would be on the map, Lac Toronto would be Lake Simcoe, and Teiaiagon had disappeared. So, is this just a typo at the Archives (striking an '8' instead of a '7'), or is there better info about this map? My assumption is the former, and that the map should be dated 1760, but the fact that Fort Toronto isn't listed suggests it may even precede that date (perhaps 1660). Another possibility is that this map was made in 1860, depicting an earlier, unidentified time. Any thoughts? Mindmatrix 14:45, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree that map is from far earlier. Not sure of the exact date, but certainly 18th century. It might be a typo on the archive's part. Or perhaps it was a book from 1860 that contained a much earlier map. - SimonP (talk) 15:55, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

It may also be a transposition error, making the date 1680, which is quite sensible and fits with all the features of the map. Mindmatrix 16:30, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

This seems the most likely explanation to me. The map has a very 1600s look and feel to it, methinks. It would also explain why Toronto is labelled as Teiaiagon rather than Fort Rouillé, while a 1760 provenance wouldn't — and by 1760, Lake Simcoe would likely have been labelled "Lac aux Claies" rather than "Lac Taronto". And with the American Revolution less than 20 years away, by 1760 we'd also have to expect New York to be looking quite proto-American rather than Les Cinq Nations Iroquoise qui font leurs pêches dans tous les marais. Not that there'd be a Buffalo or a Rochester yet, but there would be a Fort Niagara and a Fort Oswego and a Fort Stanwix. Bearcat (talk) 16:52, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Nova Scotia election

I caught this morning that the Nova Scotia general election, 2006 and the Nova Scotia general election, 2009 were both being ordinated as the 60th Nova Scotia general election. I know that we previously confirmed that there was a historical screwup in the numbering of the actual Assemblies, but is somebody able to clarify whether that also extends to the numbering of the elections, or are the elections numbered correctly and stay out-of-phase-by-one with the Assemblies? IOW, should it be 2006 = 59 and 2009 = 60, or 2006 = 60 and 2009 = 61? Or should we just avoid ordinating them altogether? There's also a discussion at Talk:Nova Scotia general election, 2009 about this, although it hasn't yet clarified which one is the number officially used by the government of Nova Scotia. Bearcat (talk) 17:04, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

FAR of BC Rail

I have nominated BC Rail for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Arsenikk ^(talk) 12:25, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Federal government revenues, expenditures and debt

Hello, I am quite interested in making some charts showing Canadian Federal government revenues vs expenditures, and the size of the debt, going back as many years as possible. Unfortunately, I'm having trouble finding the data. this site gives exactly what I'm looking for but only back to 2004. Does anyone know where to find such data going back further, say to 1980 or so? Just overall amounts of the three things would suffice, I think. TastyCakes (talk) 16:23, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I can get the data here, but they'd charge me $9 for it! Clearly an unacceptable alternative. TastyCakes (talk) 16:50, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Harper photoshop

File:Stephen Harper (Official Photo).jpg

original

File:Stephen Harper official portrait.jpg

photoshopped

File:Stephen Harper (official photo edited).jpg

photoshopped 2

A user has recently touched up the photo of Stephen Harper by adding in a background of a post from the interior of House of Commons and a Canadian flag and has replaced all the instances of them. What are your thoughts on this? I agree it's a more attractive photo but I'm concerned about neutrality on what we do with photos of politicians. DoubleBlue (talk) 04:26, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

If we change an image this much, honesty requires us to disclose the change in the caption of the image. If we can't justify putting such a disclaimer in every caption, we can't justify the change to the image. Unfortunately, we as Wikipedians have to accept that this much creativity is generally not wanted in making encyclopedic content. There's no concern with neutrality though. The bio lead image should always be the very best. I would happily support the revised image, if it was made "the old fashioned way". Also, I find the description "put in coloured background" something of an extreme understatement. --Rob (talk) 05:04, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you Rob. It's no longer a photograph but a fanciful artistic creation. It is possible that Harper could set up a photo like this but we don't have one and I feel slightly uncomfortable misrepresenting that we do. DoubleBlue (talk) 16:36, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd agree, the shopped photo is more appealing in principle. But absolutely no way in hell should we be permitting alteration of photos that we don't hold the original copyright for. Away it goes. Bearcat (talk) 05:13, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

There is an OTRS record that purports to be permission for use of the original. I would imagine that it allows derivatives if it has been uploaded to commons but that should be verified. DoubleBlue (talk) 16:36, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

There are, of course, personality rights concerns. We can't do whatever we want to a picture of somebody. It seems probably positive to put Harper in this background but it was not his choice to do so. DoubleBlue (talk) 16:39, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

1. Anyone has the right to create a derivative work of the original, or else it wouldn't be on Commons. (Yes, this sets aside personality rights, but those aren't really an issue here).

2. The white background was pretty ugly and I support the flag background. If we're willing to do this for any politician headshot, then there aren't any bias concerns here. We shouldn't say "we'll never improve any photo because it shows bias towards the photo subject". --Padraic 16:49, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

I think there are neutrality concerns and implications here. Arguably, the flag and interior of the Centre Block subtly put Harper in a more positive light. Similarly, a different background could subtly put him in a more negative light. And we are not just improving the photo -- we are significantly changing its content. We shouldn't just be looking at this as an aesthetic issue -- allowing editors to add new backgrounds to photos of political leaders in order to "improve" them opens up a can of worms. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 18:49, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

I am also troubled by the new image. Yes it looks better, but to me it seems to violate the intellectual honesty that Wikipedia strives for. - SimonP (talk) 21:35, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree. If it was simply about improving the quality of the image I think the third photo with the blue background would be acceptable. Adding a background changes the meaning of the image and is dishonest.--Ducio1234 (talk) 22:20, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

I think we have to be realistic. We're not going to get a professional studio quality photo that hasn't been tinkered with. Most people realize that it's normal for certain types of minor edits to be done in in portraits, such as air brushing minor flaws, and changing the color of the background. Do we know the PM actually posed for a picture in front a pure with backdrop? The flag/wall background is different, in that it actually makes people think the flag was physically there when it wasn't. --Rob (talk) 04:15, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree, Rob. The images used on Wikipedia are routinely cropped, cleaned-up, etc., but we are usually vigilant to ensure that such creative license does not interfere with the honest portrayal of the facts in the image (such as WLM King famously arranging for this to be changed to that).

As for the blue background, it honestly looks so fake (esp. on the image description page) that we may be better off with no background whatsoever. I am going to inquire after the OTRS record, confirm that it allows derivatives, and see if we were given permission for the actual original image (before the actual background was cropped out). It may be that the original image is the one we would want to use. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 15:35, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I feel that we should be using the original unedited image. Correcting obvious flaws in an image (colour balance, scratches, rotation, etc) is minor and rarely affects the message of the image. Altering a background can create neutrality issues and unnecessary conflict. "I prefer Harper posing in the Rockies", "I like him in the PM's Office", "Lets have him surrounded by kittens!" Official images make a good source, so lets use it unadulterated. --NormanEinstein (talk) 16:00, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I support the kittens idea. File:McGinty with kitten.gif DoubleBlue (talk) 16:04, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

But would he be eating the kittens, or just petting them? Bearcat (talk) 20:41, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

If we want to strictly adhere to NPOV, I think you would show him doing both. BTW, I have asked over at the Commons for someone to check the OTRS record. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 12:10, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Nice, yummy kitten. And, thanks for checking that out. DoubleBlue (talk) 13:19, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

It looks like proper permission was never given to use the image. All this debate over the background may be moot, as the image may be a candidate for deletion. One of the bureaucrats/admins at the Commons is going to follow up with the copyright holder (the PMO) to see if he can get the appropriate release. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 12:54, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Good catch! --Padraic 13:07, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

I am the individual who uploaded the original image, and I had confirmation from the Office of the Prime Minister in an e-mail that the image was indeed in the public domain (this e-mail exchange was included in the images description page). We had quite a time initially getting a photo that satisfied Wikipedia's rules, but the original image does - so please don't beat a dead horse. --John Hawke (talk) 01:57, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Dead horses aside, the permission you obtained from the PMO was insufficient -- see the linked discussion in my last post. An effort is being made to obtain adequate permission, but nothing thus far. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 20:54, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

John, if you have any additional information to add to the discussion over at the Commons that you believe we may have missed, that would be very helpful. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 14:01, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

A bit of an update -- the PMO finally responded to the inquiries mentioned above, but only to supply a new official photo. So far radio silence on providing a valid release. If anyone has any ideas, please share your thoughts at the Commons discussion.--Skeezix1000 (talk) 14:19, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

As you can see, the original image and the two derivatives have been deleted. No free license was forthcoming, and one of the admins at the Commons made the call that we'd waited long enough. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 12:35, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

{{Canada class 2}}

{{Canada class 2}} has been nominated for deletion. 76.66.202.139 (talk) 05:33, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Harper image removed

Recently the official photo of Stephen Harper was deleted. So, several articles have, at this moment, no head shot image of him. So, some thought about what's the best image, or efforts to get a better image, are needed. I have only replaced one image so far, as there's likely to be disagreement about which is best. --Rob (talk) 16:21, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Question

Does anybody know if there's a specific reason why some sources refer to the former British Columbia provincial cabinet minister as Gary Farrell-Collins and others refer to him as just Gary Collins? I could use some clarification, if possible, as to which one should actually be regarded as the more correct article name. Tanx much. Bearcat (talk) 18:50, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

MLA templates

Had an idea I'd like to run by the gang. Would there be any objection to doing something like this with the provincial and territorial MLA/MPP templates wherever possible? If you're unclear, I'm talking about the addition of a free/GFDL image of the legislature building at the right.

I kinda like how it looks, personally, but I thought I should ask before going ahead with this arbitrarily. Bearcat (talk) 06:00, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Makes sense to me, and in fact such a template exists for Ontario, minus the neat photo. PKT(alk) 11:46, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

All 13 of the comparable templates already exist — what I'm asking about is whether it's a good or bad idea to add a photo to them. Bearcat (talk) 14:03, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't like images used as decoration in templates, but I'm probably in the minority. I'll admit the angle of the image subject and its location in the template do make it look attractive. --NormanEinstein (talk) 15:16, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm in favour of it, it looks great with the picture added! --HJKeats (talk) 15:31, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm indifferent to using an image in the template, but the example above has too much whitespace, and the blank white area below the image has an annoying contrast with the light gray background to its left. Mindmatrix 20:24, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Clearly we have different monitor calibrations, because on my monitor the contrast between those areas is negligible, and at my screen resolution there's very little whitespace. But then again, this kind of thing is exactly why I asked for input :-) Bearcat (talk) 21:08, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

There is a grey background? It all looks white except for the pale blue (or very pale blue) bar at the top. And now I see on another monitor that there is a light colour where the New Democrat/Liberal links are. Other than colour variations it looks fine on 6 different monitors. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 21:55, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

The background colours are inherited from {{Navbox}}, which uses the "zebra stripes" of alternating white and pale light gray rows (specifically, hex colour #f7f7f7). Images in that navbox are formatted with a white background, so there's not much that can be done about that, other than using a different template format. That's probably not worth the effort. (Aside: I checked on my monitor from 800x600 to 2048x1536, and I can detect the grey within the entire range.) On several resolutions, I see plenty of whitespace above and below the image, roughly the same size as the image. It's not a big deal, but I do find it a tad bothersome. Don't hold back on my account, though. Mindmatrix 23:19, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

The thing is, if it's happening for you, it's going to happen for other people as well. On the other hand, the templates should, at the very least, be switched from standard navbox blue to the alternate colour style that we've been applying to Canadian-specific templates. Given that change, the template-plus-image would look like this instead:

I am going to apply the other style overrides to the templates regardless of the image proposal, though. - Bearcat (talk) 23:46, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Canada-related FAC

Just wanted to give you all a heads up that Yukon Quest, the article about the 1,000-mile sled dog race from Fairbanks to Whitehorse, has been nominated for featured article status. Any comments or support would be appreciated. Thanks! JKBrooks85 (talk) 10:47, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

GA Sweeps invitation

This message is being sent to WikiProjects with GAs under their scope. Since August 2007, WikiProject Good Articles has been participating in GA sweeps. The process helps to ensure that articles that have passed a nomination before that date meet the GA criteria. After nearly two years, the running total has just passed the 50% mark. In order to expediate the reviewing, several changes have been made to the process. A new worklist has been created, detailing which articles are left to review. Instead of reviewing by topic, editors can consider picking and choosing whichever articles they are interested in.

