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Wikipedia talk:Canadian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 2

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Latest comment: 17 years ago by Spirit watcher 22 in topic Why isn't this over to the talk page?
Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4Archive 5

Blah

Latest comment: 17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

G'day y'all from down under. would one of you mind verifing the claims made at blah "[blah is] a word to describe a person from the province of Saskatchewan, Canada." Thanks. The bellman 05:32, 2005 Jan 7 (UTC)

I've killed that. It strikes me as somebody trying to make a funny; it certainly isn't a standard feature of Canadian slang. Bearcat 19:15, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

that is not what you call us sask folk...lol...it not canadian slang Soku Kitty 14:46, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Federal government departments

Just noticed that someone's taken it upon themselves to move all of the articles on the various federal government departments so they're titled in the format Department of Health (Canada), Department of the Environment (Canada) etc. As per federal legislation, that's their legal names, but the only people who actually use them are government lawyers and perhaps high-ups in the Treasury Board writing very large checks. As far as what names are actually used, by both the departments themselves and by the layman, we see the XXXX Canada format used, ie Health Canada, Environment Canada, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada etc. (There are four exceptions... Dept. of Cdn. Heritage, Dept. of Finance, Dept. of Justice and Dept. of National Defence...where the legal names are used exclusively. Dunno why, but that's the way they do things.) Anyway, the below template links to things where they should be.

Admin help will be needed to move stuff back, but before I go through that process, can I get some feedback here? Agree/disagree?

Would Crown corporations fall under this structure as well? Denelson83 22:22, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
"Department of Canadian Heritage" is used because "Canadian Heritage Canada" would sound down-right silly. "Heritage Canada" is a separate, not-for-profit organization. As for the others, maybe it's just that the Finance, Justice and Defence types takes themselves so seriously.
There are many people who refer to the departments by their legal/department name and not the more modern FIP one. DOT for Department of Transport (also MOT, although only Ontario AFAIK has a "Ministry of Transport". Also, most average citizens refer to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) and Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA), although for the latter, its acronym is similar to the US DVA and Treasury Board's FIP has been trying to change this, although many Cdn. vets, as well as the public & even those working for the dept. usually always refer to it as DVA. Nobody outside of senior government 'crats seem to refer to them by their FIP names/acronyms such as Fisheries and Oceans Canada (FOC) or Veterans Affairs Canada :(VAC). Transport Canada vs. DOT is a mixture it seems.
Federal Identity Program (Treasury Board program) vs Legal Name. This is always a vexed question. Not all departments like their FIP name e.g. the Dept of Justice seems happier with the full name rather than Justice Canada website. Even the latest bills creating new departments tend to use the full legal name and make no mention of the FIP name which is presumably assigned afterwards in collaboration with Treasury Board. The FIP is really a kind of "branding" or "marketing" program. One thing you can count on is that any entity with the word "National" is on the endangered list. The National Library and National Archives were recently renamed Library and Archives Canada. It won't be long before the National Gallery gets renamed. --BrentS 01:47, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Minister Responsible

The pages Minister responsible for Official Languages and Minister responsible for the Status of Women were proposed as redirects at the bot-assisted redirect project. I really have no idea what a Minister Responsible is. I've tentatively followed the suggestions, but this decision should be reversed if this governmental position also exists in some other country. The article on Government of Canada was no help whatsoever. --Smack (talk) 04:18, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ministers normally have departments that report to them. A "Minister responsible" has responsibility for the government's policy in a particular area, but does not have a department that reports to him/her. Often there will be a secretariat or office within another mnister's department that supports the work of the "Minister responsible", e.g., I expect that there is an Office for Official Languages somewhere in the Dept. of Canadian Heritage, and an Office of the Status of Women in wherever Citizenship has ended up. I think that "Ministr responsible" was largely supplanted by "Ministers of State" during the Mulroney era. They had responsibility as described above, but only attended cabinet meetings when their issues were being discussed, analogous to the concept of junior ministers in the UK. Late in the Chreien era, "Ministers of State" became "Secretaries of State" serving the same function. If there continue to be "Ministers responsible", I expect that the difference between them and S of Ss is that the MRs are full members of cabinet even though they do not head departments, whereas the S of Ss are not full members of cabinet.Kevintoronto 13:57, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Let me try to explain. In most acts, there is a minister listed as responsible for that act. For instance, technically, the Minister of Industry is the Minister responsible for Corporations as that is defined in the Canada Corporations Act. It is unnecessary to style him as such as the act saying "The Minister of Industry is responsible for the administration of this Act." Some acts do not spell out who the Minsiter responsible is and, if there is to be a minister held accountable for that act, one must be designated as such. Ministers of State (and Secretaries of State - which were only used under Chretien) are different. A Minister of State operates under a memoradum of understanding from the Minister responsible for a certain agency or area of government policy under which the Minister delegates some of his/her powers to the Minister of State. - Jord 16:28, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Jord, I hadn't noticed that Martin had switched back to Ministers of State from Secs of State. Thanks for pointing that out. The issue of "Ministers responsible" is broader than just responsiblities for certain acts. In Martin's ministry, for example,
  • the President of the Treasury Board is also Minister Responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board (which would otherwise fall under the purview of the Minister of Agriculture)
  • the Minister of Canadian Heritage is also the Minister responsible for Status of Women, which would otherwise fall under the purview of the Minister of Citizenship
  • the Deputy Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, is also the Minister responsible for Official Languages (otherwise Citizenship), the Minister responsible for Democratic Reform (?), and Associate Minister of National Defence
  • Minister of the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec is also the Minister responsible for the Francophonie (otherwise Foreign Affairs)
Kevintoronto 17:38, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)
There is a difference between a Minister of State and a Minister responsible. A Minister of State is "attached" to a certain minister by a memorandum of understanding that delegates duties to a minister of state, thus giving the minister of state the legal authority to act as Minister under certain circumstances. For instance, there would be a memorandum of understanding sent to Carolyn Bennett saying that the Minsiter granted her authority to act as Minister of Health with respect to the Public Health Agency of Canada.
A Minister responsible for an item is merely granted that designation by the Prime Minister (through the Crown) and is asked to develop, consult and/or speak for the government on that area of government policy. The position has no legal authority to act with respect to any government department. I've asked the Library of Parliament to provide me a brief on this, which I'll add to wikisource, as I get the feeling you aren't going to take me at my word.
- Jord 18:27, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)
No, no. Now it's clear. Your first explanation wasn't that clear to me, but maybe I'm just being dense. I follow your second explanation, and have no reason to believe that you would lead us astray. I'm sorry if I gave you that impression. Carry on with your excellent work. Kevintoronto 18:43, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Probably me, I am tired. In fact, when I called over to the Library I was explaining what I wanted and said to them I was having a hard time getting it into words and she said that what I had just said (what I put above there) worked pretty good. I guess it is a good thing to talk things out in your head. Sorry for being touchy, it's been a long week. Thanks to you too Kevin! - Jord 18:59, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Provincial lieutenant(-)governors

Another issue where we have to have naming consistency, but don't at present: I note that some of the provincial lieutenant governor articles refer to "lieutenant-governor" with a hyphen, and others refer to "lieutenant governor" without one. Which is the normal convention for this office, and why aren't we using that consistently? Bearcat 18:24, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Section 58 of the constituion refers to them without hyphen. However the practice seems to very from province to province... I just checked two at random and they were different. New Brunswick's has a hyphen [1] and Nova Scotia's does not [2]. - Jord 01:26, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Why isn't this over to the talk page?

