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Dashes or hyphens in electoral district titles?

We don't seem to have a universal standard for article titles for electoral districts. Federally and in Ontario we consistently use emdashes, but in many other provinces we use hyphens. I can't find anywhere with specific guidance on this in our manuals of style. Which method is proper? Ivanvector's squirrel (trees/nuts) 18:08, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Is WP:CANSTYLE#Ridings what you're looking for? This was discussed here several times in the mid-2000s (I quickly perused a few pages of the archives but didn't find the discussions for which I was searching). I know at one point we decided to use emdashes (perhaps to match StatsCan usage at the time?), but I don't recall any subsequent discussions. Mindmatrix 18:58, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
Yes, that's exactly it. Thanks! Ivanvector's squirrel (trees/nuts) 19:03, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
This is because each province does things differently. Ontario just copies the federal riding names. -- Earl Andrew - talk 20:25, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Yeah, this is all correct: we use em-dashes for federal ridings because that's what Elections Canada uses, and for Ontario provincial ridings because Ontario mostly just uses the federal riding boundaries and keeps the same names (but the two true Ontario originals, Kiiwetinoong and Mushkegowuk—James Bay, still follow federal naming rules for consistency with the others.) In other provinces, however, em-dashes aren't used that way for provincial district names, so we follow whatever each province's formal naming conventions actually are (whether that's hyphens, spaces or en-dashes.) Basically, the rule is to follow actual real-world usage rather than making up our own arbitrary rules. Bearcat (talk) 18:26, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Local Coffee Brands (Vancouver)

Just realized that some of the local Vancouver coffee brands (e.g. 49th Parallel) do not have a page for themselves. If it is alright with this group, I can work on a page for one of them over the weekend and share it here for your feedback. If there is something you'd be recommending I do, please feel free to let me know. Kaisertalk (talk) 17:06, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

If you can find a significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it would be wrong to suggest otherwise. Walter Görlitz (talk) 17:10, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
If you can show enough reliable sources to get some or all of the local Vancouver coffee brands over WP:CORP, then yes, they can have articles. It's important to understand, however, that they're not necessarily all entitled to have Wikipedia articles just because they exist, so you would need to show quite a bit more than just one or two pieces of media coverage to make them notable. Bearcat (talk) 17:13, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of Portal:Niagara Falls for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:Niagara Falls is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The page will be discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Niagara Falls until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the page during the discussion, including to improve the page to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the deletion notice from the top of the page. North America1000 10:20, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of Portal:Canadian football for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:Canadian football is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The page will be discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Canadian football until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the page during the discussion, including to improve the page to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the deletion notice from the top of the page. North America1000 00:35, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

Legislative layout and accessibility

A change has been made at Legislative Assembly of British Columbia based on a discussion at Talk:Legislative Assembly of British Columbia. It relates to part colours, link colours and other issues related to MOS:ACCESS. Walter Görlitz (talk) 15:19, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

Categories for categories

In 2009 I created Category:Terry Fox, copying all the categories from the article Terry Fox as they existed at the time. This was probably excessive, and many were pruned that same day. Since then, every single category has been removed, replaced by two hidden categories (Category:Wikipedia categories named after Canadian sportspeople and Category:Wikipedia categories named after track and field athletes), making this category unreachable from the main category tree. Is there a purpose to this? Shouldn't this be included somwhere in the main (ie - unhidden) category tree? I've come across this situation several times now and it's become a point of annoyance that such categories are effectively removed from the main category tree.

Something else I noticed is the differences between Category:Justin Trudeau and Category:Barack Obama, as examples. The former is not included in Category:Prime Ministers of Canada (nor are any other PM categories), whereas all categories about US presidents are included in Category:Presidents of the United States. All are included in respective Category:Wikipedia categories named after Prime Ministers of Canada and Category:Wikipedia categories named after Presidents of the United States. Why the difference? Shouldn't these be treated the same? (BTW: the PMs were once in the PM category - here's the diff removing it from Category:Justin Trudeau when it was upmerged to Category:Wikipedia categories named after Prime Ministers of Canada.) Mindmatrix 14:27, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Speaker of the House of Commons elections

I want to request some opinions about Speaker of the Canadian House of Commons election, 2011 and 2015 Speaker of the Canadian House of Commons election. Specifically, are these topics that really genuinely need their own standalone articles as separate topics, or are they better handled as subsections of 41st Canadian Parliament and 42nd Canadian Parliament?

Unlike in the United States or the United Kingdom, the Canadian House of Commons does not publicly release the vote totals in a speaker election at all — and in the United States, the speaker actually has direct control of the House's legislative agenda, in a manner much more comparable to our prime minister than to our speaker. So both UK and US speaker elections can be written about in much more depth, and cite much more sourcing, than ours actually can. In both of these articles, considerably more than half of the entire body content is taken up by a purely boilerplate description of the process, such that the section is identical in both articles — and other than that, all we can really do is list the candidates and name the winner, and there's literally nothing else that can be added to either of these articles to beef them up beyond what's already there.

As is so often the case, this really boils down to the fact that Canada does not always need to automatically mirror the way things are done in the United States. We've had a lot of really bad half-baked ideas created on Wikipedia because of the misguided notion that if the US contingent does something then Canada always automatically has to match it, even if there's no context for it — we did not, for example, need a list of "majority-minority" ridings in the House of Commons just because the US has a list of majority-minority districts in the House of Representatives, because the US has genuine and reliably sourceable political and legal reasons why that matters, whereas we don't.