We are always looking for new members to assist with reviewing the remaining articles, and since this project has GAs under its scope, it would be beneficial if any of its members could review a few articles (perhaps your project's articles). Your project's members are likely to be more knowledgeable about your topic GAs then an outside reviewer. As a result, reviewing your project's articles would improve the quality of the review in ensuring that the article meets your project's concerns on sourcing, content, and guidelines. However, members can also review any other article in the worklist to ensure it meets the GA criteria.

If any members are interested, please visit the GA sweeps page for further details and instructions in initiating a review. If you'd like to join the process, please add your name to the running total page. In addition, for every member that reviews 100 articles from the worklist or has a significant impact on the process, s/he will get an award when they reach that threshold. With ~1,300 articles left to review, we would appreciate any editors that could contribute in helping to uphold the quality of GAs. If you have any questions about the process, reviewing, or need help with a particular article, please contact me or OhanaUnited and we'll be happy to help. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 05:07, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

3RR/edit war on Gordon Campbell (Canadian politician)

Please see the edit history for this article and this edit in particular, which is the latest reversion of the 3rd deletion of material by User:Gold Dragon and constitutes 3RR. I suppose so does my re-insertion of my original addition, which replaced another version which someone else a while ago had taken out without good cause - this edit- which similarly tried to censor this material, which is a known and established part of BC history and while not as yet cited, is easily citable given time even in the Vancouver Sun's archives ("even" because they're not a very reliable source for BC politics...). Gold Dragon wants to make this just disappear as though it were POV; no truth is never POV, but half-truths are. The issue is not official party status, but Official Opposition status, which is an entirely different matter. Obfuscation and dissembling in justifying deletion of valid material are big bad issues anyway; no doubt Gold Dragon will revert this yet again, but WP:Censor is at play in his game, and I'm tired of it. He complains that the Campbell talkpage I've made into a forum - yes, a forum for known historical and political items that aren't yet int eh article, ore which comment on POV wording/content that was already in it (especially press-kit and soft-soap stuff, whcih the article was bloated with a couple of months ago, after an earlier series of deletions of material not favourable to Campbell's presskit). As predictable, Gold Dragon is trying to portray me as a propgandist; but I'm not the one trying to hide known truths (like the point the leader of the Official Opposition gets a higher salary and bigger office, which is what was denied in this case, along with speaking time on the order paper and rights during questiond period). Wikipedia is not served by deletions at all, ever, unless it's of "fluff". yes, lots of fluff got taken out of this article by me, but it was genuine fluff. Gold Dragon's interpretation of what's POV and his claim of weasel wording are entire b.s. and clearly partisan/censoring in nature. 3RR action should be taken; perhaps I've violated it myself, except that it was my (valid) contributions I was restoring in the face of clear censorship.Skookum1 (talk) 21:28, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

If you want to take a literal 3rr look at it, you are each at 3 reversions. The policy is that more than three reversions is the tipping point. So a this point no adminstrative action is required provided that both of you cease edit warring. Resolute 23:07, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I did my last reversion because I object to the censorship nature of what was going down, and am well aware I can't "revert" my contribution back in if he takes it back it again; if he does, it's 3RR on his part. As you can see from the talkpage, we are at accusation/counter-accusation and I tire of it; what I don't tire of is making sure that p.r./soft-soap revisions of this article don't turn it back into a press release for the Premier. Truth is not POV/ but half-truths are. I'll leave it for now, since I have no reason to want to be goaded into a "blockable offence", but I submit that the material concerning the salary/office/perks due a Leader of teh Opposition is scarcely POV, i.e. not at all but very matter-of-fact-straightforward. Whereas pretending that the issue was only official party status is POV.....Skookum1 (talk) 23:12, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

List of defunct CBC radio transmitters in Canada

Hi all, i've decided to make up a page of the List of defunct CBC radio transmitters in Canada. This page only contains a listing of the former low-power and high-power AM/FM transmitters that are currently defunct, some that had moved to the FM dial, moved to another frequency, or completely shutdown. I've found a lot of these stations through old official Provincial road maps, an old listing of CBC tranmitters I received from the CBC in the early 90s, some old radio books like Bart Veerman, etc. A lot of them I couldn't find over the internet such as CBEO 1230 out of Rolphton, Ontario for example, i've found this one from an old official Ontario road map from the early 1980s. As for the french-language stations, i've found them from this website: http://bv.cdeacf.ca/EA_PDF/2004_10_0536.pdf starting at page 86. Note that Quebec isn't listed on this page. If anyone here has any information on old defunct CBC radio transmitters in Canada and finds anymore, please feel free to add them. Thank you. (User talk:Webfan29) 22:59, 24 May 2009 (UTC) - Updated on 6:26, 25 May 2009 (UTC).

Government of Ontario is very weak

Government of Ontario needs to be filled out. There's almost nothing there. --John Nagle (talk) 16:09, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Assessment Stats

Does anybody know how to modify the Assessment Statistics so that they pick up non-article classes such as Categories, Portals and Templates? PKT(alk) 17:45, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Those categories aren't available right now, or at least articles with those tags aren't categorised, because the template {{WikiProject Canada}} doesn't sort these into the appropriate categories. (You can see this by viewing that template's source, skipping down to the section labelled "General WP Canada ratings" - there's no switch for category, template, etc.) They are thrown into "unassessed" for now as a default action. Mindmatrix 21:51, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks - so that's the cause, and we know the effect - so can the template be modified to avoid the clutter in the unassessed articles category? It is frustrating to be trying to clean up the unassessed when much of the list cannot be dealt with. (Well, they can be reclassed as "NA" but that's not satisfactory to anybody.) PKT(alk) 22:15, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I've extended the template to add a whole bunch of new classes, and I've also created the respective categories. Let me know if I've missed any. Mindmatrix 23:46, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

<MrBurnsmode> Excellent! </MrBurnsmode> PKT(alk) 14:57, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

To-do lists

I've had a look at some of the other regional notice boards and saw that many have centralised 'to do' templates that you sometimes see on talk pages. Since I think ours is a bit decentralised, should we put it all together in one spot? JulieSpaulding (talk) 18:17, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Were you thinking of something similar to what the Australian WikiProject is doing? Could we just clean up the various pages at Wikipedia:Canadian Wikipedians' notice board/Requests instead, and perhaps import lists from sub-projects, leaving behind redirects to point to those? Mindmatrix 20:44, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

re cayoosh.net links

Just noting for anyone who happens to come across a dead link for any pages using this site as an external link or other cite, that I'm the domain owner, and it's currently "down" as I overlooked me renewal date, but it should be back up in a few days...I have until the 4th to renew it, but am currently looking for a sponsor to help out as I don't have the dough. Not asking anyone here to do that, I just wanted to note the problem so that links to the site, if removed, don't have to be reinserted/reinstated.Skookum1 (talk) 02:17, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

The site is now back up.Skookum1 (talk) 17:00, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Alexander Monkman

Please see Talk:Monkman Provincial Park#Alexander Monkman.Skookum1 (talk) 03:11, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Map/search link

Soon I'm going to be compiling all the various map and history/resource links I know of into one central location but for now because I've got to close my browser and don't want to lose this one, this is a Censsu Canada name-search/map engine that Bearcat turned me onto re List of census-designated places, where a huge number of DPLs aren't in either BCGNIS or CGNDB but they are in that link (with detailed maps). More on this later, just wanted to drop the link so I can reboot....Skookum1 (talk) 18:44, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Watchlisting request

Could people keep an eye on Windsor, Ontario? The article contains the true statement that Windsor is the only border crosssing point where one travels north to enter the United States, but an anonymous IP is repeatedly and persistently trying to undermine that by adding a parenthetical statement that Fort Erie is south of Niagara Falls, New York. When I pointed out that there's no border crossing between those locations, he started adding "but one could boat or swim up the river" — and at one point he actually got so tendentious that he insisted that the statement was also disproved by the fact that one could physically cross the bridge from Fort Erie to Buffalo while rotating one's head 90 degrees to face north instead of east. Needless to say, he's not adding content of any value to the article — but since it's not unquestionably vandalism I can't claim that removing it would be exempt from 3RR, so I need some help on this one. Bearcat (talk) 14:52, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I changed it to read contiguous United States or something like that as it was in an earlier version, traveling from Whitehorse to Alaska you enter traveling northwest. --kelapstick (talk) 23:53, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

GA Reassessment of Nelvana

I have done a GA Reassessment of the article, Nelvana as part of the GA Sweeps project. I have found the article does not meet the GA Criteria and as such I have put it on hold pending work. I am notifying all interested projects and editors that the article may be delisted from GA status if it is not improved. My review is here. If you have any questions you can contact me on my talk page. H1nkles (talk) 18:57, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Nova Scotia and New Brunswick

Just a quite note: because of a small error in a recent update of the {{WikiProject Canada}} banner, NS and NB talk pages were categorised in the other's categories. I've fixed the error, but the categories are taking some time to update; for example, Category:High-importance New Brunswick articles currently shows Talk:Premier of New Brunswick and Talk:Premier of Nova Scotia as part of its scope. Things should be back to normal in 12-24 hours. Mindmatrix 23:40, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Magna International

Apparently an edit war is going on at Magna International, concerning it being an Austrian company... 70.29.208.129 (talk) 15:19, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Category:Lists of Canadian leaders by year

It seems to me that as list-class articles, everything in Category:Lists of Canadian leaders by year should be moved to List of XXXX Canadian incumbents. Thoughts? //roux   22:15, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

template:WPCANADA - WikiProject Ontario

• New image:
• Old image:

What's up with {{WPCANADA}} ? The image for WikiProject Ontario, being such a small size, I can't tell what flag it is that's side by side with the Canadian flag on two flagpoles. 70.29.208.129 (talk) 10:38, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to MSGJ to reverting to the old version. 70.29.208.129 (talk) 10:44, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

AFD notice

Just as a courtesy notice, 3 featured list dealing with Canada Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Hot 100 number-one singles of 2007 (Canada) (2nd nomination) have been nom'd for deletion.---I'm Spartacus! ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 16:20, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Your Navboxes violate wikipedia's standards!