Latest comment: 17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I think the page is a bit overly busy, and besides, should discussion be taking late on the Talk page rather than the notice board itself? --Circeus 21:15, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)

I think you missed the point. This notice board is a discussion page in its own right. Just look at the other regional notice boards. Most of them are full of discussions. Denelson83 22:14, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

ohh yeah it is now 20076 ad our new prime minister is Stephen Harper- Soku Kitty 14:47, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Copyvio

I notice that Embrun, Ontario has been removed as a copyright violation (and with good reason, there's even a typo reproduced) Would a copyvio section be a good idea for pending tasks? Dhodges 01:57, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

  • Historically copyvios have been added – well, at least one was added, by my hand – to Articles in need of serious rework at the top (with a parenthetical noting the copyvio). Samaritan 04:38, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
    • I have added a "copyright violations" section to the to-do list on this page. Feel free to use that. Denelson83 08:18, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Lieutenant Governors redux

Did we, at some point, decide that articles on lieutenant governors would refer to them by their entire title, including "The Honourable" and post-nominal letters? (See eg. Norman Kwong, Lois Hole; see also link to Lois Hole in Norman Kwong's article; see also this anon user whose only contributions have been to add this very thing to some, but not all, articles on LGs.) Bearcat 05:43, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Due South

Questions for y'all...on January 15, an anon user split the article on Due South into two separate articles, which treated the 1994-1996 and 1997-1999 blocks of episodes as two entirely separate television series. Samaritan and I both consulted outside references and determined that this is not consistent with the way the series was actually packaged and produced, but the Internet Movie Database does treat them this way. I reverted the changes on January 16. On January 20, the same anon user came back, and edited the article to refer to the two blocks as separate series again (although he didn't split it this time); he also added the assertion that spinning off new series with identical titles "is a common phenomenon in Canadian television". So...

  1. Should we treat Due South as one series or two?
  2. Can anybody even think of one other example of Canadian television doing what this user calls a common phenomenon? I sure as hell can't. Bearcat 06:45, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • One, of course. The likeliest explanation is that the editor is confusing the British use of "series" to mean season with the North American use of "series" (including a set of seasons). Samaritan 22:26, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)


Whither Canadian current events?

I've been sporadically updating the Canadian current events page myself, but it really looks like something of a losing battle. What we've got now is pretty miserable, and I'm of the opinion that unless a whole whack of us want to throw ourselves wholeheartedly at it, it might make more sense to shelve the notion of a dedicated Canadian page for the time being and unsqueamishly put Canadian news stories on the main Current events page. Thoughts? -The Tom 03:50, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

  • Keep: I was about to agree, but then as typing this I changed my mind. There can be little doubt the Canadian page is suffering, but it makes a bad situation worse to merge our (usually) insignificant events onto another page. It won't take much to keep it off the deathbed. - RoyBoy 800 00:05, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

A modest proposal

Category:Members of the Canadian House of Commons is starting to get as out of control as Category:Canadian politicians once was. We've occasionally discussed finding ways to split the category up, but nothing's ever come of it so far. Here, then, a thought: would "Members of the Canadian House of Commons from (province)" be a good idea? That way, we could also file each category as a subset of "(province) politicians", and remove strictly federal politicians from the actual "(province) politicians" group, so as to better manage those as well. Bearcat 10:33, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I have also thought about this. How about two catgories Category:Current Members of the Canadian House of Commons and Historical Members of the Canadian House of Commons? This way we have a category only with the current members. (This can also apply to the Category:Canadian senators). If you want a provincial distinction for the historical ones I have no issues with it. --YUL89YYZ 11:00, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

If no one has any objections I can start moving people into the Historical Members of the Canadian House of Commons category. I think it makes sense just to leave the current Category:Current Members of the Canadian House of Commons alone for now. I'll wait until next week if I don't hear any objections and I will start the move process. --YUL89YYZ 19:21, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

That's a great idea. In your last paragraph, do you mean that you will leave the current Category:Members of the Canadian House of Commons alone, or do you intend to move the current members into the new Category:Current Members of the Canadian House of Commons? I like the idea of splitting that category into a new Historical category, but to leave the current members in the already-existing category. --Deathphoenix 14:27, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I will leave the current category alone. I already started (slowly) moving the historical ones. --YUL89YYZ 17:19, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

--How about Category:Members of the Canadian Cabinet current and/or historicalAndyL 12:37, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Reminder

Just wanted to remind y'all that normal Wikipedia convention for articles about people is that the article should be titled with the person's most common name whenever possible. Frex, the Supreme Court justice should have been listed at Ian Binnie, not William Ian Corneil Binnie, since he's always been known as Ian professionally; the former justice minister who died last week is properly at Ron Basford rather than Stanley Ronald Basford. A person's rarely-used extra names should only go in the article title if they provide a helpful disambiguator from another person with the same name (eg. all those darned Donald Macdonalds and John Macdonalds and Angus McDonalds and John MacDougalls). The full name can go in the body of the article, but Wikipedia's stated policy is that the title goes at the common name; redirects should point from the full name to the common one, not vice versa. Bearcat 03:09, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Federal government entities

A user has recently added a number of crown corporations (e.g. the Canada Council and Canadian Museum of Civilization) to Category:Canadian federal departments and agencies. I disagree with this decision as I feel there are important differences between a crown corporation and a department or agency. What do others think? - SimonP 03:17, Feb 6, 2005 (UTC)

I tend to think they're one and the same. Spinboy 03:33, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
My arguments in favor of grouping all federal government "entities" or "agents" has been given to SimonP at his Talk page. If you search the statutes at the Justice Canada website, you will be hard pressed to find a common definition of a so-called Crown corporation (first invented by C.D. Howe for Air Canada, CNR). The Canada Council for the Arts Act explicitly says it is not an agent of Her Majesty, but very few other acts say this. The government has folded or sold off most "crown corporations" of the war-time and post-war era, and now creates all kinds of entities which report through a minister who is a member of the Queen's Privy council for Canada (Canadian Space Agency, Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Parks Canada Agency, various museums). You have to carefully examine each statute to see what the entity's status is. Of course, there are differences between federal entities, but they were created by the Parliament of Canada by statute and with few exceptions are subject to Parliament, report directly or indirectly through a minister, are subject to the Auditor General and a host of other federal acts which vary from entity to entity. If they have a board and a CEO, they are usually named by order-in-council during pleasure, and they get most of their money from Parliament. Is making a distinction really worthwhile when the word "agency" in any dictionary is broad enough to cover most federal entities. You can create too many sub-categories. I am not absolutely opposed, but I would want to see a definition of "Crown corporation" based on some federal law which can be applied evenly and consistently in a typology.--BrentS 03:39, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I agree with SimonP. Clearly there are significant distinctions between departments, Crown Corporations and Special Operating Agencies. Unlike Federal Government Departments, Crown Corporations are not subject to laws such as the Public Service Employment Act, and the Public Service Staff Relations Act; they are not subject to oversight by Treasury Board and the Public Service Commission. The agencies BrentS refers to (e.g. Canadian Space Agency, Canada Parks) are neither Departments nor Crown Corporations. For the most part, they are formerly branches of government departments that have a clear and distinct mandate and have been separated from the mother department. The differences between the three structures are complex. For anyone curious about the distinctions there is a good overview by the Privy Council Office [3]. To further complicate matters, you have Federal Boards and Commissions (which behave like agencies) and Provincial Crown Corporations. I would prefer to see them kept separate, otherwise it will be a huge (and unmanageable) list. Sunray 06:51, 2005 Mar 1 (UTC)