I believe this is the same: our speaker elections don't necessarily need their own standalone articles just because US speaker elections have them, because we can't match their political context, their depth of substance or their depth of sourcing — all we really need is short subsections in the parliamentary session articles, rather than standalone articles that only just barely escape being stubs and can never be expanded any further. But I don't want to proceed with merging them arbitrarily, without additional input from other editors — so I wanted to ask what the rest of y'all think. Bearcat (talk) 13:42, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

Merging them into their respective parliament articles, would be best. GoodDay (talk) 14:58, 12 May 2019 (UTC)
I can't think of a good reason for standalone articles for elections of the Speakers. The subject fits the xxnd Canadian Parliament articles as a standard section. PKT(alk) 15:01, 12 May 2019 (UTC)
+1 merge them. The position of Speaker is notable, but individual Speakers are not outside of the term of the legislature that they serve. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:19, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

List of garden plants to feed honey bees in Canada up for deletion

Nomination of Portal:Montreal for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:Montreal is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The page will be discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Montreal until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the page during the discussion, including to improve the page to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the deletion notice from the top of the page. North America1000 12:05, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

Stereotypes of Canadians

So expand or delete??? Stereotypes of Canadians.¿--Moxy 🍁 13:25, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stereotypes of Canadians.--Moxy 🍁 20
48, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
Comment: an encyclopedic treatment might be included in Canadian identity. – Reidgreg (talk) 14:37, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

Infobox flag within Infobox settlement

I've seen discussions about WP:INFOBOXFLAG in the past and how it does not apply to demographic subjects. @Joeyconnick: has been removing them from {{Infobox settlement}} such as here. I thought it was acceptable to stay in-place. Walter Görlitz (talk) 03:39, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

I was going by a) the general preference for prose, b) the fact neither nearby Surrey, British Columbia or Vancouver uses them, and c) MOS:INFOBOXFLAG's opening itself:

Generally, flag icons should not be used in infoboxes, even when there is a "country", "nationality" or equivalent field: they are unnecessarily distracting and give undue prominence to one field among many. Flag icons should only be inserted in infoboxes in those cases where they convey information in addition to the text.

Pretty clear we should be leaning away from the inclusion of flags. —Joeyconnick (talk) 03:58, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
Support removal of flags from infobox. When doing cleanup, I generally remove these with exceptions for military history and athletes representing a country. – Reidgreg (talk) 14:33, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
I've been doing this for some time now as I see them. Usually while making other edits to the page. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 07:06, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

University of the Fraser Valley

University of the Fraser Valley needs some care and attention from editors who know more about the place than I do. I've updated several links and some data, but I've come across a whole section about a campus that appears to be closed, and our article says it still offers certain courses and other info. Can anybody help? PKT(alk) 17:00, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Bump. Can anybody help this article? PKT(alk) 02:01, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
@PKT: Bumping won't move it to the top of the page. This isn't a forum or message board. Mr. C.C.Hey yo!I didn't do it! 06:40, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
No, it keeps the item from being archived for a little longer. PKT(alk) 11:05, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
I can archive it manually though. If the one below goes, this one will. Walter Görlitz (talk) 15:27, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Template:GPC

An IP (142.160.89.97 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)) has been reverting edits on {{GPC}} for a day or so, insisting that the template is for all parties in Canada following a Green politics ideology, rather than its traditional use for parties under the umbrella of the Green Party of Canada (hence its name) and generally following the usage of the navigation templates of the other major national political entities in Canada (i.e. {{Liberal Party of Canada}}, {{NDP}}, {{Conservative Party of Canada}}) which all broadly include info on the federal parties and their provincial counterparts whether they are officially affiliated or not. The IP seems to want to change the template into one for the broader political ideology, moving it towards a template like {{Canadian Conservative Parties}}. Honestly content-wise there's not a lot of difference between those two approaches when it comes to Green politics in Canada, but we should decide which it is and stick with it. Thoughts? Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:01, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Support reversions to established version of template. The navigation template is used on c.100 pages and its scope shouldn't be changed like that. If the IP editor wants a broader nav template (possibly "Green politics in Canada" or "Environmental politics in Canada", removing many of the specific links to "Green Party" organizations and leaders), they should try creating a new one and see if it finds consensus for use. – Reidgreg (talk) 16:17, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
I support reversions to keep the scope of the template consistent as well. However, I think there is some ambiguity in the template's title. A hidden explanatory note at the top of the template would help avoid the issue this IP is causing. PKT(alk) 16:31, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
@PKT: you mean because "GPC" could refer to other things? There was a hidden hatnote on it, but it linked to the article GPC (disambiguation), which wasn't helpful for someone trying to choose a template for one of the other uses. In fact there don't seem to be any articles listed there which have related templates, but I haven't checked them all. I added one to {{Canadian conservative parties}} after this discussion started, we could do something like that if we find ambiguous uses. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:24, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

Sourcing from Hansard

Trying to source all notable alumni from Agincourt Collegiate Institute Best (only) reliable source I have found for Michael Overs's attendance is a member's statement in Hansard. If anyone knows how to properly format a reference to the Hansard database please fix my undoubtedly botched attempt [1]. Of course, if you can find a better ref please replace it. Thanks. Meters (talk) 04:17, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