The Canadian Navboxes violates the wikipedia standards of Wikipedia:Manual of Style (icons) and Wikipedia:Navigation templates, which I was doing the same things to the U.S. Ones like yours and it was pointed out to me and they got reverted back to the correct wikipedia standard of blue for the headers and the use of the maple leaf even though patriotic like the american flag is to me is decoration and I will talk with the others in the wikipedia community to achieve this here, and make them uniform with the other nations! Nationalistic zeal has no place on wikipedia except of User Pages, PERIOD! _BLuE^DOgTn 17:27, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

First, please learn to use sentences; it's almost impossible to understand what you are saying. Second, icons and different colour schemes are frequently used in navboxes to make their subject matter more obvious. Third, it is obvious that you are engaged in disrupting Wikipedia solely to make a point, as stated by yourself here. So I have given you a warning for that. Fourth, consensus generally trumps the mass of internal inconsistencies that is MOS anyway. Fifth.. there is no fifth. //roux   17:32, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with you that I am making a point, which is what an argument is about. I am not going to deny that I tried to implement the same thing you did here on the Canadian ones, but it was pointed out to me national pride has no place except on User Pages. This is the reason I am seeking to get these reverted, which is because one projects consensus about navboxes does not mean you don't follow the community whole wikipedia's consensus. The ones here are decorative and not intended to distinguish it from any other navboxes; therefore, violates the decoration doctorine! _BLuE^DOgTn 17:44, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Alright, so you admit you are deliberately violating policy? Tsk. Second, yes, the changes are quite precisely used to differentiate Canadian navboxes from others, so you're really, really wrong on that count. Third, please see this discussion which addresses all of your points; changes to colour and minor use of icons are perfectly acceptable and normal, and used across Wikipedia to prevent navboxes from looking like a sea of undifferentiated mauve at the bottom of every article. Sorry, but you are incredibly wrong about this whole thing. Mostly because the major argument against what you wanted to do before was that the image of the seal was a blur at navbox size, and thus didn't really do much. Now that's all dealt with, I trust that you're going to stop this, understand that yes these templates can look like this, and indeed you will actually listen to what Chris Cunningham said to you several months ago, which is to discuss sweeping changes beforehand. //roux   17:52, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I have to agree with what Roux is saying. The difference between the two situations, Blue Dog, is that the Canadian templates were the result of a lengthy discussion and consensus, while the changes you wanted to make to the U.S.-related template were a unilateral move without consensus. It would help if you looked towards consensus-building rather than making threats. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 01:12, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Bluedogtn, you need to re-read Wikipedia:Manual of Style (icons) and Wikipedia:Navigation templates as the Canadian Navboxes do comply with them. First of all Wikipedia:Navigation templates is just an essay, someones opinion and not necessarily the consensus of any Wikipedians. I assume that you are talking about the following sentence, "There should be justification for a template to deviate from standard colors and styles". I believe that Roux already provided that with the link to Wikipedia talk:Canadian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 9#Consistency of appearence to Canada-related navboxes. Consensus there does trump some essay. I also assume that you are talking about Wikipedia:Manual of Style (icons)#Do not emphasize nationality without good reason. Again I point to Wikipedia talk:Canadian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 9#Consistency of appearence to Canada-related navboxes where consensus would indicate there is justification to include the flags. By the way a quick look at the first thing I typed in shows that Template:Montana includes a flag and the Template:U.S. state templates which is attached is a different colour. Are you also removing the flags for all the US states and standardising the colours as well? Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 02:00, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I'd also point out that the issue with flags in navboxes has to do with the fact that most flag files on Wikipedia are actually fair use, not free GFDL images. It doesn't mean that a navbox can never contain any sort of image or logo, only that we can't use images for which we don't hold the proper copyright. An actual exact image of the Canadian flag wouldn't be okay — but a small unobtrusive maple leaf that a Wikipedia user designed and created themselves most certainly can be used in a navbox template. There's no blanket prohibition on ever using images in templates — only on "fair use" ones. Bearcat (talk) 22:23, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

All that being said, those navboxes look like used tampons (apologies to the red maple leave, which I deeply love and respect). I don't know about you guys, but my eyes hurt when I see those red lines. --Qyd (talk) 03:37, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Cornwall Island border

I've just created this article (Cornwall Island border). Help would be appreciated. It is a fairly significant item; the entire border has been shut down due to opposition by the Mohawks.--Richard (Talk - Contribs) 03:22, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

There isn't exactly a compelling need for a separate article on this; it could be quite adequately addressed as a subsection of Akwesasne. Bearcat (talk) 03:34, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

I also think it should be part of the Akwesasne article - it would be the first that there's been a border-article for a subdivision of the Canadian boundary, other than perhaps certain places like Dixon Entrance, Haro Strait of Strait of Juan de Fuca and the like; other instances along the border sometimes occur as articles about the building-and-structure, though mostly it's just the border-crossing towns themselves that get the category and a writeup, and the Truck Crossing in bC, aka, the Pacific Border Crossing, at the moment goes to Washington State Route 243 (which is all of 3/4 of a mile long between I-5 and the border) and the Peace Arch crossing buildlings don't get, or have, their own articles (yet). Also, a separate article for the "Cornwall Island border" is something of a POV fork. I recommend a merge but would also like some geographical clarification; are the Canadian border posts on the Canada-St Regis/Akwesasne "frontier" or are they at the US-Canada boundary in the Akwesasne Reserve. It confused me seeing Three Nations Crossing, which is the name of the bridge and not so far as I can tell the border posts, as the name "crossing" would imply. So I guess what I'm asking is are the Canadian and US border/customs posts on the outside boundary of Akwesasne, or ar they right at the usual US-Canada border. I'd also recommend, Richard, that you step back a bit from "white POV" on the subject and tell it from both sides, rather than just the one in the main media.....Skookum1 (talk) 02:39, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, it would appear that the northbound (i.e. entering Canada) border post is inside Akwesasne, but the southbound (i.e. entering the US) border post is outside of Akwesasne. And according to the bridge authority's website, Three Nations Crossing is the name of the whole crossing — the bridge itself is still technically the Seaway International Bridge: Beginning January 1, 2000 the crossing occupied by the Seaway International Bridge was re-named the Three Nations Crossing in recognition of the Mohawks of Akwesasne. Bearcat (talk) 22:55, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Indian reserve and capitalization

Moved here from Notice Board; from here this discussion will be archived in due course. PKT(alk) 19:02, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

• Indian reserve → Indian Reserve. Ack! - I'd just created the double-capital form a few minutes ago, which is the proper legal form of this designation, and then tried to name-change the target article, only to not be able to do it because I'd, well, just created the redirect....can someone pls flip these? NB small-r "reserve" is only used for constructions like "he lived on the reserve" but when saying "the house is on the Capilano Indian Reserve" full-capitalization if required/expected, as also "there is an Indian Reserve on the Fraser at....". It's an official land-designation and always capitalized. and looks odd with the small-r reserve; another land designation Government Reserve or something like Land District etc is also always capitalized.Skookum1 (talk) 15:05, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

It's capitalized in the proper names of specific reserves, yeah, but that's because the rule in English is to capitalize proper names. No matter how many people do it, however, it's incorrect to capitalize "reserve" when simply referring to Indian reserves in a general sense. Bearcat (talk) 23:54, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

In Wikipedia style guides, yes, that's certainly the rule. But have a look around INAC and other Canadian govenrment cites, which are the ultimate "reliable source", and they capitalize both words in all usages, as do CGNDB and BCGNIS and other official sources.Skookum1 (talk) 15:18, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Officialese is frequently different from correct English usage on capitalization of nouns — the same sources you're talking about will also invariably capitalize "City", "Town", "Village", "University", "College", etc., regardless of context. But it's not correct usage in those cases either — in proper and standard English, class nouns are only capitalized when appearing in the specific proper name of a specific member of the class ("City of Vancouver", "University of Winnipeg", etc.) Wikipedia follows standard English, not officialese. Bearcat (talk) 15:21, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

"Standard English" infers homogenization and not taking into account normal local usages; this reminds me of the "Interior" discussion ("Interior" is a proper name in BC, like "Lower Mainland" and "Fraser Valley" vs "lower mainland" and "Fraser valley"). Re Indian Reserves, though, "most common usage" isn't just officialese, it's also standard media use, at least in smalltown papers where Indian Reserves are regularly mentioned. In a phrase like "the Indian Reserve is located on the banks of the Fraser River ten miles north of town", it's a specific Indian Reserve that's meant; it also infers a special status for that land, as also noted with Government Reserve, Timber Berth, and so on. Not capitliizing these looks very irregular. Unless you're suggesting that "standard English" should rightfully homogenize all traces of local usage/local colour/variation. In Nova Scotia, Cape Breton is often referred to as "the Cape", not as "the cape: And re City, Village etc. the capitalization is perfectly valid, in normal (if not "standard" use) if the City is being referred to as a governmental body, rather than as a community. i.e. "the neighbourhood wanted the road built via this route, but the City had different ideas". There's a big difference between a non-capitalized village and a legally-constituted, capitalized Village. But most of all I don't see why "standard usage" derived from places that don't have Indian Reserves should trump how Indian govenrments, other governments, local media, big media (escept for those who have kowtowed to new-era "standard usage" as CanWest has been doing) and sources like BCGNIS/CGNDB/INAC use the term. To me, that's linguistic imperialism. Irrespective of this discussion, also, Category:First Nations reserves in British Columbia and its sister cats should be changed to Category:Indian reserves in Canada/Category:Indian Reserves in Canada, as there is no such thing as a "First Nations reserve", with or without capitalizationexcept in p.c.-flavoured POV-speak and not even band governments use the term, even those that call themselves First Nations rather than Indian Bands..... Speaking of which, if your argument about capitalization holds, then "first nation(s)" should be the usage across the board, and it's not (in any source or styleguide3).Skookum1 (talk) 15:53, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Regardless of whether it's common to capitalize the class noun alone if the reference is intended to be to the government rather than to the settlement, it's still wrong in standard and correct English usage, and thus still has no place on Wikipedia. How government sources, including the governing bodies of the reserves, refer to them is officialese, not standard English — so it's wholly irrelevant to the question of what we should do here. It's not linguistic imperialism, either; it's a purely stylistic issue that has no more to do with "local colour" than if somebody were to go around claiming that "well, in our dialect of English we always capitalize every single word."

You're misunderstanding the definition of "proper noun" if you think using the phrase "the Island" to denote Vancouver Island reifies that phrase into a proper noun itself — the only proper name of the thing is "Vancouver Island", and the phrase "the Island" is merely a common shorthand which only works as long as the speaker and the listener have the same understanding of which island is actually being referred to. Every single island on earth, even the dinkiest little skerry in the North Sea, can be just "the Island" as long as all parties to the conversation understand which island is meant in that particular context. Even other islands in British Columbia can be referred to as just "the Island" once it's been established which island is actually being referred to. But that doesn't make that phrase a proper name for any of those islands — it's merely a common convention, which isn't the same thing at all because it isn't the actual name of the island in question.

And the phrase First Nations isn't the same thing, either — that is the proper name of a specific cultural group (albeit a very broad, generalized one with many more specific subgroupings within it), not a general class noun for a type of thing. Lowercasing "first nation" would be equivalent to lowercasing "canadian", "american" or "french", not to lowercasing "city" or "village".