User:JillandJack and NPOV disputes

JillandJack have added NPOV tags to Lower Canada Rebellion, Chateau Clique, Quebec sovereignty movement, Médard des Groseilliers, and Pierre-Esprit Radisson, yet they refuse to discuss what the problem is, exactly. They have also posted to their userpage that they will not discuss the matter with those who have perpetrated the bias - since I have asked them twice to explain themselves, and I either wrote or had a large part in writing four of those five articles, I can only assume they mean me. At the moment I assume they are just trolling and I was about to revert the NPOV tags, but hopefully the other Canadians here can help discover this mysterious bias first. Adam Bishop 19:32, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hmm.. I removed the NPOV tags he added. He seems to have reverted some back, adding some "reasoning" to the said pages... ✏ OvenFresh☺ 20:10, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

List of Ontario premiers

There is a large blank space before the actual list. Is the graphic at the right really needed since it is on the Premier of Ontario page? Perhaps someone could fix this page.--BrentS 03:58, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

  • I commented out the {{Politics of Ontario}} because it was interfering with the table (it was overlayed on top of it). --Deathphoenix 14:20, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Category:Acadian

Could this category be deleted? There is a category Acadia for the French speaking areas of Atlantic Canada. There is no category Canadian or New Brunswicker, so why for the adjective Acadian? It would involve only moving the article Acadian French to the category Acadia.--BrentS 15:49, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I agree, redirect the category to Acadia and merge articles. Is therean Acadian people category? --Circeus 17:39, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikiportal/United States of America

I just noticed this Wikipedia:Wikiportal/United States of America. Should we have a Canadian version? --YUL89YYZ 16:33, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

It DOES have the potential to increase the board and its related subject (CCOTW) popularity and participation, but how do we give it more visibility? --Circeus 17:51, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
I'd say why not? In fact, I just created that page. It's only a skeleton as of right now; I shall leave it up to all of you to "fill in the blanks." Denelson83 18:34, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Added a featured article. We should do a list, I think, of great Canada-related articles for that feature. --Circeus 21:16, Feb 13, 2005 (UTC)

Community Wikis?

Hello. A couple of months ago, a started the Calgary Community wiki. Is anyone aware of any other Canadian community wikis? I know that there is the Vancouver wiki, but it does not currently have any significant content. I think it would be great if every major city had one. -- James Teterenko (talk) 04:14, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

  • There's one for educational workshops in Toronto at Anarchist U, but I don't know if there's a general interest one for TO. Bearcat 20:33, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've created a Toronto one ([4]). Didn't think I had, because when I tried my browser window just couldn't seem to complete the request, but looks like it went through anyway. Bearcat 03:05, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

That's awesome. Hopefully we will have active communities for every major city. I would probably contribute a bit to wikis for Saskatoon, Edmonton, and/or Winnipeg, since I spend a bit of time in those cities. -- James Teterenko (talk) 06:09, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Are there a lot of Edmontonians here intrested in creating/maintaining a Wikicities page for Edmonton? --Sasquatch 06:18, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)
I'd help out with this. I could see the Edmonton & Calgary wikis cross linking a fair amount and making both stronger. A blatently obvious example would be something like the Jubilee Auditorium. -- JamesTeterenko 07:24, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There is a new wiki for Kitchener-Waterloo [5] but so far it does not seem to attract many contributors. Brona 02:37, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Is this place notable?

I stumbled across Thunder Bay Community Auditorium while doing some maintainance work - is this notable or encycopedic? Either way, I figured this was the best place to list it. Cheers, Alphax (t) (c) (e) 02:31, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC)

Seems notable enough; it looks like the biggest arts venue in the area, so encyclopedic enough IMO. Radagast 18:26, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC)
Fine - needs more links to it, and something done about the giant image. Alphax (t) (c) (e) 03:03, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

Image in David Miller

Hi, I'd appreciate any feedback you can provide at Talk:David Miller. I'm wondering if it's best to place the first image that's there right now under a subheading, and instead using an "official" image of the mayor as the first image in the article. Thanks! --Deathphoenix 19:31, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Cities in Ontario

An anon user recently changed the population figures for a number of Ontario cities to reflect a fictitious 2004 census. Most changes were subtle and not likely to be noticed if you didn't know what was going on, but one was glaringly obvious: Sudbury most certainly did not grow from 155,000 to 221,000 in just three years. Please, if you can, keep an eye on Ontario cities for these types of edits. Bearcat 00:56, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Request for... / Offer...

I see a "Request for" Section at the top, but no "Offer ..." section. For exemple, I live in Montreal, and could easily take pictures around the University of Montreal Campus. Could a "Offer..." section be useful? - Sepper 01:36, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

NDP news

I believe the New_Democratic_Party_Shadow_Cabinet was shuffled a few weeks ago. AndyL 12:27, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, the official list [6] matches the article... Radagast 13:28, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)
I updated the article yesterday. AndyL 14:00, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Geography of Canada: an analysis

Copy/paste of what I added to Talk:Geography of Canada:

Here is a list of things that must be done berfore the article is fit for Featured article submition

  • Write up Geography_of_Canada#The_Arctic
  • Expand the other sections to be more comprehensive
    • Include more material about secondary, but notable features, like secondary mountain ranges, notable rivers and lakes...
    • Separate Canadian rockies and Pacific coasts
  • Create an Hydrography section, including a link to rivers of Canada
  • Create an ecogeography section about the main ecologic regions found in Canada. See Nearctic (maybe too specific) and Floristic province: Rockies, west of the rockies, tundra, plains, coniferous boreal forest, mixed forest, Broadleaf forest (can be divided in more specific areas, but these are the needed ones for te purpose of this article)
  • Appropriate Geological, ecological and hydrographic maps
  • Not necessary but would make a good impression not to have a bunch or red links under See also

On relaunching the canadian COTW

Things needed for making the CCOTW to actually work:

A fresh start

We need to start anew, or at least clean off the nominees' list and everything before it died, until we have a high enough number of committed (see below) participants (2 dozens or so) to kick it back off. Past nominations can always be nominated back.