DYK for Canada Day

Hi. I have a multiple-article DYK hook which I want to run as a bit of fun for Canada Day, and four of its articles still need reviews. One of these recently passed GA and two of the others are quite short. Any help would be appreciated as the clock is ticking. The nomination is at Template:Did you know nominations/1st Canadian Comedy Awards. Thanks! – Reidgreg (talk) 11:28, 22 June 2019 (UTC) – All done. Feel free to proof-read or comment, though! – Reidgreg (talk) 16:24, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Parti Québécois

Several times in the past few months, a user named 101-Québec has comprehensively gone through our articles about Parti Québécois MNAs to change their nationality from Canadian to Québécois. As always, "Canadian" still does not mean "English Canadian to the exclusion of Quebec" — it means "from Canada including Quebec" — and we have a longstanding consensus that the article subject's personal views on Quebec sovereignty are not the inflection point on which we distinguish a Québécois who is also Canadian from a Québécois who is not also Canadian, so this is entirely inappropriate. But the editor has now revert-warred me over it several times — and they appear to be a WP:SPA with no other Wikipedia editing interest besides removing the label "Canadian" from PQ MNAs.

Their edit history is here. I've reverted them up until now, but I haven't tackled the most recent flare-up at all.

To me, this is behaviour that likely warrants an editblock, because it's not constructive and falls afoul of more than one part of WP:NOTHERE — but having been involved in the dispute, I'm not the right person to impose a block myself, so I wanted to ask for input from the rest of the project. Bearcat (talk) 15:26, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Have reversed edits simply based on the fact it's a Federal party represented in the Canadian Parliament. this wording is just odd to say a quebecois from Quebec... I just redundant and less informative. I'm pretty sure these people didn't give up their Canadian citizenship--Moxy 🍁 15:40, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
You missed Pascal Bérubé. But also, no, this is the provincial party in the National Assembly of Quebec, not the federal one. Bearcat (talk) 15:47, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Bérubé is corrected now...PKT(alk) 15:58, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Sorry typo..... a provincial Parliament representing Canadian members at a Federal standpoint..... the standpoint that they are part of Canada and wish to leave...but they haven't left.. and the Quebec nation is still part of Canada.--Moxy 🍁 16:00, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Talk about additions to main Canada navbox

Could we get some input about adding First Nation links to our main Canada topic nav box {{Canada topics}}. Pls see Template talk:Canada topics#Under 'Geography' adding 'Countries'.--Moxy 🍁 02:03, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Proposed move of Rural municipality

See proposal at Talk:Rural municipality#Requested move 29 June 2019 Hwy43 (talk) 12:15, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

This discussion has been closed, and moved to Talk:Rural municipality (Canada). Alas. PKT(alk) 11:18, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Category:Canadian cattlemen has been nominated for discussion

Category:Canadian cattlemen, of interest to this project, has been nominated for possible merger. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. TSventon (talk) 12:08, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Visible minority charts

Shock is back......but cant remember who it was . Do you guys remember who got banned for adding "Visible minority group" charts all over because they are back adding them again all over.--Moxy 🍁 11:39, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Can't say who it was but do you have a couple diffs? I can look into it. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:02, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

The Great Hall - Toronto (Heritage Site)

Hi Canadian Wikipedians,

I live and i visit always a nearby venue space that i attended before to see concerts and events that takes place in the city and I had my wedding there!

The building is an ancient site and goes back to 1889 and its part of the heritage sites in Toronto and holds a great deal of history. I am not an experienced Wikipedian i just use the space to retrieve information but i think this site should be part of wikipedia, when i did my visit for my wedding i got to see all spaces and hear from the person showing me around how rich the place is and it goes back to YMCA west end, and it had a running track that a six nation athlete used to practice there and got to participate in the Boston marathon ages ago and won.

I believe this should be something that us as Canadian to have up there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kafares (talk • contribs) 15:32, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

PEI 2019 general election 'update'

The extension (not by) election was just held for Charlottetown-Hillsborough Park, today & was won by the PC candidate. This gives the PC minority government a total of 13 seats in the legislature. Seeing as this 'was not' a by-election, the results would be treated a being part of the general election results. I've made some adjustments to related articles, but I'm not completely sure how to implement this (I assume) unique situation in Canadian politics. Any help, would be appreciated. GoodDay (talk) 23:44, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

It's not completely unprecedented, as there have been a few other similar instances in the past, but it is rare. However, other than some of the terminology we use to describe the situation, it otherwise doesn't have to be handled any differently than a conventional general election or by-election — basically everything else works exactly the same way as any other new MLA winning the seat any other way, and all we really have to do is describe the unique aspects of it. Bearcat (talk) 14:16, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Discussion about article "SNC-Lavalin affair"

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:SNC-Lavalin affair#RfC about the first sentence, which is about an article that is within the scope of this WikiProject. We could really use some outside input. – Anne drew 19:38, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Succession to the Throne Act, 2013

The Quebec Court of Appeal apparently heard an appeal regarding the Succession to the Throne Act, 2013 approximately 18 months ago. The article has not been updated with information regarding the result of that appeal since then. Could someone please do so? Thanks. --Slugger O'Toole (talk) 01:32, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, it's still on reserve before the Quebec Court of Appeal. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 20:29, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Council of Canadian Academies (CCA)

I've noticed some errors on the Council of Canadian Academies Wikipedia page. Listed below: They've changed "Board of Governors" to "Board of Directors"; A majority of the Board of Directors are not appointed, only 6 out of 12; They've now published over 50 assessments; Under "see also", the Science, Technology, and Innovation Council is listed but this organization no longer exists; Under Presidents... Peter Nicholson is incorrectly listed as Dr., and; Janet Bax was intern President until January 31, 2016 not February 1, 2016.