Whether the categories should be renamed or not is a separate question from this, mainly because in the vast majority of cases there's not enough that can be written about a reserve as a topic separate from the First Nation that occupies it to even really justify having a separate article about the reserve in the first place. Bearcat (talk) 16:41, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I gather you'r bringing up "the Island" as an apposite to "the Interior", but the reality despite your argument is that these are USED as proper names in BC (not just nouns); other examples like Fraser Valley, Fraser Canyon, Lower Mainland, Sunshine Coast, North Island, North Shore, North Coast virtually abound, and whether it's acceptable in London or Toronto or not, when speaking of these as regions, teh capitalized version of the short form are de rigeur in the same way that "the Lakehead" is always capitalized, or "the Maritimes" or "the Prairies" (when meaning a region, that is, in the case of the Prairies). When we see "the Valley" in BC, capitalized, we know it's teh Fraser Valley and no other that's meant, even if you're reading it in the Pemberton Valley, the Comox Valley or the Cowichan Valley (or, for that matter, Lynn Valley). The distinction with the capital-I Island taht you've missed is clear from your suggesting that we would use capital-I Island for any other island than Vancouver Island, which we simply wouldn't; it's when Vancouver Island is referred to as a region (including its offshore islands) that we use the capital-I. When referring to it in purely geographic or passive senses, yes, the capitalization is unecessary; but the MOST COMMON USAGE is for the capital-I to be used when referring to the region. It's the same reason we don't write "lower mainland", "Fraser valley", "interior plateau" etc. BEcause when used in certain ways, i.e. as names for regions they ARE proper nouns, including in "shorthand forms" like "the Island", "the Mainland", "the Valley", where in each case the "Vancouver", "Lower" and "Fraser" are recogniably absent; other valleys and islands are capitalized ONLY when the rest of their name is present; small-case "mainland" is used to refer to up-coast locations relative to surrounding islands; occasionally, very occasionally, usually only in historical contexts such as in reference to teh Mainland Colony, capital-M "Mainland" is used to mean the whole mainland, including the Interior and North Coast; but modern-usage is always in reference to the Lower Mainland as a cultural/political entity. Or would you insist that Newfounland be referred to as "the rock" and Cape Breton as 'the cape" and Thunder Bay as "the lakehead"? Adn re capitalized First Nation(s), fine if it's used as an ethnicity (which is actually incorrect as it's NOT), but when it's a government or governments that are referred to the comparison would be to "the provinces" or "the province", which is the same argument you've made about city, villages etc. "north shore//North Shore", "western Canada/Western Canada", "the West" (as a political/cultural entity, whether it's within Canada and/or the US or in a global context) vs "the west" (as a general concept). Standard English has to step up to bat and recognize proper usages, instead of trying to eradicate them.....which is not Wikipedia's job. Wikipedia's job is to reflect reality, not ordain it, and that goes for lexical/orthographic reality as much as antyhing else.Skookum1 (talk) 18:30, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Common usage of a phrase as a substitute for the proper name of a thing does not become a proper name. No matter what common usage is, the proper name of Vancouver Island is Vancouver Island. Any other usage is a common usage, but not a proper name. The proper name of a thing is its actual, formal and correct name — common phrases used in conversational or informal written English in lieu of the actual proper name are not proper names themselves. Kindly read the section proper name in the article noun — especially this part: Owing to the essentially arbitrary nature of orthographic classification and the existence of variant authorities and adopted house styles, questionable capitalization of words is not uncommon, even in respected newspapers and magazines. Most publishers, however, properly require consistency, at least within the same document, in applying their specified standard.

And "The Lakehead" is a false analogy, because that region doesn't have a longer proper name for which "The Lakehead" is a shorthand conversational substitution — "The Lakehead" by itself is the actual proper name of the region.

As is "the Interior", w/wo "Central", "Northern", "Southern", "Northwestern". "the Island" and "the Mainland" are less common than they sued to be - BUT "the Valley" in reference to the Fraser Valley is NOT (even in CanWest papers, ditto for the Interior). What you're claiming is that the new usage "Metro" as a substitute for "Greater Vancouver" should be spelled "metro" (and it's not, ditto here in Halifax and no doubt also the same in TO); or that "the Northwest" is incorrect when not accompanied by "Pacific" or "Great" ("Great Northwest" being MI/WI/MN etc). These are well-established historical usages in BC, for well over a century and more; the exceptions in print are just that, and typically from material published/edited elsewhere. user:Keefer4 isn't with us anymore, but he used to have the Canadian Press styleguide handy and it could perhaps resolve this; although you might argue it's out of date and/or doesn't correspond to "standard English". Neither does "the Southwest" for the American Southwest, or "the Southeast" for Dixie, but they're still in use (in standard English). Ditto for the Alaskan usage for the Alaska Panhandle - "Southeast Alaska", which isn't "southeast Alaska". Other similar usages are "the Sound" (for Puget Sound), "the Bay Area" instead of "the bay area", simlarly its short form "the Bay" (meaning San Francisco Bay), "the States" when teh country is meant ("how long did you live in the States?" vs "how long did you live in the states?"). It's when they are used as proper names that they ARE proper names....in short form or not. Ditto "the Channel"...Skookum1 (talk) 19:39, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

And it's not about "ordaining" usages, either — it's about proper and correct writing style for an encyclopedia article. It says nothing about what styles other people can or can't use in other contexts — but in the context of an encyclopedia, we have an obligation to follow encyclopedic writing style whether other entities apply different rules in non-encyclopedic contexts or not. Bearcat (talk) 18:43, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

True encyclopedia content would reflect teh proper local usage", instead of imposing a standard which isn't local and flies in the face of local culture/identity/usage. Just as Canadian English on Canadian articles, British Columbia English (which exists, clearly, given our disputes) should be used on British Columbia articles and in reference to British Columbia subjects. Again, the examples of "the Rock" and "the Cape" which are standard Canadian English as short/nickname forms are in the same league. Similarly when we say "he went to the North" we know it means something different than "if you go to the north of Halifax"; one means somewhere north of 55, the other means (in Halifax's case) Sackville or Wolfville.... Standard English should encompass, and in strict terms, does encompass usages such as those encountered in BC just as they are encountered and used in other jurisdictions. Unless you'd maintain that "the midlands" is preferable over "the Midlands", I think you should back down on this issue. You're wrong.Skookum1 (talk) 20:09, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Another example just occurred to me, a very well-known one - "the Straits" in reference to the Bosporus and Dardanelles collectively, i.e. as a geopolitical object/goal/strategy. Similarly references in European diplomatic history to "the North", "the West", "the East" are all common, as "the Sound" in Europe means the waters between Copnehagen and Sweden, just as in teh Pacific Northwest it means Puget Sound (and not Queen Charlotte Sound or Howe Sound); not sure if it's used for Long Island Sound or Chesapeake Sound though.... Similarly in the New World (sic), "the Gulf" is used for the Gulf of Mexico, just as it's used for the Persian Gulf (or Arabian Gulf, depending on your bias). This is all standard English. Re "the Cape", it's not just short for Cape Breton, but is standard English" as a short form fo either the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn.... But, somehow, these are not according to the logic you're invoking to interpret what you think is standard English; yet they ARE standard English usage...Skookum1 (talk) 20:09, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not wrong; you're falsely conflating usages that simply are not standard written English with usages that aren't equivalent situations. It simply does not matter what local usage allows — standard, correct encyclopedic usage in English is that terms such as "sound" and "cape" and "straits" are not capitalized in standard English writing if they aren't appearing in the exact proper names "Puget Sound" or "Long Island Sound" or "Cape of Good Hope" or "Cape Cod" of "Strait of Bosporus". Whether capitalization reflects a common local usage or not, local shorthands simply are not proper names that get capitalized in standard written English; a "proper name" is the exact and actual name of the thing, not "any phrase that people commonly use to denote the thing whether it's the thing's actual name or not". Whether capitalizing then as shorthands for the actual name of the thing is common or not, it is not standard. I didn't make this up; 400+ years of English grammar did. And this is EOD, because it's obvious that this isn't a discussion that's going to resolve — you're claiming that any common usage automatically becomes a proper name, which is what's known as reification, and I'm arguing from the actual definition of the phrase "proper name", and the two ain't gonna meet up anytime soon. Bearcat (talk) 21:53, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. Because you're trying to tell me that the likes of A.J.P. Taylor, Arthur Runciman, Colin McEvedy, Arnold Toynbee, George Ostrogorsky and countless other highly-educated users of the English language are wrong in using "the Straits" to refer to the Bosporus/Dardanelles, or "the Cape" to refer to the Horn (sic) or the Cape of Good Hope? "The Porte" as shorthand for "the Sublime Porte" (which itself was a nickname for the court of the Grand Vizier in the entryway of the Topkapi. Or to "the Sound" (Sunden in Danish, which is also capitalized by convention...oops might be Sundet if it's neuter gender), and taht counltess authors using standard American English are wrong in referring to "the West", "the Southwest", "the Northwest", "the Delta"? Things become proper nouns when used enough in certain ways, that's how these usages evolved and are now standard in English. I look forward to your citations showing that these places should be spelled "the straits", "the cape", "the delta", "the porte" etc....perhaps Oxford University Press needs to obey your rules on standard English...but they don't...perhaps you should take it up with them...all I know is if I were an Oxford or Cambridge or LU student and I submitted a paper with any of these usages in lower case, I would be marked down for it....(if not failed, which might very well be the case) .Skookum1 (talk) 01:43, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