A list of contributors

We need for committed people (if only for copyedit) to voice their interest and say they actually intend to collaborate in nominating, choosing and editing (if only for copyedit) the Collaboration article. Those interested can list themselves here

A pruning rule

We need an actual rule for the pruning of articles. I suggest 2 votes after 7 days. solved, see CCOTW's Talk page

Comments

Comments on relaunching are welcome.

Bilingualism

I think there's a strong urgency for a Bilingualism in Canada article given the historical, politican and cultural importance of the subject and the fact that the bilingualism article does not and perhaps cannot deal in detail with the Canadian aspects of the concept. AndyL 19:19, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've just stubbed one in with a basic historical outline. I'd be grateful if people could start filling in the details, and maybe add some links to fair and balanced anti-bilingualism sites to balance the GoC sites I linked to. -- Dpm64 20:16, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Great! We need to go through the articles that link to bilingualism, find the Canadian ones and redirect or install links to the new Bilingualism in Canada article. I've done this with a few but my computer is unbearably slow and I'm giving up doing any more for now. AndyL 21:55, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Elections charts

I’d like to get some consensus on what to do about colours in the elections charts, but I don’t want to get into a revert war, so I’ve asked people for their ideas before any changes are made. Some of the colours that are currently being used are too dark for some monitors so that it is difficult to read the text. The point of adding colours to the charts is to make it easier for readers to derive information from the charts. This goal is foiled by using colours dark enough to obscure the text. The Wikipedia style guide is clear on the issue:

Use colour sparingly. Computers and browsers vary: you cannot know how much colour is presented on the recipient's machine if any. Wikipedia is international: colours have different meaning in different cultures. Too many colours on one page make them look cluttered and unencyclopedic. Use the colour red only for alerts and warnings.

Several people have suggested their ideas. Three specific proposals have been made. I am proposing to have a vote between these proposals and the status quo.

Please vote and/or contribute your comments at Talk:Canadian federal election results since 1867 Thanks. Kevintoronto 15:59, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • Because of a sock puppet attack, I've ended the vote and drawn some conclusions, although they're not entirely conculsive, so further comments would be appreciated. Kevintoronto 15:59, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I have tabulated the results using some of the more common vote counting methods :) - Jord 18:10, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Rob Anders

On this MP's page, Rob Anders, an anonymous user has added back a link to this site http://www.voteoutanders.com/. Prevoiusly, I thought it was not a NPOV link and I removed it. It is now back. Before I remove it again I was just curious what others thought about this. Is this a fair link? Thanks, --YUL89YYZ 14:53, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

  • There is also a link from the article to robanders.com, his official website, which is not NPOV either. I think that both external links are relevant to him, and that external links don't have to be NPOV, only the text of the article. All of the political party articles have links to the parties' official websites, which are also inherently NPOV. Kevintoronto 14:58, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • The Vote Out Anders link seems relevant and adds to an otherwise sparse article. The link is obviously POV, but it's not a crazy rant so I don't see anything wrong with it. - NormanEinstein 17:21, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • So long as the article text is NPOV I see no problem with a link with a particular slant. This is seen quite often on articles on any manner of topics. Radagast 17:23, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)
      • POV links are permitted, but one should make sure the biases of the links are clearly explained to the readers. - SimonP 17:28, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

I just created {{Canadian quick links}}, mostly as a shameless ripping of {{India quick links}}. It looks like this:

And I'm not sure what to do with it(!). Suggestions are appreciated.

I've added it to my user page :) - Jord 19:51, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I like it. --Spinboy 20:18, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)


Census Articles

I was thinking that it would be useful to have a Canada 2001 Census Article. The content of the article would be a summary of some of the important information from that census. One of the most useful aspects would be that wherever any article references the 2001 Census they would link to the article (would have to edit census references). This would make it quite a bit easier to update it when the Canada 2006 Census is done. (IE check what links to 2001 Census page). Would also give some context to references to 2001 census. Simarly would create Canada 1996 Census etc... for comparison purposes -- Webgeer 04:06, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • That would be great, especially if we can get Canadian town-by-town census-reflecting articles (similar to the US ones). Tim Rhymeless (Er...let's shimmy) 04:49, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • I thought of this before as well, as the Americans have a page for their census. It just seems like so much work ;-) Earl Andrew 05:03, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Screw the Americans, let's do it! --Spinboy 05:08, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
        • What should be included? Earl Andrew 05:23, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
          • When did they start couting gay couples? --Spinboy 05:36, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
            • 2001 I believe. (Oddly enough we discussed this in a class of mine today) - Earl Andrew 05:54, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
              • There we go. It's a start. Maybe include everything from the 2001 census. It's certainly notable. Maybe we should create an article on this. --Spinboy 05:59, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
              • Perhaps. Who should begin this grand venture? Earl Andrew 06:09, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • OK since it seems like a consensus and the United States 2000 Census exists then I'll give it a start. (note I changed my proposed names to be consistent with the US version) -- Webgeer 06:13, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • Sounds great, have a good time. :-) If you need any help, ask Earl, he's good at these types of things. And beer. He's good at drinking beer too. --Spinboy 06:19, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
        • What's all this about beer then? - Earl Andrew 06:34, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
          • Harmless teasing my friend. :-) --Spinboy 07:10, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
            • Do not drink and wiki ;-) Anyways getting back on topic I think we should model it off of the US article. - Earl Andrew 07:14, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
              • I couldn't agree more! I also think that Earl Andrew should cut back on the beer. ;-) Spinboy 07:19, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
                • I started it with only a little help from beer. I'm not sure if I struck the right balance in number of tables. It could defintely be made a little prettier. More demographic information could be included, but I would like to resist having too many tables. After all if you want the gory details you can go to Census Canada pages. If somebody wants to wikify the ethnic origins, all I can say is have fun... -- Webgeer 08:43, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
                  • What's with all of the unwarranted attacks on beer? Beer is our friend. Beer is our ally. Beer is the one thing we can count on when everything is falling down around us. Besides, I understand that Earl is very amusing when he's had too much beer -- sitting in a corner giggling and muttered about bus routes and what-not. ;-) Kevintoronto 15:52, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
                    • Some good work webgeer! I was going to help out but the database was locked, and now I have to finish some school work, but I will work on this shortly. And, let the record be known the drinking age of my province is 5 months higher than my current age. :-D - Earl Andrew 08:25, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Have we decided a specific format for Canadian community pages? SD6-Agent 04:00, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You mean for Rambot? - Earl Andrew 18:48, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, I was going to say, I asked Ram-Man if he could get his Rambot going on Canadian community articles. I gave him the link to the relevant information on the StatsCan website, and he basically said he would sleep on it. Maybe we could prod him into getting the task done? You can look at the article on Courtenay, British Columbia as a working model. Denelson83 19:45, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Ottawa also has a good example too. Plus it links to some of the ethnicities. - Earl Andrew 21:19, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ottawa Wikipedia Meetup

Just a quick note for those Wikipedians who live in Ottawa and the valley that this Saturday @ 2pm there will be a meetup! Come on by the Meetup website and if you can attend, let us know! If not, join up anyway, and that way you'll be informed of future meetups! Thanks! --Spinboy 21:05, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Canadian COTW moving on with Tommy Douglas

The CCOTW for April 2005 is Tommy Douglas. You may already vote for the next collaboration at /CCOTW

Did anyone listen to CBC Ottawa this afternoon?