Asebben (talk) 16:34, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Go ahead and update the article, @Asebben:, and please provide references to the current information. BeBold. PKT(alk) 16:39, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Berry Head, Newfoundland and Labrador

Any one know about Berry Head, Newfoundland and Labrador? See User talk:CambridgeBayWeather#Berry Head. Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 23:50, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Proposed move of County of Minburn No. 27

See discussion at Talk:County of Minburn No. 27#Requested move 30 July 2019, referring to the past discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Alberta/Archive 5#Proposed move of rural and specialized municipality articles. Hwy43 (talk) 18:09, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Removing MLA lists from riding articles.

Hello, User:Joeyconnick has been removing MLA lists from various BC provincial ridings that an anon user has been adding, citing it is duplicate information (with the election results) (e.g. here). I think the actions are harmful, as I'm sure the anon sees that these lists exist everywhere else on Wikipedia (especially on other ridings), and may be discouraged from editing in the future. I see no reason why they shouldn't be included, as unlike the election result tables, they show terms of office and which legislature the members sat in. Anyone want to back me up here? -- Earl Andrew - talk 19:16, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Harmful? That's an interesting and provocative word choice. Maybe my reverts will encourage them to make less problematic edits?
"Problematic edits" in that, beyond the duplicated information, there's also significant problems with: rowspan, MOS:DATERANGE, and non-standard table formatting in all the edits. And apparently they can't even be bothered to read and employ MOS:HEAD (namely, sentence case for section headings). And the party colours should be next to the party names, not the MLA (as they are in the election results tables). So if these are suitable for inclusion—and honestly I remain unconvinced they provide any relevant new info and "this exists elsewhere" is a very poor argument to continue propagating them—then at the very least they should be done properly. —Joeyconnick (talk) 19:28, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
This page exists as a place where potential changes to how the MLA tables are formatted can be discussed. However, it is not your prerogative to arbitrarily deem that the existence of such tables is "doing it wrong", as you did in your edit summaries — such tables are mandatory, and are not duplication of the election results tables as they present a different subset of information in a non-redundant way. So, again, you're free to propose changes in how we format the MLA list templates in election articles — but you're going to be running the risk of a temporary editblock for disruption if you continue to remove them from articles entirely instead of discussing potential improvements to them. Bearcat (talk) 19:43, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
In terms of the content, I agree with Earl Andrew - the short table of MLAs or MPPs (depending on the province) is useful information about the history of a riding. If there's a formatting issue, editors should help to fix the formatting. PKT(alk) 21:12, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Agree with Keep. I find it very handy to have lists of all the members for a riding, especially since the re-jig of the Library of Parliament webpages has made it much less user-friendly to find that info at the federal level, for example. Having lists of members, federal and provincial, is a good part of the articles. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 03:36, 5 August 2019 (UTC)


Article requests

I'd like to raise a discussion about Wikipedia:Canadian Wikipedians' notice board/Requests.

In my experience, it's actually very little used and rarely consulted by active Wikipedians at all — in actual practice, it basically serves almost entirely as a place for anon IPs, who can't create articles themselves, to post redlink requests for articles that mostly aren't likely to ever actually happen. 1997 Canadian Flying Loon Loonie? Detroit-Windsor vibrations? National quotient (meaning "number of people per electoral district (riding)", and thus not a topic that will ever actually warrant its own article as a separate topic from electoral district (Canada))? Smalltown shopping malls with no discernible notability claims beyond just existing? In actual practice, it just becomes a list of permanent redlinks that almost no active editors ever actually even try to deal with or respond to at all — and it's also where the recent "Reeves and mayors of former municipalities of Metropolitan Toronto" slapfight came from, because there was a discussion there that nobody paid any attention to until it got repasted here.

So my question is, if we're not going to start actually doing anything productive with it, then is there any value in even keeping it at all anymore? Bearcat (talk) 20:32, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Definitely out of date. I'd go for a trim/review/cull of what's there, those examples you gave could go. But maybe there is some value there, so I'd hesitate to delete it completely. I had never looked at it before you mentioned it. I'm probably not the only lazy one. :-) I could take a go at it. I have access to Canadian Newsstand/Globe and Mail/Toronto Star archives, so I could make some decent guesses at feasible ones. Alaney2k (talk) 20:41, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
I don't see a value to that page. Never responded to any of the requests, many of which are badly dated. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 15:17, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
so, a month on. Is there any consensus on this issue? I would suggest keeping the tab, but automatically culling any requests that are more than a year old. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 02:20, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
Blank it in favour of a message redirecting editor to this board to make a request for an article, which can either be created by an interested editor if deemed notable, or declined due to lack of notability. While the request may have served a useful purpose in the formative years of this WikiProject, it has gone stale and become ignored. Hwy43 (talk) 05:29, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Deletion of project template again

Pls see Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2019 July 16#Template:Infobox province or territory of Canada--Moxy 🍁 21:47, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

I looked. Concluded I don't know enough about wrappers and tranclusions to make any useful comment. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 02:24, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
Same as Buzfuz. Though that said, I'm far from convinced by the argument that we have any uniquely Canadian needs that the merge-target template somehow can't handle. Bearcat (talk) 16:42, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
My only concern would be that the regular template does not allow for enough customisation for Canadian terminology. I have run in with that issue in other templates designed by US-pedians. They may think, in good faith, that the template works for other jurisdictions but it actually doesn't. I will take a look at the model one and see if I can find any issues. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 19:19, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Deletion of "order" in bios of Prime Ministers