And you're quite wrong, very wrong, that there's no difference between a First Nations government and the associated Indian Reserve; many reserves are multi-governmental, and most bands have more than one reserve, and each reserve has its own history and purpose and they do not represent tribal territory, nor are all of the inhabited and in many cases there's more than one community per reserve, or more than one reserve that form a community; This is a mainstay in guidelines governing hte Indigenous peoples' WikiProject and too lengthy a discussion for here, but there's all kinds of reasons why government articles and reserve articles have to be different. "reserve" low-case is used in a general sense, yes, but when we see both-caps "Indian Reserve" we know it's the legal status of the land that's referred to, not just the place or concept.Skookum1 (talk) 22:30, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Kindly stop misquoting or misunderstanding me. I didn't say that there was no actual difference between the two; I said that there's nothing that an encyclopedia article can really write about the reserve as a distinct topic, other than strictly demographic statistics. What happens when one actually tries to do so is the exact same thing that would happen if you tried to write separate articles about "Toronto" and "Torontonians", or "Vancouver" and "Vancouverites" — the article on the city itself would become a permanently unexpandable stub consisting of a statistical data dump and absolutely nothing else, because the genuinely meaningful encyclopedic content about the topic would all belong in the spinoff, leaving us with absolutely nothing left that we could write about the settlement as a distinct topic. Bearcat (talk) 18:18, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm not misquoting you, I'm telling you you're wrong. First off you're equating reserves with settlements, and whiel that may be true in your part of Canada it's not in British Columbia; many reserves which must have articles do not have residents (e.g. Peckquaylis, although that's a special case; another would be the Defence Islands reserves and the west-shore Howe Sound ones of the Skwxwu7mesh. And if User:OldManRivers were around these days, he'd take it up with you I'm sure about your misconception that an Indian Reserve defines a First Nations people and likewise that the Indian Act government of that people is the same as as the people themselves. Your comparison of Vancouver to Vancouverites etc labours under a similar misconception; IRs do not represent the traditional territories in any way, and FN people identify with their territory (so much so that the term Skwxwu7mesh-ullh refers to all things pertaining to the Squamish people/culture including their territory; but while it might include the specific settlements located on modern Indian Reserves, it references them according to their traditional status as historical/traditional vilages; and in the Skwxwu7mesh case, as in others, the physical reserve includes things other than the settlements. Namely, in their case, the Park Royal Shopping Mall and adjoining office tower, a trailer park, the majority of the Neptune Terminals bulk-loading facility; the Mosquito Creek Reserve incldues marinas and shipyards, and the Burrard Reserve has on it non-native housing developments (as does the [Tsawwaseen Indian Reserve]], which has on it Tsatsu Shores, a controversial non-native housing project (not controversial as being for non-natives, but because of local politics to do with services pertaining to it); similarly on the Tspentikum (sp?) reserves, two of 'em, in West Kelowna, there are likewise non-native commercial and residential properties. The Slosh 1 and Slosh 1A reserves include two of the powerhouses, switchyards and townsites of the Bridge River Power Project and also other non-native properties....And there's more to all Indian Reserves in BC, and likely elsewhere if I remember my history right, concerning the land history of each reserve - reductions, expansions, acquisitions, and items of interest to do with reason-for-being; and sometimes reserves allocated land which should have been designated to a different band than the one that's in charge of it now. These and other issues have been gone over exhaustively in {{NorthAmNative}} discussions and there's good reason for the distinctions needed, and the redundancy and homogeneity you think exists just doesn't; I could point to American-side parallel situations, e.g. the many different settlements in the Colville Indian Reservation. Your main mistake here is thinking that only statistical data is encyclopedic; no, what's encyclopedic is (eventual) complete coverage of what and why each reserve exists and what's on it and that a reserve is only equivalent to a settlement, and/or that an Indian Act government of a people is the same as a people. Native sensitivities and relevance are part of what's at stake in the distinction (which is why Squamish Nation is a different article from Skxwu7esmesh, as is the distinction between there dozen or so reserves and roster of traditional places/placenames, some of which coincide but many of which don't; what doesn't coincide from the native perspective is the confusion of the notion of the reserve with the reality of the settlement. Defunct reserves, like the old Songhees Reserve on Victoria' Inner harbour and which is no longer under Songhees jurisdiction except in an aboriginal-title sense, is now a deluxe resort hotel. Territory and reserves are not the same thing, band governments are not reserves, reserves have more than one settlement on them, quite often, nor no settlement at all, even more common, and are often widely dispersed, and governments are not peoples. And in many, many cases an Indian Reserve is part of a non-native settlement, as in Alexis Creek or Alkali Lake. For cultural/historical reasons, also, there are sometimes two articles for what is effectively the same place - 'Yalis vs Alert Bay, D'Arcy vs N'quatqua; similar Slosh and Nkiat are vilages in Seton Portage, though the Slosh IR isn't just Slosh and includes Shalalth and the aforementioned powerhouses and non-native residents/settlement(s). It may be simpler with Akwesasne and other consolidated reserves back EAst, it doesn't work in BC, and it doesn't work in a lot of the North either. IR articles aren't hte only ones that are, for now, mostly stubs; provincial park articles often remain as little more than stubs with size, location and latlong but the idea is to have the framework ready for people to add to it as material becomes available/is found, and to keep definitins/perspectives/sensitivities all accounted for. A capital-IR Indian Reserve is a "land artifact", NOT a settlement; when used small-r as "Indian reserve" it might have that meaning, but THAT is the reason why capital-R is necessary - it's a legal land-status designation distinct from the general concept of "reserve" as a community/territory; it's not a community, it's a survey-object and is legally distinct from adjoining land when used in capital-R form. "the power plant was on Indian Reserve" vs "the power plant is located on an Indian reserve" might seem subtle to you, but the usages have different (common) applications and the most common uage is "Indian Reserve"; it's also the officially citable usage (except by StatsCan, which isn't the arbiter of such things though it has a habit of making up its own usages/terminologies). INAC, CGNDB, Atlas of Canada, BCGNIS and various branches of the BC and federal government use the double-caps IR form as a matter of course; applying some external notion of "standard English" without taking into account actual usage and preferred usage (esp. taht of the governments in charge of these places, namely the FN governments and INAC, or with provihncial agencies/ministries dealing with them including regional district boards and also RMPs (regional management planning units); that's an awful lot of commoon usage to diepense with because of some allegation that "it's not correct in standard English". What's not correct is "standard English" not icnorporating these usages and trying to "correct" them....which is OR..........Skookum1 (talk) 03:52, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

You are misunderstanding or misquoting me badly. The standard for determining whether a topic should be a distinct article or a redirect on Wikipedia is not "is this thing a distinct topic from that one?" — if it were, many of the redirects on Wikipedia would be required to be separate articles rather than redirects. The standard is "can we write a substantial, properly referenced and genuinely useful article about this as a topic in its own right?" — and the reality is that for most reserves we simply can't ever meet that standard, because apart from raw demographic statistics what's actually referenceable and genuinely notable about most reserves is not the land entity in its own right, but the people who live there. With a few rare exceptions, the land entity by itself can almost never be anything more than a permanent two-line stub saying that the reserve has X population and Y land area and is occupied by the Z First Nation. Not because the land entity is the same thing as the First Nation, but because apart from the mere fact of the reserve's basic physical existence, the First Nation usually represents almost everything that's actually notable and referenceable about the reserve. Bearcat (talk) 22:43, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

[undent] A good example or comparison is the INAC usage Indian Village (Canada), which is an incorporated body, vs Indian village which is a usage for any number of types of locations and which in BC turns up a a type of BCGNIS category; Similiar Indian Settlement and Métis Settlement, which are incorporated/constituted, vs small-case versions of same (which may or may not be). This is why the Indian Reserve designation is not just some bumpkinish violation of the rules of your alleged "standard English" which seem to disregard the point of specific/local usages with a homogenizing juggernaut; the reality is that the "official usages" you're downplaying (while defending them re DPLs... as if DPLs were notable just beacuse they're DPLs....). Indian Village as a land status vs Indian village as a general concept is the same thing as Indian Reserve vs a land status vs Indian reserve as a general concept. If I were you I'd pay more attention to the OR/POV/p.c. nature of Category:First Nations reserves and also the fudging of a lot of placenames articles with IR content...which is another inaccuracy, and more reelvant to encyclopedism than arcane invocations of a yet-to-be-defined corpus of "standard English".......Skookum1 (talk) 04:11, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

[re-undent]Quoting you - "but because apart from the mere fact of the reserve's basic physical existence, the First Nation usually represents almost everything that's actually notable and referenceable about the reserve." - YOU ARE SO VERY WRONG. It's like I tell you facts and you pretend that they're not there or aren't relevant, only your one-dimensional view of the issue is what's counting in your verdict. But here's the facts:

• the Indigenous peoples' WikiProject has clear guidelines about distinguishing between traditional and non-traditional governments, and between reserves/reservations and communities, and between those governments and those reserves/reservations and the people themselves.
• There's a lot more to Indian Reserves than your worldview is cognizant of, apparently; as I noted above about the Capilano Indian Reserve and the Westbank Indian Reserve, and a host of others, there's a lot happpening on reserve lands that's referenceable, and easily so. And how the reserve came into being is part of the long and sorry story of grievances, detailed and referenceable for each reserve, behind BC Land Claims politics. Many - MANY - reserves are also multi-band in nature; i cited Peckquaylis as an example but there's lots that are shared by two, three, four or more bands (hunting, fishing, spiritual locations). Each one has a purpose.
• Most bands in BC have multiple reserves, widely scattered afield; see Westbank First Nation, Skawahlook First Nation, Ulkatcho First Nation, Squamish Nation for starters. Your adjudgement that it's enough to redirect the reserves to the government is a non-starter and causes more problems than it solves. We have notability satisfaction on vanished mining towns and railway camps and canneries/steamboat landings; not respecting the same tier of local-importance is discriminatory, and not slightly. That many of these locations remain in use, unlike the ghost towns, is all the more reason that they remain notable; some have news stories attached to them, also (news stories that may or may not involve the government(s) in charge of them).

Your stubbornness in the face of overwhelming factual realities on whether or not IR articles should be separate from government articles, and by implication that people articles shoudl just be merged with government articles too, is really quite remarkable; especially when you invoke "standard English" as a way to dismiss the buik of official sources that dispute your claims as to what "standard English usage" DICTATES (as if English were a dictatorship...). That you choose to ignore WP:NorthAmNative protocols and guidelines, also, is quite remarkable given your admin status and your own participation in another "oppressed peoples" WP (WP:LGBT). That you have extended the Indian Reserve vs Indian rseerve discussion into calling into question the existing/developing structure of Indigenous peoples' coverage without really understanding the material is.....I suppose "ironic" is the most polite term. Indigenous geography and history is a complex subject, with a complex web of differing contexts/perspectives and a need for sensitivity to what the people represented relate to; that you're dismissive about this is like hearing someone from someone from a Family Values perspective wanting to decide/simplify coverage of LGBT content!!! I'm not even FN, but I've worked with lots of them in real life and in Wikipedia, and have become conversant in the complexity of their issues and perspectives, and am also aware of their scattered Indian Act geography and governance and problems of terminology; you just want to boil it down to what YOU think is "notable" and "referenceable", without even listening to WHY they are individually notable and to stop to give some consideration as to what might be (and is) referenceable in nearly all cases. That most are stubs right now is incidental; so are a lot of smalltown pages, and parks parges, and more, including bios. There exist separate categories for governments, peoples, communities and reserves for very good reasons; perhaps you should just open your mind and educate yourself on the subject matter before deciding how it should be delivered/organized.Skookum1 (talk) 23:18, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Land claims history is an aspect of the people more than the physical entity. Historical and political and social grievances are an aspect of the people more than the physical entity. Every single thing you cited here in your attempt to lecture me is an aspect of the people more than the physical entity. And also kindly note that I said most reserves, not all reserves — I expressly acknowledged that there were potential exceptions. And I'm not ignorant of FN issues or politics, either. I find it particularly intriguing, in fact, that I don't actually have a reputation on here as being unusually stubborn or fundamentally wrongheaded about things anywhere outside of these circular debates with you, and only ever you, in which you talk down to me like I'm an idiot while simultaneously misrepresenting what I'm even saying in the first place and then sticking to the same misinterpretations no matter how many times I point out that they're misrepresentations. Bearcat (talk) 23:30, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Quoting you, and telling you how that quote comes across, is not misrepesenting you; it's pointing out what you haven't taken into consideration, or seem unaware of. Stop misrrepresenting me, especially given your ongoing involcation of some over-arching "standard English" which doesn't need citation always comes across like you're calling me stupid (or perhaps only provincial). Myself, i'm finding your attitudes and evasiveness to be very parochial, as well as obtuse and stubborn...Skookum1 (talk) 00:02, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

You have yet to point out a single thing I "haven't taken into consideration" or to quote me directly — what you keep doing over and over again is to paraphrase what you think I'm saying, and then argue with that strawman even when it's the opposite of what I actually said. Bearcat (talk) 00:20, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm not going to bother reading all of these long diatribes, but I am, based on the original question, going to side with Bearcat on this one. When speaking in general terms "indian reserve" or "native reserve" is proper English. It should only be capitalized if it is a proper name, like Sturgeon Lake Indian Reserve. Government legaleze is not the "ultimate resource", it is simply a differing, and formal, style. Wikipedia is not written in that style. Resolute 23:43, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