I turned on the radio at about three minutes to six this evening and heard the CBC host reading out Wikipedia's URL and inviting listeners to visit the site as though they had just done a story on us. Did anyone manage to hear the story that proceeded this? - SimonP (who's hoping they mentioned our full coverage of Ottawa city councillors)

If you know the name of the show, you may be able to find it on the cbc website perhaps tommorow. --   Earl Andrew - talk 23:59, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
No one listens to CBC Ottawa. People prefer CFRA. I don't know anyone who listens to CBC. --Spinboy 00:53, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
LOL my dad does in the mornings, and on his truck radio occaisonally. Some times it's on at dinner time, but rarely. CFRA is garbage anyways. hehehe --   Earl Andrew - talk 01:48, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, *your* Dad. :p CFRA is pretty bad, especially Late Nite Counsell. --Spinboy 01:57, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, that show is \/\/4y |\|0+ 1337 --   Earl Andrew - talk 02:15, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
And Lowell Green is? Bearcat 19:39, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
At least Lowell Green is somewhat, albit remotely, tolerable. --Spinboy 05:35, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • uhm, who listens to radio anymore? XD LG-犬夜叉 08:05, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)
Have you tried this [7]? It may be there, if not try emailing the good people at All in a Day. --   Earl Andrew - talk 21:38, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
As a regular CBC listener, I can tell you that the Ottawa afternoon show is hosted by Brent Bambury who also hosts Go (radio). He seems to be quite internet saavy and regularly references websites (usually the noncommercial community type of websites), so it doesn't suprise me that he mentioned wikipedia on his afternoon show. If only I could get internet radio in my car or at work, then I could listen to Ottawa's CBC feed during the day. -- Webgeer 00:48, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Aboriginal Canada

Category:Canadian First Nations currently includes Category:Métis and Category:Inuit as subcategories. This is incorrect - Quoting from the naming guidelines of Canada's Department of Indian and Northern Affairs: "The Canadian Constitution (the Constitution Act, 1982) recognizes three groups of Aboriginal peoples — Indians, Métis and Inuit."[8] This is also evident by the political organization of Canadian aboriginals. The Assembly of First Nations for the First Nations, the Métis National Council for the Métis, and the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami for the Inuit. So, a new, higher-level category is needed to encompass the Canadian First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and other categories that deal with all three groups.

I'm unsure of what would be the best name for this new category. Possibilities include "Aboriginal Canada", "Aboriginal Canadians", "Canadian Aboriginals", "Aboriginal peoples in Canada", "Canadian First Peoples", etc, etc. I advise first that we use "aboriginal" because it is used more commonly by the government than "First Peoples" [9]. I think the choice that is most concise yet still says everything required would be Category:Aboriginal Canada. Comments? Kurieeto 17:43, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

I'd go with "Aboriginal peoples in Canada" because it is the clearest. "Aboriginal Canada" makes me think that we're talking about Canada before the arrival of the melanin-impoverished folk. Clearly, this category includes articles about the post-invasion history and situation of the Aboriginal peoples as well. Kevintoronto 18:20, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I second "Aboriginal peoples in Canada". -GrantNeufeld 20:56, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Keep it as is. It's what First Nations people call themselves, regardless of what it says in the constitution. Names change over time, and this is a prime example. The term aboriginal is offensive to many. --   Earl Andrew - talk 21:36, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I must disagree. Any term will be offensive to some number of people, but I do believe that the term "aboriginal" would be the least offensive choice. When the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit need a term to describe all three of them they have chosen the term aboriginal. An example of this is the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation, and one of their most known programs, the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards. Another example would be the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network. Further attempts are also being made by the government to use this term, as evident by the wording of National Aboriginal Day. The word is the chosen term used by these people to refer to themselves as a whole. Kurieeto 23:18, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)
Actually, First Nations is a term that describes all three groups, not just one of them. Believe me, the term aboriginal is highly offensive to many First Nations people- and that is what they're calling themselves now. --   Earl Andrew - talk 05:59, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I believe you're mistaken, Earl. First Nations is used virtually exclusively to refer to peoples that might have been termed "Indians" a few decades ago (be they status Indians or not). My understanding Metis and Inuit are excluded from First Nations, but fall under the Aboriginal umbrella.
According to the inappropriately named “Ministry of Indian and Northern Affairs,” the “Metis” and “Inuit” are indeed excluded from First Nations (also called “Indian”), but all three fall under the Aboriginal peoples umbrella. At least from what I can tell from their confusing website that Kurieeto kindly alerted me to here. Paradiso 10:36, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I should throw "indigenous peoples" and "native peoples" out there for consideration... Samaritan 14:20, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I bit the bullet and put together Category:Aboriginal peoples of Canada and did some re-sorting. I'm certainly open to further changes, but this seems to reflect correct useage. -The Tom 00:55, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I would have preferred more time for debate, but very well. Unfortunately the newly created Category:Aboriginal peoples of Canada is worded incorrectly. I suggested "Aboriginal peoples in Canada" for a specific reason, to avoid as the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs puts it, "describing Aboriginal people as "belonging" to Canada"[10]. This is why the subcategories formerly in Category:Canadian First Nations that collected aboriginal peoples were titled for example "Aboriginal peoples in British Columbia", etc. The newly created category will need to be deleted or renamed. Kurieeto 06:12, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)
Interesting. I wouldn't personally consider "of" to imply posession in this case, but if DIAND seems to think so, then I gracefully back out. I had simply named it so it was in keeping with general Wikipedian construction and the title of First Nations of Canada—might this mean that its title (and slso Category:Canadian First Nations) run afoul of useage guidelines as well? -The Tom 18:27, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for noting the other cases that may imply belonging. I would argue they do, and we may as well correct them now when we're changing other things at the same time. Also if you could please file a request to move Category:Aboriginal peoples of Canada to Category:Aboriginal peoples in Canada it would be appreciated. I don't recall the exact name of the page where this is done.
As for the First Nations matter, we again have some options. I'd advise all interested to read the page regarding that term on the DIAND site[11]. Here's an excerpt: "Although the term First Nation is widely used, no legal definition of it exists. Among its uses, the term "First Nations peoples" refers to the Indian peoples in Canada, both Status and Non-Status". Some naming options that spring to mind are "First Nations peoples in Canada", "First Nations", "First Nations in Canada", etc. I believe the first suggestion is best as it continues with the "_ peoples in _" naming conventions being implemented. Whatever change we decide on, if any, for the First Nations category can be applied to the main article. Comments? Kurieeto 13:05, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

New Wikiproject

Hi everyone! Earl Andrew and I have started the WikiProject Ottawa! We'd appreciate it if you stop by and give us a hand! Thanks! --Spinboy 23:48, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Luba