An editor has been removing the number from the "order" parameter in the bios of the Prime Ministers, without explanation. If you check out the bios of Mackenzie King, Clark, and others, they no longer state if they were the 10th Prime Minister, the 16th PM, etc. I would have thought that if there is a parameter for the order to hold the office in the template for the inbox, that's a general consensus that this information is relevant and useful, but I thought I would raise it here before going on a revert campaign. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 13:41, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

The "order" valid information that should be kept, IMO. PKT(alk) 14:03, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
The troublesome editor-in-question is @Discospinster:, who's been trying to re-insert mistaken edits by @Vaze50:. He's been removing numberings & capitalizing prime minister to Prime Minister, in the intros. GoodDay (talk) 14:35, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
FWIW - the numberings should be removed from infoboxes of cabinet ministers, ya know - finance, defence, etc. GoodDay (talk) 14:59, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
Following up on the ANI thread: as per the template documentation, order numbers should be included only "when there is a well established use of such numbering in reliable sources". Is that the case for PMs? I'm not sure: various sources do give numbers, but those numbers are different (for example Parliament differs from ours) and some don't give numbers at all (eg. Canadian Encyclopedia). It definitely isn't the case for cabinet ministers. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:07, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
The numbers used in the wiki articles match the numbers the PMs themselves have used:
bio for Justin Trudeau on his PMO web-page states that he is the 23rd Prime Minister.
Stephen Harper's Facebook page says that he was the 22nd PM.
Paul Martin's personal page says that he was the 21st PM.
Can't find a page for Chrétien.
Kim Campbell's personal page says she was the 19th PM.
Brian Mulroney's professional page says he was the 18th PM.
Canadian Encyclopedia interview with John Turner refers to him as the 17th PM.
Didn't find a personal web-page for Joe Clark.
Didn't find a personal web-page for Pierre Trudeau, but the Canadian Encyclopedia article refers to him as the 15th PM.
That matches the numbering used in the articles, where PMs who served separated terms (Macdonald, Meighen, King and Trudeau père) don't get additional numbers. Seems a pretty well-established numbering system, if the PM and the former PMs use it themselves. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 15:58, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of Portal:Ottawa for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:Ottawa is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The page will be discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Ottawa until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the page during the discussion, including to improve the page to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the deletion notice from the top of the page. North America1000 01:09, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of Portal:Canadian Armed Forces for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:Canadian Armed Forces is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The page will be discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Canadian Armed Forces until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the page during the discussion, including to improve the page to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the deletion notice from the top of the page. North America1000 01:16, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of Distinguished Artists for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Distinguished Artists is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Distinguished Artists until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Theprussian (talk) 16:32, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

List of First Nations governments move proposal

I've been updating and creating a fair amount of Indigenous geography content lately, starting with Alberta, where every Indian reserve now has its own page and its own locator map. As I work through the morass of redlinks, it seems to me like there are a few community standards that have never been established. For instance, First Nations band governments (which are groups of people) and Indian reserves (which are geographical entities) are often conflated in first-pass stubs. Because many bands own multiple reserves (i.e. Bigstone Cree Nation) and some reserves are owned by multiple bands (i.e. Blue Quills First Nation Indian Reserve), each should ideally have its own article, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of consistency among those that already exist. To make it easier, I've extensively redeveloped Template:Infobox First Nation.

So, this is all just a heads-up that a lot of this work runs the risk of re-opening old discussions that never achieved consensus. Here's a link to a proposal I'd especially like to notify everyone about:

→ Talk:List of First Nations governments#Requested move 22 August 2019: Suggested move of List of First Nations governments to List of First Nations band governments

I don't think this is a particularly contentious suggestion, but it's an old and large page, so I thought it was worth a ping. "First Nations governments" could refer to band governments, tribal councils, unrecognized Indigenous entities, or historical Indigenous polities: an unworkably large and diverse group. "First Nations band governments" refers to a finite set of about 620 entities, recognized by the federal government. In practice, the article already only lists band governments, so this name change would just make its already-existing scope more clear.

Federal band recognition is not a morally ideal process (groups such as Alberta's Aseniwuche Winewak Nation have been denied Indian status largely because the government never bothered to send a Treaty party to meet them). But I think this change would also benefit coverage of unrecognized First Nations, because it would allow scope for a complementary List of unrecognized First Nations in Canada to be created, equivalent to List of unrecognized tribes in the United States (although probably smaller).

One last note: unless I've really missed something, "First Nations" constitutionally does not include "Inuit" and the Nunavut section of this article should be removed.

Awmcphee (talk) 04:43, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

There's certainly no reason why a First Nations band and its reserve can't have separate articles — the issue is that we haven't always been able to support standalone articles in all cases, as there isn't always very much reliably sourceable content to say about the band and the reserve as separate topics. So it's not ideal, but redirecting a reserve to the name of the First Nation that inhabits it is still preferred to either a redlink or an unreferenced stub. This is the same reason why we can't always support standalone articles about every named community in Canada as a separate topic from the municipality that it's part of — there just aren't always enough decent references for submunicipal neighbourhoods or communities to allow us to say anything more than "this is a place that exists, the end". If you have access to better sources for First Nations reserves than the norm, you're absolutely free to convert them from redirects into standalone articles — but the quality of the referencing that is or isn't available to support a standalone artice is the determining factor, not "separate articles are always mandatory no matter how bad the referencing is". Bearcat (talk) 20:01, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
I was just going to say something about scope but your "last note" maybe clarifies it. Anyway, would it be better for the list to be a List of Indigenous governments in Canada? (If that's the appropriate term, I'm not very knowledgeable in this) Or are you just starting with the First Nations and maybe planning to move on to other Indigenous groups later? Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 21:27, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Proposed move discussion at 'Canada national football team'

There is a proposal to move Canada national football team to Canada men's national football team over at Talk:Canada national football team#Requested move 30 August 2019. - TrailBlzr (talk) 23:51, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

I will stop at nothing, say the right things when electioneering...