But Wikipedia should use "most common usage", not invoking arbitrary guidelines called "standard English". And most common usage, including in print media is "Indian Reserve" when used in a formal sense; i.e. not in a general sense of "reserve communities" but when titling a list of proper-name Indian Reserves. "Native reserve" is a non-starter and no more acceptable than "First Nations reserve" or for that matter the Yanquito neologism "First Nations reservation". My issue with starting this original point is that ;Category:First Nations reserves in British Columbia is inappropriately titled and, from my own exper5ience of the subject matter and sources (official-ese or otherwise) that Category:Indian Reserves in British Columbia is the way to go; "Indian Village" is a legal designation that has a different meaning than "Indian village", likewise "Metis Settlement" vs "Metis settlement". Indian Villages are incorporated; Indian villages may refer simply to a community, historical or otherwise. In the case of what goes in the category, or what SHOULD be in the category, formally-named capital-IR "Indian Reserve" is apposite to any category or title/content re "Indian Villages" (capital -V). Confusing the two contexts is what's wrong with Indian Reserve vs. Indian reserve; the latter is used in a general sense, and increasingly by graduates of jouranlism schools, but it's not the specific sense and because of the parallel Village and Settlement designations there's a need to respect the capital-R form next to them; and as far as "standard English" goes, the both-capitals acronym "IR" is representative of that distinction. "It's (on) IR so you can't do that there" is a reference to legal restrictions (it's not official-ese); the context is very dfiferent from "there are several Indian reserves in the region" as a way of referring to reserve communities. List of Indian Reserves in Canada is a list of citable, titular Indian capital-R Reserves, it's not a listing of agglomerations of them which can be referred to as "reserves" small-case.Skookum1 (talk) 23:59, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

post-edit conflict (to Bearcat): But you are clearly out of step with them in the case of BC, or you wouldn't have said some of the things you've said, or made the assumption that IRs should be redirected to band government articles as if they were the same thing. You may keep up on it to some degree, but there's a big difference between what goes in in Caledonia or Akwesasne and what goes on in the complex map/polity of BC indigenous content/topics. Even "most reserves" is wrong; what you think are teh exceptions are actually the rule. And OMR went at this full-bore about Squmiash Nation and did much the same re Kwakwaka'wakw (though I've left some of his more POV-flavoured content intact). Indian Reserves are not band governments, or vice-versa, and natives themselves make the distinction, often vehemently.Skookum1 (talk) 23:59, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

And here's an example of where you're arguing with a misinterpretation of what I said instead of with me: IRs should be redirected to band government articles as if they were the same thing. I did not say that they're the same thing; I explicitly said that they're not. But "X is the same thing as Y" isn't what redirecting means — we can redirect if X is an aspect of Y. We can redirect if X is related to Y. We can redirect if X is merely something connected to Y. As with any other topic, the decision is based on whether X will realistically ever have a referenceable and substantial article about it as a topic in its own right — X being synonymous with Y is not a requirement of a redirect. The only requirement is that X is in some way related to Y. Bearcat (talk) 00:20, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

pre-edit conflict: ::You've just provided another demonstration of what you don't know about IRs in BC and BC in general; land claims history here is not just limited to the absence of treaties, it's also full of lots of specifics about how what Indian Reserves were originally granted were later reduced or cancelled outright, and how others were re-acquired and/or designated/redesignated at a later date. These are not exceptions they are the rule. And further, to repeat again, Indian Reserves are not territory in the sense that term is meant in relations to FN content; to equate the limited landholdings colonialism restricted them to with the band governments now in charge of them (rather than assigned/confined to them) is another issue you don't quite seem to get. Ditto the reality that there is usually in BC no contiguous set of reserves, rather a spread-out patchwork quilt; there are few, very few bands, which have only one reserve, and there are as I've aaid lots of reserves which are shared between bands (just as there are also bands which combine formerly separate peoples). And there's the ongoing reality taht many reserves have lots of non-native residents and non-native commerce; another I could have mentioned is the Osoyoos Indian Band, whose reserves produce 40-50% of all wine grapes in the Okanagan in a joint project with Jackson Triggs, and license many wineries within that reserve; their territory is MUCH larger and their traditional social organization remains distinct from, and at times at odds with, the band government. This is not an isolated instance of that, in fact, it's quite common (as, if OldManRivers were around, you would find out from him re the Skwxwu7mesh, though there's some links on his userpage that will take you places online covering the disputes). It would be unencyclopedic to gloss over all these differences. Just as it would to ignore the most common usage, and the most common official usages, in the name of some amorphous body of "rules' somewhere about "standard English".Skookum1 (talk) 23:59, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

And yet another example of arguing with strawmen: land claims history here is not just limited to the absence of treaties, it's also full of lots of specifics about how what Indian Reserves were originally granted were later reduced or cancelled outright, and how others were re-acquired and/or designated/redesignated at a later date. How exactly does that contradict anything I've said anywhere in this discussion? Bearcat (talk) 00:20, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

It contradicts this, which you said earlier tonight, in fact:

"but because apart from the mere fact of the reserve's basic physical existence, the First Nation usually represents almost everything that's actually notable and referenceable about the reserve."

If you didn't mean that all that's notable about a given Indian Reserve is its mere physical existence, and all else is "the First Nation", then it certainly came across like that. Also it's unclear if you mean "First Nation" in the ethnographic sense or in the band government sense, and there is a difference. It's your notion, as expressed in that quote, that information about reserves is only physical existence and all else is part of the .... people? the band? In either case, you remain wrong.Skookum1 (talk) 00:26, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

The issue here is not so much to do with in-text usage but with titles and with category names, where formal usage does have a place. Category:Indian villages in Canada vs Category:Indian Villages in Canada is a very distinct and valid comparison; similarly Category:Indian reserve communities in Canada would be perfectly acceptable, and could include individual communities on reserves, but Category:Indian Reserves in Canada would only be titular reserves, i.e. specific-reserve articles and list of those specific/titular reserves. There's a big, big difference in contexts and the existence of the comparisons to "First Nations settlements" vs "Indian Settlements" (capital-s) is yet another valid comparison. These are not casual usages I'm talking about, they're specific usages to do with listings of proper names.....NB Category:Provincial Parks of British Columbia and there are others of that kind, also...Skookum1 (talk) 00:07, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

• Good God. Will the two of you go to WP:3O or WP:MEDCAB, please? Youre arguing in crcles. //roux   00:49, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Hear, hear. PKT(alk) 00:55, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

ALL *I* want out of this, and why I brought it up for name change, is to further a CfD for Category:First Nations reserves in Canada or Category:First Nations reserves to a non-neologistic, non-POV terminolgy, and wanted the caps issue resolved before starting that CfD; the category/hierarchy should be Category:Indian Reserves in Canada or Category:Indian reserves in Canada; maybe I'll just do a binary-CfD and let the "collegial" system decide; other than the citability fo the former term (which is extensive) the point remains that "sister" categories must have double-caps forms because of the potential confusions of meaning - Category:Indian villages in Canada vs Category:Indian Villages in Canada; with "settlements" it gets even more emphatically necessary, because of the extant "settlements" categories; with FN categories it gets a bit easier at the local level as Category:Kwakwaka'wakw settlements can include historical village-sites and traditional villages alongside those on native reserves. But when the individual nation/people cant' be specified and it's an Indian Settlement taht's being referred to (if that's a redlink, see INAC for a definition and listing, or Talk:List of Indian Reserves in Canada. Again, all I'm looking for is a proper name for the parent article of a category whose name is much in need of changing; I'm not talking about across-the-board in-text usages, I'm talking about article titles and category names ONLY.Skookum1 (talk) 01:10, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Look at the comparisons visually:

• List of Indian reserves in Canada (if that's to be the title)
• List of Indian Villages in Canada (for official Indian Villages]]
• List of Indian Settlements in Canada (ditto)

or, List of Indian reserves, Villages and Settlements in Canada/List of Indian reserves, Indian Villages and Indian Settlements in Canada.

The same applies to category names and any other attempt to meld IR listings with Indian Villages and Indian Settlements (and/ore Métis Villages and Métis Settlements). Using small-case "village" and small-case "settlement" opens up the intended meaning, way too loosely. It's for necessary consistency that I've been wanting this, not in the least because of the other settlements categories (small case)....what might be the parent category for all three of those, plus Metis Settlements/Villages and any Inuit equivalents, I can only wonder what to call Category:Indian Reserves, Villages and Settlements in Canada is about it, other than Category:Indian and Métis Reserves, Villages and Settlements in Canada, with Indian and Métis broken down as subcats, likewise capital-V Villages and Capital-V Settlements~ Not capitalizing "Reserve" suggests not capitalizing Village or Settlement either; but see again the list's talkpage as to why that gets complicated (e.g. Vancouver is BC's largest native settlement, pop. c.50,000...)Skookum1 (talk)

It should be "Indian villages" and "Indian settlements" as well, no capitalization. Same reason why articles like List of cities in Canada uses the lowercase c. Resolute 02:57, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

(undent) Wow, this is a lot of reading. First comment is, please stay cool guys, there's no point in accusing anyone of mis-speaking or misunderstanding...

Is this whole thing about the article name, or about capitalisation within articles?

• If it's the name itself, since it refers strictly to the Canadian usage, then I'd say the title should be fully cap'ed, since the Canadian usage of "Indian reserve" derives from the official naming of "Indian Reserve"s ("I.R."s) and the article discusses the legal definitions. The colloquial usage of "Indian reserve" (and/or "native reserve") is derivative and contrasts with the U.S. usage "Indian reservation". The "officialese" precedes the common usage, and yet is still recognized as common usage by the majority of readers - no confusion will result when a reader arrives through a redirect at the fully capitalised article name.
• Within the article itself, up-case/lo-case can be used interchangeably as long as there is no ambiguity in the usage. For instance, "the reserve has a resident population of 12,572" contrasted with "the Kahnawake Reserve is fifth-largest among Canadian Indian reserves" (note here the non-caps in the last word!). Franamax (talk) 02:53, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Consider the phrases "when the land was made Indian Reserve in the 1860s...." vs. "he lives on-reserve". it's when the legal/designatory context is meant that I'm meaning the double-caps version is important, as well as when apposite to other parallel formal designations (whether Indian Village or Land District or Government Reserve). The first example speaks to the designatory aspect of the term, i.e. the legal-ese sense of it, the latter is a derivative "general" usage. As somewhere above I explained, when a city government is referred to as "the City" vs the community/geographic object, inclusive of its citizens and territory and not limited to specifying the city government, is a very useful and clear convention, and a common one. "The city told taxpayers it was because of the higher mill rate..." nonetheless retains its context of city-government-as-an-institution; but when you see a phrase like "the City of Greenwood petitioned to retain its civic status despite its decreased population", you know it's the city government that's being referenced, not a colloquium of its residents. With Indian Reserves it's a special case, partly because they're so common and because it's a special kind of land status. We don't have articles on Timber Lease, Timber Berth, Timber Supply Area, Government Reserve yet but the same logic applies, especially as regards article and category titles (Government Reserve, in fact, was created as a term around the same time Indian Reserve was - designating Crown Land [sic] which was outside any specific ministerial jurisdiction; in BC the Government Reserve was actually set aside as a material asset towards eventual settlement of the land claims issue (this was in the 1880s or '90s....); that evaporated in 1976 when 85% of it was assigned over to teh Ministry of Forests as TBs, TFLs, TSAs etc....not to digress overmuch, but just citing yet more examples of why "Indian Reserve" IS "standard English" in certain usages". And as you note, Franamax, it's because the main article discusses this legal status and not a general concept, and because the list, which I retitled, is a listing of formal, specific Indian Reserve designations (not agglomerations of them, or "general sense" meanings), it's important that the title reflect it...another problem with Category:First Nations reserves in British Columbia is it's been applied to placename articles which are not directly, or exclusively, Indian Reserves, though including or adjoining them; I've added many of these cats myself but was always uncomfortable with it; if Seton Portage, British Columbia gets that cat because some of it is IR, and some of those IRs have rancheries on them (a type of settlement-name) as well as modern FN housing, then it's only a short step to saying that Lillooet, British Columbia, though incorporated, also should get that category. In the case of Anahim Lake, British Columbia, which has the category, it's not just an IR community and none of the IRs have that name (see Ulkatcho First Nation) whereas Anaham Reserve is a term for the main reserve near Alexis Creek, British Columbia (the actual reserve, as I recall, is Anahim's Flat 1...I'll save discussions of the problems with that Wiki-standard StatsCan-derived name/number format for another time, but suffice to say that there's lots of un-numbered reserves, some of them with the same names as the communities they're located in, or only near.... But first things first in tidying all this up (and it does need tidying, as well as a lot of article-creation for full coverage - the BC component of the list-page should probably become its own page, as it'll be so large even if only inhabited reserves are included), there needs to be a CfD about that "First Nations reserves" term/category-name, and to do that this capitalization issue really has to be settled on; or leave it to the discussion at the CFD to arbitrate/consensualize on it. The dominant weight of citability is on the both-caps version, as is the need for congruity/consistency with other parallal/similar designation like "Indian Village" and "Metis Settlement".Skookum1 (talk) 03:18, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

OK, so we seem to have Bearcat and Resolute, both admins who could potentially make the move, opposed to making the move. We have myself and Skookum1 in favour of the move. Roux and PKT seem indifferent, except to the arguing bit. The next logical step then seems to be WP:RM for further input. Just for concision, could all of you rethink and state here in 100 words or less what is your viewpoint? By boiling down, we may be able to reach agreement, or at least better understand each other.