Luba is already a disambiguation page for several other meanings. Should a future article on the Cancon musician be at Luba (singer) or Luba Kowalchyk? (Encyclopedia of Music in Canada: Luba; Jam! Music Encyclopedia: Luba) Samaritan 14:48, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • Luba (singer), because she goes by 'Luba.' (I guess 'Kowalchyk' isn't a very rock 'n roll name!) Paradiso 05:26, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • I would put it under Luba (singer) with a redirect from Luba Kowalchyk. --Spinboy 22:35, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Canadian Atlases

Some useful resources:

-GrantNeufeld 03:23, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Canadian legislators

Hi, I'm trying to organize Category:Legislators. I'm trying to arrange it so that each country gets one entry for its national legislators (e.g. U.S. senators and U.S. House members are put into Category:Members of the U.S. Congress, which is then put into the legislators category). I was going to do this for Canada as well, but hit a roadblock. I read through Parliament of Canada, and couldn't find the word for "Senators and MPs". What category should they go into? Should I just use "Category:Canadian national legislators" or is there a preferred term? Meelar (talk) 01:49, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

I have no idea, but maybe Parliamentarians is the term we want? Maybe you could just add the two categories into Category:Legislators directly.

—UTSRelativity 02:24, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm trying to avoid that--eventually, it will have at least as many subcategories as there are democracies, plus a few more for historical legislators. If no other suggestions, I'll use parliamentarians. Meelar (talk) 02:53, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

Parliamentarian is the correct term for both the House of Commons and Senate. That is why there is a Parliament of Canada web site which includes both. You should say Category:Canadian Parliamentarians. --YUL89YYZ 17:01, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks very much, everyone, for the help. Meelar (talk) 18:00, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

CBC article submitted for peer review

I'd like to see some Web sources for most of the information in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation article, such as CBC television's border zone audience in the States. Denelson83 08:34, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

NPOV dispute

Is the NPOV tag on the "Criticism" section of International Socialists (Canada) valid?70.49.88.25 22:26, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Timezones

Latest comment: 19 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hello all, I got the following message the other day on my talk page, and was wonder if anyone can help, as the answers I do not know for sure.

Earl, since you're a Canadian, and you're interested in time zones, I'm hoping you can help me clear :up some of the misinformation in the time zone articles. My big question is: who named the Canadian :time zones? This is of particular interest because three Canadian zones have the same name as their :U.S. equivalent. So it would be useful to know whether Canada has an agreement with the U.S. about :this, or just chose the same names to avoid confusion.
I'd also like to know who draws the boundaries. In the U.S., Congress draws them, and everybody has to :go along. I gather things are more granular in Canada, but I'd like to get specifics.
---Isaac R 08:00, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

--   Earl Andrew - talk 20:22, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There are actually four zone names shared by the two countries: PST, MST, CST, and EST. It was the railways that first started using these names in the 1880s, and the Canadian railways did copy the names from the American railways. Legal time in Canada is under provincial and territorial jurisdiction: it is these governments that decide zone boundaries, whether or not to use DST, and when standard changes to DST and back. All provinces and territories that use DST have copied the U.S. Congress's DST rules (1st Sun. Apr, last Sun. Oct., 02:00), presumably for the convenience of commerce and entertainment (TV schedules). Indefatigable 23:50, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The Canadian railroads probably participated in naming the time zones. The Time zone article lists the establishment of five time zones in North America in 1883, the easternmost zone known as "Intercolonial" time, an obvious reference to the Intercolonial Railway of Canada from Quebec to the Maritimes. User:Luigizanasi 04:31, 25 April 2005 (UTC)

When you're writing about the future always remember that Wikipedia never forgets

I was just looking at the first version of the 39th Canadian federal election article and chiding myself for some of the speculation I included that tuned out to be utterly wrong. Then I looked at the first version of Canadian federal election, 2004 and wow were we ever wrong. Arguably both reflected the expert opinion at the time, but they are also both very good examples of why Wikipedia is not a crystal ball.- SimonP 05:18, May 16, 2005 (UTC)

Bill C-38

On the talk page for this article, I argue about the title of the article and think it should be moved. I just wanted some consensus from some fellow Canadians before I make a page move on an article as important as this. - Lucky13pjn 02:59, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

New Socialist Group

Latest comment: 19 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion

There's been repeated vandalism of this article by two anon IPs (though possibly the same user) who consistently unwiki every link in the article and add unsourced personal criticism; one of them has explicitly stated on the talk page that they like Wikipedia's usefulness as an axe-grinding tool. I'm on my second revert now; could y'all please keep an eye on it as well? Tanx much. Bearcat 22:56, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

You know, the 3 revert rule does not apply to vandalism. - Lucky13pjn 01:05, May 28, 2005 (UTC)
Ah, okay. Still wouldn't hurt to have as many people keeping an eye on it as possible, though. Bearcat 01:12, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

Title of the notice board

Latest comment: 19 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion

This page has been moved from "Wikipedia:Canadian wikipedians' notice board" to "Wikipedia:Canadian Wikipedians' notice board" on May 31, 2005 by User:Timwi (See edit history). — Instantnood 14:06, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

This is an irritating move since Timwi failed to:
This was an absolutely sloppy move. Mindmatrix 14:32, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
After a second look, it appears that only the second point is valid. The talk page was moved back by Spinboy. Mindmatrix 14:39, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
I've moved back the project page back to small letter w first. Because the project title name [Wikipedians'] is not as same as in the talk page [wikipedians']. And note that Timwi need to know the title name that the folks that needs before move/changes. --Shinjiman ⇔ ♨ 06:06, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Also, the move was performed without any discussion, at least, as far as I can tell. --Deathphoenix 11:53, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Some said it is just a fixing of proper casing. — Instantnood 05:53, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)

Sorting

Anyone know why this page doesn't sort properly on Category:Regional Wikipedian notice boards? I've looked at the wiki-source, and the sort-key is "Canadian", so I don't know why it's under the W's on the category page .. --Azkar 16:42, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • Hmm .. I think {{RWNBs}} (which also adds pages to Category:Regional Wikipedian notice boards) might be overriding the sort key. I'm going to try moving the category tag to the end of the page (where it should be, anyway) and see if that helps. --Azkar 17:08, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • Yup. That did the trick. --Azkar 17:10, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Canadian politics

I had an email (via Jimbo) from Royal Galipeau, a Canadian politician. He wanted to give some corrections and new articles. I told him to edit himself of course, but it seems that he's not willing to try that. So he's sent corrections and new articles as Word files. I could try again to encourage him to edit, but as one of the articles is about himself it might be best for someone uninvolved to look at them first anyway. Is someone willing to look and maybe add these articles? Please let me know, and I can forward the docs to you. Thanks -- sannse (talk) 09:19, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Marc Emery

Someone has been removing information from the Marc Emery page, claiming that it is inaccurate and biased.