Just a heads-up to everybody that the cyclical election year onslaught of campaign brochure articles about as yet unelected candidates in the 2019 Canadian federal election has already begun. In addition to a bunch that have either already been deleted or are still at AFD as of today, I've literally caught eight nine ten more within the past few hours alone. And it warrants mention that so far, except for one Green they've otherwise been entirely Conservatives so far, created by a cluster of at least three four users who aren't quite literal WP:SPAs, but are pretty close to it as creating articles about Conservative candidates seems to be their primary interest right now.

As always, of course, WP:NPOL does not grant notability to candidates — a person has to win the seat to derive notability from a federal election, not just run for it — but as we also know, in the year of an election we have a constant eruption of these campaign brochure articles anyway. So just a reminder to everybody to be vigilant about watching out for candidates trying to use Wikipedia as a campaign platform.

I've speedy deleted one outright on procedural grounds, as the creator had started it in draftspace but then copy-pasted it directly into mainspace without a proper AFC review, but eight of the other nine have already been listed for AFD and the other one will be momentarily. So you can check Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Politicians if you want to see the articles that I've caught. Bearcat (talk) 19:20, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that political parties are attempting to use Wikipedia for advertising? Shocking! Walter Görlitz (talk) 19:33, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
Wouldn't it be easier to simply redirect these to the appropriate provincial section in List of candidates by riding for the 43rd Canadian federal election? We should also consider more explicit rules about this in WP:CANCAN. Mindmatrix 19:58, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
RFD has actually deprecated the idea that candidate names routinely need to be redirected to an election-related article — it still happens sometimes if there are grounds to believe that a particular candidate is a more plausible search term than usual (e.g. some US gubernatorial candidates), but there's no consensus that it's required or useful for most candidates anymore. It was never very good at doing what it was designed to do (i.e. blocking the creation of standalone articles because we thought newbies were less likely to know how to edit a redirect than they actually are) in the first place, and not infrequently interferes with much more notable people with the same name. Bearcat (talk) 20:27, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
I think an editnotice or a hidden comment discouraging editors from creating pages on the as-yet-non-notable candidates should suffice. It should be a great idea to inform people especially if they're new to WP. FoxyGrampa75 (talk) 02:15, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Where would we place such a thing? Bearcat (talk) 19:05, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
The conservatives are sending out campaign brochures in meatspace too. I may have written a complaint to Elections Canada. Simonm223 (talk) 19:11, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Y'all might be interested in Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Canadian politics. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 22:43, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

@Bearcat:: well done on the discussion thread title. You couldn't sneak that song lyric by me undetected. I may. Be paranoid. But. Not an. Android. Cheers, Hwy43 (talk) 03:18, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

AFDs about lakes in Quebec, and about Statistics of Canada sources?

Please consider commenting at:

--Doncram (talk) 20:35, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Also, could anyone help identify which are the larger lakes in Canada? A ranking of lakes by size, by province? To help direct editors to work on more important rather than least important potential topics for Wikipedia. The List of lakes in Quebec article helpfully gives a list of those with more than 400 square kilometres (150 sq mi) area, which all have articles, but how can the next biggest layer of lakes be identified? It cites a 2005 Statistics of Canada publication, "Principal lakes, elevation and area, by province and territory", which maybe identifies more of the bigger ones, but seems not to be available online anymore. I can't find it at the Statistics website. Help! --Doncram (talk) 23:48, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

BT

Does Breakfast Television (Citytv Toronto) really need its own standalone article as a separate topic from Breakfast Television everywhere else? It's referenced five-sixths to primary sources and non-reference clarifying notes rather than reliable sources, and even the one footnote that was technically a reliable source is a dead link I can't recover because the publication is an out of business zombie whose website still exists but can't be searched anymore. Which means it's not well-sourced as notable at all, and it's liberally peppered with unencyclopedic bumf like "Many people had reached out and showed their love for Kevin as he was signing off for one last time" — and of all the different BTs across Canada, Toronto's is the only one that has its own standalone article, while all of the others are just addressed by the omnibus article with no separate content forks to expand on their section in the omnibus article at all. And by the same token, neither CTV Morning Live nor Global News Morning have content forks for any individual edition of the show as a separate topic from the franchise overview either. So I'm not convinced that BT needs two articles instead of one, but I wanted to ask what other people think rather than merging them arbitrarily. Bearcat (talk) 07:50, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, merge them. The Toronto version was the original and aired more than a decade earlier than the others, but it's all one brand - it merits one article describing the main show and its spinoffs, not a separate article for each one or any one in particular. It's all in desperate need of updating, too: the Toronto section of Breakfast Television is still describing a recruitment drive from 2006 as though it's ongoing, several of the "now known as" station names are years out of date, and all the unencyclopedic fluff needs to be trimmed. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 15:47, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Support Multiple are not necessary. Mr. C.C.Hey yo!I didn't do it! 06:38, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