The locus of the dispute seems to be whether or not the word following "Indian..." should be capitalised in the context of official names such as Indian Reserves and if they exist, Indian Village, Metis Settlement, etc. The question is whether the second word is an uncapitalised descriptive noun, or a capitalised proper noun. Do I have at least that right? Franamax (talk) 06:40, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Skookum1, you raise an additional issue, before I crossed the divide, I'd mostly thought of IR's in terms of the results of numbered and named specific treaties and settlements. Over here on the Pacific side, I'm not sure who exactly ever agreed on what. But that's for another day. Franamax (talk)

Re whether or not Villages and Settlements exist, see Talk:List_of_Indian_reserves_in_Canada#Removed_Saskatchewan_items_and_tableization and Talk:List of Indian Reserves in Canada#Indian Reserves in the Northwest Territories; the items taken out of the Saskatchewan listing were not all Settlements/Villages but cases where the link simply went to a town, and the town article said nothing about the Reserve/Village/Settlement, or may "dupe" another entry that's still in place. In the NWT there's no actual reserves, but "Settlements" are incorporated as such and are listed on INAC's directory of Reserves/Villages/Settlements. There's also a bunch of Métis Settlements and other designations in Alberta. On a side-but-not-unrelated issue, in BC now we also have some "former Indian Reserves" which are now fee-simple; in the realm of the Sechelt Treaty, there are now Indian Government Districts - which are municipal in nature, as is the Sechelt Indian Government, and in Nisga'a territory a number of Indian Reserves are now just placenames as mandated by treaty and usually also fee-simple; for examples go to Alice Arm, British Columbia and use the BCGNIS link for it, then do the radius search, and a number of these will come up, so Category:Former Indian Reserves in British Columbia will eventually be called for, and that can include Indian Reserves which were not treatied into municipal status but also those that were cancelled (as some were by the various revisions under Trutch, O'Reilly and Vowell). BTW the Indian Village bluelink simply needs Indian Village (Canada) as an entry, which would explain the legal status of the formal term "Indian Village" according to INAC's site. Then there's "abandoned villages" which is a BCGNIS designation - examples can be found by a BCGNIS radius search off any article in the Queen Charlotte Strait area, and also elsewhere (I just happen to know there's a bunch around there); none were ever reserves, some have been made reserves or always were, some are highly significant/notable. e.g. Kii:?in/Keeshan in Huu-ay-aht turf (Bamfield). User:CambridgeBayWeather was who it was who raised the "Settlements" issue re the Northwest Territories on the list talkpage; User:Luigizanasi is in Whitehorse, I'm thinking his advice on what exists in Yukon would be worthwhile here....there are also non-reserve First Nations communities in northwestern BC that are outside the reserve system, but without status other than, in BCGNIS, "locality" (e.g. Taku, British Columbia); who to designate them I'm not sure.....All I can say for certain is that Indian Villages, Indian Settlements, Métis Settlements, Métis Villages do exist as formal designations. A problem with the List of Indian Reserves page, btw, is that many of the links go to towns rather than reserve articles, or to First Nations government pages; or are redlnks or bluelinks directly to First Nations governments, which shouldn't be the case (unless you subscribe to Bearcat's contention that there is no difference between an Indian Reserve and the government in charge of it, which to me is clearly wrong, especially in BC's case).Skookum1 (talk) 12:34, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Another very pointed example is simply "First Nation", which though a couplet is treated as a proper name, in the very same way that "Indian Reserve" should be, and with a lot less official weight behind it; it's even fully capitalized when in adjectival form "First Nations person". I know the counter-argument is that that's not unlike "British Columbian" or "Nova Scotian". But we don't write "First nation", "Nova scotian", or "British columbian" do we? Maybe mixing apples and oranges, but they already seem all pretty mixed up anyway; especially given the phrase "First Nations reserve".Skookum1 (talk) 12:48, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

• AGAIN: will the two of you go to WP:3O or WP:MEDCAB, please? You're arguing in crcles. This is beyond discussion and well into equine necrophilia. Drop it or find someone uninvolved to mediate. //roux   19:50, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Pierre Trudeau

The article Pierre Trudeau has been nominated for GA, and I've put it on hold pending changes. The original nominator has not responded, so normally, I'd have to fail the article by default, but I want to give this project a chance to get it to standard. If someone can fix some issues within the next 5 days or so, I'd be willing to take another look at the article; otherwise, it'll be failed. Thanks, Nikkimaria (talk) 01:41, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Labrador retriever at Peer review

Labrador retriever is up at peer review, please see Wikipedia:Peer review/Labrador Retriever/archive1. Cirt (talk) 06:12, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Nova Scotia general election, 2009

I'd like to request an opinion about something in this article. Specifically, scroll down to the Nova Scotia general election, 2009#Shifts in control section and look at the template that's there.

The template starts out with a column of links to the 2006 provincial election immediately next to the names of the Conservative candidates who ran yesterday whether they were the actual incumbents from 2006 or not, then a column of the number 2009 next to the names of the NDP candidates who won yesterday, and then a column of who the incumbent representatives who were actually elected in 2006. So the year means two completely different things depending on which party's column it's in — if it's under the NDP column, then it means "this is the person who ran for the NDP and won in the year that's next to their name", but if it's under the PC column it means "the party used to hold this riding but this is the person who ran for the PCs and lost in 2009, not necessarily the person who ran and won in the year that's next to their name". And for Cumberland North, this format also commits the cardinal wikisin of assuming that the reader has the background knowledge of the Ernie Fage scandal that's necessary to understand how a riding whose incumbent is marked as independent can be a PC-to-NDP shift.

I'm also not at all certain that "shift in control" is really a phrase that would be generally recognized in Canadian English for the concept of a riding being won by a different party than the one that held it before the election — it really strikes me as somebody importing a term from another country's elections articles rather than using a term that would actually ring true in a Canadian context. But I'm willing to consider that other people might have a different take on that.

So, in a nutshell, I find it very misleading and not correctly designed to do what it's intended to do — but I'd like to solicit other opinions on how we can improve it, or whether it's even really necessary at all. Bearcat (talk) 18:08, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

"Electoral shifts?", "Ridings that changed hands?" I agree that "shift in control" sounds weird, especially because "control" is not really teh relationship of a candidate/member to his/her electorate or constituency...or vice-versa. "Ridings that changed hands" doesn't sound very encyclopedic, but it is the usual phrase for such changes.Skookum1 (talk) 14:01, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Category:Quebecois cuisine

Category:Quebecois cuisine has been proposed to be renamed Category:Quebec cuisine 70.29.210.174 (talk) 04:37, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Canadian stamps

A bunch of Canadian stamp images have come up for deletion at WP:FFD — 70.29.210.174 (talk) 05:07, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Outlines: comparison of Canada's coverage with the United Kingdom and the United States

Canada's coverage in Wikipedia's Outline of knowledge is:

• Outline of Canada, and work is underway on:
  • Provinces and territories of Canada
    • Wikipedia:WikiProject Outline of knowledge/Drafts/Outline of British Columbia
    • Wikipedia:WikiProject Outline of knowledge/Drafts/Outline of Saskatchewan

But nothing as of yet on:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Outline of knowledge/Drafts/Outline of Alberta
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Outline of knowledge/Drafts/Outline of Manitoba
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Outline of knowledge/Drafts/Outline of New Brunswick
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Outline of knowledge/Drafts/Outline of Newfoundland and Labrador
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Outline of knowledge/Drafts/Outline of Nova Scotia
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Outline of knowledge/Drafts/Outline of Ontario
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Outline of knowledge/Drafts/Outline of Prince Edward Island
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Outline of knowledge/Drafts/Outline of Quebec

For the sake of comparison, UK's coverage is:

• Outline of the United Kingdom
  • Constituent countries of the UK:
    • Outline of England (draft)
    • Outline of Northern Ireland (draft)
    • Outline of Scotland (draft)
    • Outline of Wales (draft)
  • British Oversees Territories
    • Outline of Akrotiri and Dhekelia
    • Outline of Anguilla
    • Outline of Bermuda
    • Outline of the British Antarctic Territory (draft)
    • Outline of the Cayman Islands
    • Outline of the Falkland Islands
    • Outline of Gibraltar
    • Outline of the British Indian Ocean Territory (draft)
    • Outline of Montserrat
    • Outline of the Pitcairn Islands
    • Outline of Saint Helena
      • Outline of Ascension Island
      • Outline of Tristan da Cunha
    • Outline of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (draft)
    • Outline of the Turks and Caicos Islands
    • Outline of the British Virgin Islands
  • Crown Dependencies
    • Outline of Guernsey
    • Outline of Jersey
    • Outline of the Isle of Man

And here's the coverage of the United States so far:

• Outline of the United States
  • Historical outline of the United States
  • States of the United States
    • Outline of Alabama
      • Historical outline of Alabama
    • Outline of Alaska
      • Historical outline of Alaska
    • Outline of Arizona
      • Historical outline of Arizona
    • Outline of Arkansas
      • Historical outline of Arkansas
    • Outline of California
      • Historical outline of California
    • Outline of Colorado
      • Historical outline of Colorado
    • Outline of Connecticut
      • Historical outline of Connecticut
    • Outline of Delaware
      • Historical outline of Delaware
    • Outline of Florida
      • Historical outline of Florida
    • Outline of Georgia (U.S. state)
      • Historical outline of Georgia (U.S. state)
    • Outline of Hawaii
      • Historical outline of Hawaii
    • Outline of Idaho
      • Historical outline of Idaho
    • Outline of Illinois
      • Historical outline of Illinois
    • Outline of Indiana
      • Historical outline of Indiana
    • Outline of Iowa
      • Historical outline of Iowa
    • Outline of Kansas
      • Historical outline of Kansas
    • Outline of Kentucky
      • Historical outline of Kentucky
    • Outline of Louisiana
      • Historical outline of Louisiana
    • Outline of Maine
      • Historical outline of Maine
    • Outline of Maryland
      • Historical outline of Maryland
    • Outline of Massachusetts
      • Historical outline of Massachusetts
    • Outline of Michigan
      • Historical outline of Michigan
    • Outline of Minnesota
      • Historical outline of Minnesota
    • Outline of Mississippi
      • Historical outline of Mississippi
    • Outline of Missouri
      • Historical outline of Missouri
    • Outline of Montana
      • Historical outline of Montana
    • Outline of Nebraska
      • Historical outline of Nebraska
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    • Outline of Tennessee
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    • Outline of Wisconsin
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    • Outline of the District of Columbia
      • Historical outline of the District of Columbia
  • Insular areas of the United States:
    • Outline of American Samoa
      • Historical outline of American Samoa
    • Outline of Guam
      • Historical outline of Guam
    • Outline of the Northern Mariana Islands
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      • Historical outline of the United States Virgin Islands

Instructions can be found at Wikipedia:Outlines, and more information on outlines and their development can be found at the Outline of knowledge WikiProject.