Could I have some people look over this page to ensure that (i) the current edit is appropriate, and (ii) no further arbitrary deletions are made. CJCurrie 23:37, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Category:Members of the Canadian House of Commons

A user created template boxes to group the current Parliamentary delegations by province. The problem User:SimonP and I discussed with them is that some of them are far too long compared to the US boxes they were modelled on (see e.g. Template:ON-FedRep), they're not easily made smaller (the Ontario box as it stands is already the result of my best effort to chop it down), and they actually go against stated Wikipedia policy that template boxes should be used to list sequential series and not groups of people or things related only by common occupation or circumstance (as per Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes).

So, long story short, to serve the purpose of the templates in a different manner, I've started to reorganize this category into subgroups, with each article being filed into one subcategory for members grouped by province and one for members grouped by political party. When it comes to the historical ones, though, I can think of several different ways to handle that, so I wanted to bounce them off you guys for input:

  1. Former MPs go into new "historical members by province" and "historical members by political party" subcategories. (My main concern with this one is that "Historical Members of the Canadian House of Commons from Newfoundland and Labrador" is entirely too long to be acceptable as a category name, so the wording for these would have to change.)
  2. The province and party subcategories I've already created become groups of present and former MPs; add just one further category to group members of the current Parliament (without removing those people from the province and party cats).
  3. Same as #2, but without a special category to list current members; just use the article Members of the Canadian House of Commons to serve that purpose. (This is arguably the easiest approach from a post-election category management standpoint, but some people do seem to like having a category for everything a category could possibly be implemented for.)

Any thoughts? Bearcat 16:31, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

On # 1, I would suggest calling them (e.g.) "Historical Newfoundland and Labrador MPs". Also, the territories should be one category. Not only are there few MPs, but territorial ridings have at times combined more than one territory. Plus, it will provide a category for pre-1905 MPs from what are now AB & SK (if there were any?). Luigizanasi 16:50, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
FWIW, the only riding that ever crossed territorial boundaries was Yukon—Mackenzie River for just a single election. Pre-1905, Alberta and Saskatchewan (and Assiniboia and so on) were just ridings within the Northwest Territories [12]. So I wouldn't see an absolute need to merge them, but it's def. an option. -The Tom 15:30, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I think # 2 probably makes the most sense. -The Tom 15:32, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Update: I haven't gotten too much input on this, so I'd still like a few more people to weigh in. However, I am going to rule out option #1 as far too complicated. So the question is: do we want to add a third category for current members of the House, or skip it? Bearcat 1 July 2005 20:33 (UTC)

To any wikipedian living in Vancouver

If you have a digital camera, could you please provide a GFDL image to replace Image:Vancouver Waterfront.jpg, which I originally uploaded and which was recently put on Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images? I'd do it myself, except a) I don't have a digital camera, and b) I'm in the Comox Valley. Denelson83 19:36, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I can try, but I wont be able to get that angle. The Vancouver Waterfront image looks like it was taken from a boat or sea plane. There used to be docks near there where I could have gotten a similar angle, but those have been removed. There might also be a boat parked there when I go to take the picture. I'll upload it under a different name as "Vancouver Waterfront" is not very descriptive. "Canada Place" would be a much better title. Zhatt 5 July 2005 16:58 (UTC)
I did try, but I'm not able to get that angle. That picture was taken from a boat and, unfortunately, I do not have a boat. It may be possible from North Vancouver with a very powerful telescopic lens, but I don't have one of those either. Zhatt 17:24, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
I think you can take a similar picture from Stanley Park with a telephoto lens. I think I have a nice digital picture from that angle. I will see tonight if I can find it. -- Webgeer 17:54, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

Category:Italian-Canadian politicians

Is there any convincing reason why Italian-Canadians should be the only cultural group within Canadian society who get their own special category to group politicians of Italian descent separately from the main category Category:Italian-Canadians? If there is, I fail to understand it... Bearcat 04:03, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Cause we are the greatest? :-) Or maybe we wanna keep the notorious away from the notable with real achievements? :-) The whole thing started at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Italian-Canadian. Luigizanasi 04:57, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Population figures Ontario towns and cities

Anonymous user 24.92.224.54 has changed quite a few Ontario population figures from 2001 to 2004. I have no idea where he got the Thunder Bay (Ontario) figures from. They are not at the Statistics Canada website which gives an estimate of 127,100 for the CMA in 2004 (24.92.224.54 changed this to 136,000). Maybe all the changes he made are suspect. Others may want to check into his/her changes to towns such as Tilsonburg and Peterborough. --BrentS 15:30, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I reverted him on London too, because I know it's not that big, but I don't know about the other places... Adam Bishop 17:14, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
It may just be from the town's own estimates, or the district/region etc in which its located. I don't support the use of those estimates, except to complement Census data. However, for small communities, especially those in townships, census data may not be available (only township data is released).
Anyway, I've updated a few of the pages modified by the user; source used: Statistics Canada Mindmatrix 17:45, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I don't know if this is the same user or not, but this isn't the first time somebody has done exactly this to a subgroup of Ontario communities. Sometime last year, Sudbury magically jumped from 155,000 to 221,000, which is absurd. None of that user's other edits were as outlandish as that one, but they were all entirely unsourced. Bearcat 21:09, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Category:Ontario geography et al

I've noticed that all the provincial geography categories are titled Province geography. Wouldn't it be more appropriate if they were titled Geography of Province instead? I notice that the articles Geography of Canada and Geography of Alberta have titles matching the latter form, and thought that would fit more readily with naming conventions. Would anyone support (or oppose) a move of those categories? Mindmatrix 14:27, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I would oppose the change, and would argue for the opposite:

1. Creates a problem with the Northwest Territories and especially the Yukon, while using the province/territory as an adjectival noun neatly circumvents the issue. See my User page. The "the" was only eliminated from the Yukon by petty-minded bureaucrats in 2002 with the passage of the Yukon Act. "Geography of Yukon" sounds really awkward to the ears of this Yukoner. But if we used "Geography of the Yukon", we would get into the usual silly discusssions, as in Talk:Yukon, Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2005 June 1, Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2005 May 25 2. It's a waste of time better spent on writing articles. Luigizanasi 16:43, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I generally prefer the Geography of xxx-style, but unless there's a mixture of the two styles in a single category I wouldn't worry about it. If you're feeling ambitious and don't mind championing the cause, then I think you should go for it. It simply makes sense for Category:Geography of Canada to lead to Geography of Alberta, etc. With regards to Luigizanasi's comments about the Yukon, Category:Islands of Canada uses "the Yukon" and "the NWT" and no one has complained about that, but maybe it's time that we had that discussion. ;-) --NormanEinstein 18:32, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)
How about a compromise then - the categories for provinces will be changed, and those for territories left as is for now, until we can come up with a naming convention for them as well. Mindmatrix 19:07, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
A good Canadian solution, eh. My personal preference is for using "the Yukon" whenever possible but "Yukon" as an adjectival noun (e.g. "Yukon Geography") is also OK. I abhor & detest "Yukon" without the article and I am not the only one. On the other hand, there are weenies out there who want the Yukon to be just like everybody else and drop the "the". FWIW I have found two other Yukoners with talk pages and they use "the Yukon" in their articles. Luigizanasi 22:41, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I've re-categorized all articles related to provincial geography into new categories. Mindmatrix 16:57, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Regarding the Territories, how's this:
For Nunavut, I don't think the 'the' article is needed (it sounds awkward). Mindmatrix 17:02, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I totally & unequivocally agree with Mindmatrix's names for all three territorial categories. Let's just hope no one tries to change them to "Geography of Yukon", etc., like they did for airports. Thank you. Luigizanasi 17:59, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
NormanEinstein actually mentioned it above; I had thought of the same thing, and formalized it a tad in my previous post. Anyway, everything should be working normally with the new cats, and the old cats have been deleted. Mindmatrix 21:13, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Comprehensive list of all past and present members of the Canadian House of Commons