I few years back (may be 5 years ago) I proposed redirecting Canadian related project talk pages to this page with no luck (CAN roads was the main hold out that could be omitted from this proposal if need be ..but no real action there either now). Here we are many years later with most Canadian sub project inactive for years. I am proposing keeping the projects as they have vital info and stats but redirecting their talk pages here so that questions and notices are seen by us here - thus we can reply or react where need be.--Moxy 🍁 20:57, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Communities
Topics
Politics
Entertainment

Comments

  • @Moxy: I would suggest posting a redirect discussion notice on each of talk pages of the WikiProjects that would be affected by the proposal; I do not think this decision should solely be made here without consulting the participants of these WikiProjects (especially if they may not be watching this talk page). Mkdw talk 22:34, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
 Done --Moxy 🍁 22:48, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose CanRoads, communities, geography and provincial WikiProjects for the same reasons as five years ago (@Moxy: please supply a link to that past discussion for all of us). I use these WikiProject talk pages when doing work on highways, communities, geographies, and provincial articles. As stated before, although it appears there is little activity on these, that doesn't mean they aren't watched or that their editors are not active furthering the WikiProjects. In fact, when I post notices about proposed deletions, having the additional eyes at the provincial, communities, geography and CanRoads WikiProjects are very helpful in addition to the watchers at CanTalk. There is a volume issue at CanTalk where things can get overlooked and missed among all the activities. Not all watchers at these individual WikiProject talk pages are CanTalk watchers, so we would lose their valuable input on matters such as proposed deletions, mergers, etc. By redirecting these talk pages, we cannot compel their watchers to chart watching CanTalk. This proposal removes an opportunity to directly engage with those editors that are most interested in topics at the provincial, community, geography and highway levels. Bottom line is the activity in these WikiProjects should not be judged by reviewing the revision histories of their talk pages.

    If these are redirected, then I ask what workaround is there to engage these other watchers? Mass pinging lists of editors from the WikiProjects is not the answer. That would be clunky and amateurish.

    Honestly, I don't understand why this repeatedly needs to be proposed. There is no benefit. Hwy43 (talk) 23:54, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

  • Indifferent to major cities WikiProjects. I support deletion of the entireties of WikiProjects for any sub-provincial geographies aside from these major cities, such as there are for the Okanogan and some united counties in Ontario, if they still exist. They should have never been WikiProjects in the first place. Hwy43 (talk) 23:54, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Abstaining from all others lists as I am not familiar with them. Hwy43 (talk) 23:54, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose I don't care about most of the locations and I suspect that having a lot of cross-talk will cause a lot of editors like me to simply ignore the discussions, thereby missing the small amount of content in which they are actually interested. Walter Görlitz (talk) 01:27, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose Walter brings up a good point. A cross-talk page is not good. You think it will be better for all Wikiprojects, but it actually won't be. Hwy43 also brings up a good point. There is no point in bringing this up. This the second time bringing this up and it looks like it will be another oppose. You should think about not proposing this again. You will get the same result. Having these talk pages as is is not doing any harm. Mr. C.C.Hey yo!I didn't do it! 06:30, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment I don't think redirection is necessary, but I'd support adding a disclaimer to some pages along the lines of "This WikiProject may be inactive. Consider posting a discussion notice at WP:Canada to reach a wider audience." BLAIXX 12:39, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm with Blaixx here, with respect to the provincial and community working groups. A note advising users they'd be better off asking for help on the central notice board (this page) would be more useful. I also agree with Hwy43 regarding CanRoads and such: they're fine, just leave them be. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 12:34, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

59th NB legislature

Would someone fix up the seats change table at 59th New Brunswick Legislature, which I've been trying to update since the death of an MLA there. I'm on the verge of smashing my screen & keyboard. GoodDay (talk) 13:53, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

We've got a mess up

At the 42nd Canadian Parliament article, we've a mess up. In the table concerning seat changes over the life of the 42nd parliament, we've got August 16, 2019 as when the NDP dropped from 41 to 40 seats. Yet, the party currently has 39 seats. What happened to the 40th NDP MP & when? GoodDay (talk) 02:50, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Where does 39 come from? I just went through and updated List of New Democratic Party members of parliament and count 40 current members, according to our articles. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 12:07, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
The HoC website says 39 for the NDP. GoodDay (talk) 14:01, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
Link? I couldn't find it. Does it have a list of current MPs anywhere? The list I did find on the Parliament website had clearly not been updated since the 2015 election. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:28, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
Now, I can't find it. Something is messed up. We'll need help over at 2019 Canadian federal election as well, where the number is at 39 for the NDP. GoodDay (talk) 14:35, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
In 2015, 43 NDP MPs were elected into the House of Commons. Since then, four members have ended their terms: Murray Rankin (resigned 2019.09.01), Sheila Malcolmson (by-election MLA 2019.01.02), Kennedy Stewart (resigned 2018.09.14), and Thomas Mulcair (resigned 2018.08.03). The correct standing total is 39. Mkdw talk 14:50, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
44 NDP were elected in 2015. GoodDay (talk) 14:53, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
You're right. I am forgetting Pierre Nantel who crossed the floor on 2019.08.16 for three days (to Green) and now sits as an independent. Mkdw talk 14:58, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
Rankin resigned his seat on September 1, 2019? GoodDay (talk) 15:01, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes, or at least the effective date of his resignation. He was named by Trudeau in July for Chair of the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency. Rankin's last sitting day in parliament was August 30 and his term formally ended on September 1. Mkdw talk 15:11, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

I shall update his bio infobox. But, we're still at loss, about the 40 or 39 situation. GoodDay (talk) 15:14, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
44 minus 5 would equal 39, no? Four resignations and one removed from caucus. Mkdw talk 15:28, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
Ok, I've made the corrections. Rankin was the missing link. GoodDay (talk) 15:30, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
I found an official source which shows Rankin's end date in parliament in case it is needed: [2]. Mkdw talk 19:18, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
Cool :) GoodDay (talk) 19:36, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Category:Canadian expatriates in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Does anybody know of any other people that would fit this category? Cacrats (talk) 19:43, 25 September 2019 (UTC) (talk) 19:41, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Satellite television edits promotional?