The Transhumanist 01:48, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

{{CGNDB}} template

Please note the existence of this new template which can be used as a cite. Usage is similar to {{BCGNIS}} and {{gnis}}. Add '|" + the CGNDB unique identifier number within the template.Skookum1 (talk) 13:27, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Canadian/BC government resource publications

• Water Powers, Fraser River, British Columbia, Canada, by British Columbia. Department of Lands. Victoria, B.C.: King'S Printer, 1938. Call #: 333.914/B862F/1938 (BC Ministry of Forests Library focuses on the Fraser basin
• Water Powers, British Columbia, Canada, by British Columbia. Department of Lands. Victoria, B.C.: King'S Printer, 1931. Call #: 333.914/B862/1931, BC Ministry of Forests Library
• Water Powers British Columbia Canada, 1954 publication. by British Columbia. Water Rights Branch. Victoria, B.C.: Queen's Printer, 1954. Call #: 333.914/B862/1954
• Water powers of Canada: Province of British Columbia. by Conway, George Robert Graham., Canada. Department of the Interior. Dominion Water Power Branch.Ottawa, ON: Dominion Water Power Branch, 1915. Call #: 333.914/C767

I used to have the 1954 one, which if course is the most up-to-date and also the most thorough, covering lots of streams (and waterfalls on them) for which other online sources will be difficult to find.23:50, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Bruno Cote ?

Hoping someone here can answer this - a quick google failed to find me an answer. Is the artist Bruno Cote the same person who stood for the green party in the Abitibi—Témiscamingue district in 2008 federal election ? Hoping someone with more knowledge than I can either redirect or disambig as necessary. - TB (talk) 11:16, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm not 100% certain, but I doubt it. The artist's site indicates he lives in/near Baie-Saint-Paul, which is not in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue area. The name is relatively common, so my guess is that they are not the same man. PKT(alk) 12:07, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Unless evidence can be found to the contrary, I'd default to the assumption that they're not the same person. However, per WP:POLITICIAN I also haven't seen any evidence that the political candidate would actually merit a Wikipedia article — so I've changed all the politician's links to point to a Green Party candidates list instead. Bearcat (talk) 21:29, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Abbotsford schools

Can someone look at Abbotsford Career Technical Centre, Abbotsford Collegiate and Abbotsford Traditional Secondary School. The address given in the article for the Career Technical Centre is 2272 Windsor St, which agrees with http://www.abbotsfordcollegiate.ca/ctcprograms/. However, the article also says that it's located at Abbotsford Collegiate, 2329 Cresent Way, which agrees with http://www.ufv.ca/trades/ctc.htm. Abbotsford Traditional Secondary School is also supposed to be at 2272 Windsor St but I can't get their site to work, probably because I'm using FF and not IE7. Thanks. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 10:54, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Vancouver in WP:FAR

I have nominated Vancouver for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Aaroncrick^{(Tassie Boy talk)} 10:15, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Danforth Avenue

Can someone look at this. In the history section it says that it was named for "..Asa Danforth, who built Queen Street..." but that's a disambiguation. Then goes on to say "...connecting to [[Queen Street West|Queen Street East]]...". Which is the correct link, east or west? In the see also section there are two subsections both of which say "Major streets in Toronto which intersect with Danforth Avenue (west to east):", which doesn't look right. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 22:10, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Queen St. East appears to be the correct link, according to the reference. I don't understand what the article's talking about "as well as connecting to Queen Street East and Kingston Road." - Danforth Ave connects to Kingston Rd, but not Queen.

As far as the list of major streets, I checked Google maps and it appears correct enough. The list for Danforth Road looks odd because it runs north-west, cutting across both north-south and east-west streets before becoming McCowan Rd. PKT(alk) 23:41, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. And of course I missed the fact that in the see also one said road and the other avenue. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 00:46, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

John Baird

Bit of a situation brewing on John Baird.

In this week's print issue of NOW, the article on Jaime Watt's controversial recent award from Egale Canada contains the following sentence:

“ He wasn’t the only gay conservative at Egale’s dinner. Also in attendance was MP John Baird. ”

In the web version of the same article, however, guess what happens?

“ He wasn’t the only conservative at Egale’s dinner. Also in attendance was MP John Baird. ”

As a consequence, there's an anon IP who insists that the printed statement means Wikipedia can finally now describe and categorize Baird as gay. However, I don't believe that we can, for a number of reasons:

1. We don't know why the discrepancy exists between the print and web versions. Was it an accidental editing oversight? Did Baird call them to threaten a lawsuit? Did they intentionally do one thing in print and another on the web because of the differing audiences? We just don't know.
2. To anybody who doesn't live in Toronto, the web version is the only consultable version of the reference — and even to people who do live in Toronto, the paper version will only be available until next Wednesday night, at which time the web version will become the only consultable version for us too.
3. As a rule, the only acceptable reference for describing and categorizing somebody as gay is their own public statement on the matter. So until Baird actually says something about it himself, it simply isn't sufficient for Wikipedia to cite somebody else simply asserting that Baird is gay in an article that isn't actually about Baird and doesn't provide any proof of something that Baird still hasn't publicly acknowledged in his own words.

I'm hardly interested in protecting closeted gay politicians, obviously — but I don't believe that the source in question is sufficient. However, the anon is persistent enough that a third opinion is necessary here. Bearcat (talk) 19:23, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

You're absolutely correct, especially on the third point. If the I.P. persists after this point, I'd be happy to block or semi-protect as required. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 19:25, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

• Didn't the article in Frank 3 years or so already out him? It's not like it's a secret. I'm not sure stating that he is gay on his page is appropriate, but surely it is appropriate to note that the media has hinted at his sexuality, without actually stating anything one way or another - leave it ambiguous. Normally I'd argue it's irrelevent, but given the anti-gay rheteoric that his party has been spouting for the last few years, it's hard to ignore. Surely, the appropriate place for this discussion is the talk page, however one editor has unfortunately tried to erase any mention of the topic! Nfitz (talk) 03:51, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
  • So your position is that we should engage in leering innuendo about public figures' sexual orientation? Can you cite any Wikipedia policy which would favour inclusion? Because WP:BLP says that "Biographies of living persons must be written conservatively, with regard for the subject's privacy." If we discuss his sexual orientation in the article, we will be putting ourselves on the same level as Frank (the only source that has identified him as being gay without subsequently removing that mention), and I don't think anybody's going to argue that Frank is written either conservatively or with regards to its subjects' privacy. As for your argument that Conservative Party policies make Baird's sexuality fair game for us to discuss, that is equally unsupported by Wikipedia policy and is, frankly, appalling. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 03:55, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
    • Did you even read what I wrote? Of course we shouldn't engage in leering innuendo ... but there's nothing negative about being gay. It's simply a statement of fact. It's been public knowledge for years. Frank is difficult to reference, but NOW seems to be clearly publishing what has been talked about for years. I'm not saying we should report it because of the Tory parties position; I'm saying we should report it because it has been reported. Quite frankly, I don't think such information should ever be mentioned in any media - it's not relevent. Neither is the person's religion or spouse. But we do put people's spouse and religion ... why, for example, do we report on who Josée Verner's spouse is? Why do we report that Bev Oda has Japanese heritage? Nfitz (talk) 04:12, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
      • You've said that we should "hint at it" without actually saying it outright. Perhaps "leering innuendo" was a little strong, but you can see where I'm coming from. As for your examples, there are a couple of differences between Josee Verner's spouse and John Baird's sexual orientation: first, spouses are a matter of public record; sexual orientations are not. Second, Verner is presumably publicly open about who she's married to; we've seen no indication that Baird is similarly forthcoming about his sexual orientation (this distinction also applies to Oda's ancestry). That said, Verner's spouse was unreferenced, so I've removed it. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 04:43, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
        • I merely meant whether we should report it as an observation of what was in the media, rather than a statement of fact, something like "It has been reported by some media .... "(ref 1, ref 2, ref 3). Hmm, and was Minister Toews forthcoming about having cheated on his wife, and gotten his mistress pregnant Vic_Toews#Family_life? Nfitz (talk) 05:03, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
          • No, and my preference would be for that not to be there. But what I gather from the title of the source (it's print only, so I can't read it) is that that was actually a topic of public discussion during the election campaign, which isn't true in this case either. Besides that, whether Toews fathered a child out of wedlock is an unambiguous question of fact. Baird's sexuality is, to a substantial extent, a matter of self-identity; if he's not self-identifying as gay, who the hell are we to say otherwise in his article (though you don't seem to be suggesting that we say otherwise so much as suggesting that we say that others have said otherwise). Sarcasticidealist (talk) 06:29, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
  • I'm pretty sure there's nobody involved in this discussion who didn't already know that Baird bats on the same team as I do...but the issue is about sources. He's one of an odd class of "glass closet" politicians who are completely out and open in their personal lives and support LGBT issues politically, yet somehow manage to avoid ever being explicitly identified as gay in the non-Frank media, with the result that even though pretty much everybody already knows, we still don't have any valid sources that would allow us to say so. And that's not really a uniquely Conservative trait, because everybody many people here can name a former Liberal MP and an NDP-affiliated Toronto city councillor who are in the same situation. Also, I'd disagree that the general CPC position on LGBT issues has any bearing on whether we have valid Baird-specific sources. I might feel differently if Baird were being personally hypocritical on issues such as same-sex marriage, but he's not — and the mass media would have outed him in the drop of a hat if he ever had, so we wouldn't have a sourcing problem. Bearcat (talk) 09:00, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
    • For the record I couldn't identify either Liberal MP or NDP-affiliated councillor ... if I did know once, it's not like it's something that would stick in one's mind, any more than remembering the name of their dog. Nfitz (talk) 12:30, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
      • I can; both of them hit on me at Woody's in the mid-90's, on separate occasions. The city councillor was somewhat more persistent than the former minister. Bleargh! → ROUX ₪ 22:15, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
        • Given the timing of your incident, I think we might even have two different city councillors in mind! Bearcat, who never gets hit on in bars by anybody, ever (talk) 05:22, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
          • I believe he was pre-politics at the time, but there have been one or two G&T's since then, so I could be mistaken on the timing. → ROUX ₪ 05:28, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
            • The one I'm thinking about would have been too young at the time for there to be too much fuzziness about it :-) Bearcat (talk) 06:03, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
              • OHHH. Now I know who you were getting at. He is a bit of a dish, isn't he? And of the two, he's the better way. Choice. I meant choice. → ROUX ₪ 10:26, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Brent Townsend

Is anyone interested in expanding Brent Townsend to DYK quality by Canada Day? There is a semi-proposed hook here and if anyone does expand it just nominate it here. I would expand it myself but art and sculpting isn't exactly my thing.--Giants27 (c|s) 01:27, 25 June 2009 (UTC)