Ok folks, here's my latest, I hope some of you find them useful. I have compiled a comprehensive list of all past and present members of the Canadian House of Commons. The list contains all 3498 members of the HOC from 1867–2005. If you use these lists, be aware that they were created by a semi-automated process relying on information dumped from the database of the Library of Parliament. In most cases, only the full and formal name of members is used, so help with disambiguation or creation of suitable redirects would be much appreciated. Names of the electoral districts in particular are often incorrect, since they tend to point to the name of the community, rather than to the electoral district. I will create a formal project page at some point for this as I have done in the past for individuals with entries in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, but in the meantime, I challenge you all to turn some of those red wikis into blue! Cheers, Fawcett5 06:34, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)


Canada geography stubs

Latest comment: 19 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion

Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting has just split the Canada geography stub category. With nearly 1500 stubs, it was becoming too large to be of practical use to editors, so separate subcategories have been made for the four provinces with the most stubs (Ontario, Quebec, BC, and Alberta). We've only split these top four because none of the other provinces had a very large number of stubs, so it would have been unprofitable to split off the rest (if they get too big at a later date, they may also be split, but there's no point at the moment in making a separate stub category for eight PEI stubs, for instance). The new categories are all subcategories of Category:Canada geography stubs, and use the following templates:

At the moment the areticles are yet to be sorted into these new categories, but hopefully they will be in the next week or so. We hope this will make it easier for you 9and other editors) to find Canadian geography items to expand! Grutness...wha? 08:31, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • Is there a precedence for using BrColumbia? I have never seen this abbreviation before and don't think it is useful. It should either be British Columbia or BC. I would argue for BC since it is the most used way to refer to the province even in speech. DoubleBlue (Talk) 14:06, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • This British Columbian has never seen/heard "Br. Columbia" before, and so I'll second that request to use "BC" instead. It seems analogous to using "{{UtdStates-geo-stub}}, which would be clearly weird. -The Tom 19:36, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • For those who have an opinion one way or the other, the discussion is at: WP:WSS/C DoubleBlue (Talk) 05:04, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Apologies about Br. Columbia - it's what most of the world calls it, and it never crossed anyone's minds at the Stub sorting project that it wouldn't be known as that in Canada (a fairer analogy might be USA-stub - widely used outside the US, but rarely used there). Still, BritishColumbia-geo-stub can also be used, since one redirect to the other. BC is a bit too ambiguous though - other parts of the world call themselves BC. Grutness...wha? 09:53, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

I re-stubbed most of the Canada-related geographical stubs; for BC, I used {{BritishColumbia-geo-stub}} since it was the most descriptive and least ambiguous. It currently redirects to {{BrColumbia-geo-stub}}, though I hope the former will eventually replace the latter. Mindmatrix 6 July 2005 15:50 (UTC)

BTW: here are the current counts for those stub categories:

The Ontario category is growing very quickly; an extra 100+ stubs have been added in the past week, after the re-categorization was done. Mindmatrix 6 July 2005 15:56 (UTC)

...And there's been yet more growth in some of the provnces which didn't have separate stubs, so WP:WSS has created two more:

The first of these is for geography stubs from NS, NB and PEI - currently there are about 125 of these, and uses {{maritimes-geo-stub}}. The second is for what it says, Newfoundland and Labreador geography stubs. To avoid having a huge template name - and also to hopefully stave off any claims of neglect from Goose Bay et al if the obvious shortening was used - this can use either {{Newfoundland-geo-stub}} or {{Labrador-geo-stub}} (the latter redirects to the former, and the wording of the template names both!). Grutness...wha? 09:46, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Re-categorization

We've re-named a few categories, and since then I've been looking for other inconsistencies in naming. We have Category:Museums in Canada, but Category:Ontario museums; we have Category:Bridges in Canada, yet Category:Montreal buildings. I'd like to standardize this as much as possible. For the geography articles, we decided to use nouns exclusively, instead of adjectival nouns (ie - prefer the first form in each pairing I listed). Some of these categories are sparsely populated now, which makes re-naming them easier.

Succintly:

We should also consider the use of in versus of as a descriptor.

It appears that Wikipedia in general is moving toward this format too, so I propose we make these changes now, rather than making them later when they'll certainly require more work. Does anyone have objections or concerns? Mindmatrix 30 June 2005 20:29 (UTC)

I just want to stress that while I know some people genuinely prefer the "Nation subject" format, it's actually Wikipedia policy that categories should be named in the format "Subject of Nation", and eventually all categories will be changed to that format when people get around to them. So any objections need to address whether there are exceptional circumstances under which Canadian categories should be exempted from the rule; I don't personally think there are any. My only input is that not every province currently has its own distinct museums category, so either all the museums in Canada should be recatted by province, or the Ontario and Alberta categories should be merged back into Category:Museums in Canada. As for "of" vs. "in", I think it really depends on the individual category -- some just sound much more natural one way or the other. Bearcat 1 July 2005 18:29 (UTC)
I've re-named all Province communities categories to Communities in Province, with appropriate attention to the territory categories also. I chose in instead of of since we already had many sub-categories of the form Towns in Province etc, and I re-named any sub-categories that didn't match this naming scheme.
I'll start re-naming other categories soon, but I want input regarding a few changes. In Category:Geography of Canada, we see a standard for sub-categories of Foo of Canada, so I was going to re-name Canadian parks to Parks of Canada. But in Category:Canadian parks, we find its sub-categories using both in and of. I'll change everything to use of, unless someone cites a good reason to do otherwise.
I decided to use Parks in Canada etc instead, but left National parks of Canada. Mindmatrix 5 July 2005 18:13 (UTC)
I also used Category:Ski resorts in Canada, contrary to my previous statement that I'd use of; this was more natural. Mindmatrix 5 July 2005 20:03 (UTC)
Here's a list of other suggested changes (comments are invited):
Note that the above list includes material from Category:Canada or its descendents; I haven't looked at provincial categories yet. Mindmatrix 4 July 2005 17:16 (UTC)

Category:Quebec culture is still linked to several pages so I have not deleted it. Please excise the links so that it can be deleted safely. —Theo (Talk) 5 July 2005 18:22 (UTC)

Fixed; the category can be safely removed now. Mindmatrix 5 July 2005 18:57 (UTC)
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