Please could someone have a look at recent contributions by BeefyChuck21 to determine whether they are promotional or legit? It's beyond my expertise. Thanks. Meticulo (talk) 23:27, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Tununiq

Just updated the Tununiq after the by-election and noticed there are two style for the elections. Most follow Tununiq#2013 election but then there is Tununiq#2017 election. Which is the standard style in other articles? CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 07:14, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure there is a standard style - I've seen a variety of them. They've evolved as the years go by. In my opinion, the style used for the Tununiq#2017 election looks rather cleaner and better organized than the other in this case. PKT(alk) 11:27, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
I think the other boxes have a column for party colour, at the left hand side. That means nothing for Nunavut elections, since they don't have parties. The 2017 box looks cleaner and I think should be used for the other Nunavut elections as well. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 11:33, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
I don't think there's been any formal consensus established for which style to follow in Nunavut elections. The greyboxed version indeed resulted from the fact that most other Canadian legislative elections are partisan, so their election results tables have a colourbox at the beginning of the row to denote the party colours — so when we started actually adding results tables to Nunavut electoral districts, we just kept the established format from partisan elections with the existing "independent" colour used across the board. I really don't think there's ever been a formal discussion to establish a consensus that the greybox format was preferred over the 2017 alternative — it just started that way because reasons and then mostly stuck because of inertia. So if somebody actually wants to tackle converting the greyboxed versions over to the 2017 format, there's no reason why they couldn't — I agree that the 2017 alternative actually does look cleaner and better organized, and just having a constant stack of grey boxes isn't useful in a jurisdiction where every candidate is always a greyboxed independent. Each district could simply have a note added to clarify why there aren't party affiliation colours in the results tables, if anybody's concerned that the inconsistency with federal, provincial and Yukon elections might actually cause any confusion for the uninitiated. Bearcat (talk) 00:35, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
And also, thanks for raising this discussion; I missed the news of the initial by-election entirely, so this discussion alerted me and I got David Qamaniq's article in place since nobody else had started it yet. Bearcat (talk) 00:44, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
The 2017 version is what I've been using for municipal election articles which are also non-partisan, so it would make sense to use it for consistency sake. -- Earl Andrew - talk 01:12, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
I should add, however, that if people do want to go ahead with converting the other election tables to the 2017 format, the one minor change I would make to the 2017 template is adding a crossbar where it can either link to the election article or mention the exact date of the by-election the way the greybox version does — because if we switch the formatting of the tables, the article currently offers no other way to link to the election articles at all, and just adding a line of text before each table to provide that link in prose would be bad article design. But that's not difficult to add. Bearcat (talk) 18:09, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

How's this look? CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 10:12, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

Excellent. Good job. Bearcat (talk) 18:15, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

Town and city demographics

Just a heads up to everybody, I've noticed a new issue that we have to watch out for when it comes to town and city populations.

As many of you already know, we've had a longstanding issue with editors who failed to understand the definition of population centre making changes to the population centre lists to reflect the municipal populations instead of the correct "population centre" populations — well, in the past few weeks I've seen several examples (most recently Pembroke, Ontario) of people making the same conflation in the other direction, replacing municipal populations with population centre populations in the city articles. And in the case of Pembroke, while the original number was the correct city figure, it was always cited to the population centre data instead of the municipal data even before the editor tried to change it, which means people are sometimes even using the wrong sources outright.

So this is a whole new thing we're going to have to watch out for, unfortunately. Bearcat (talk) 22:46, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

One of the many failings of Wikipedia's category software is that it provides good navigation to sub-categories, mediocre navigation to parent categories, and no navigation at all to sibling categories. Hence the widespread use of category navigation templates such {{Navseasoncats}} for chronology categories.

While working on Canadian chronology categories, I noticed that since Canada has a fairly stable set of provinces and territories, it would be suitable for something like {{AllIrelandByCountyCatNav}}, in this case to provide navigation between categories by province or territory of Canada. So I created {{CanadaByProvinceCatNav}}, which uses a a Lua module to achieve the goal.

{{CanadaByProvinceCatNav}} needs no parameters. Just place it on a category page, and if the category title includes the name of a province of Canada, it creates a navbox with links to similar categories for all the other provinces and territories. So e.g. on Category:Academics in Alberta the navbox has links to Category:Academics in British Columbia, Category:Academics in Manitoba etc ... with greyed-out entries for Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon, since none of those categories exist.

I have deployed it on over 8,000 categories. It seems to be working fine, though I haven't finished resolving all the edge cases.

I hope this helps. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:07, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Infobox Canada electoral district

Please see Template talk:Infobox Canada electoral district#Changes. Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 17:37, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of Portal:Canada for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:Canada is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The page will be discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Canada until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the page during the discussion, including to improve the page to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the deletion notice from the top of the page. Certes (talk) 20:47, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

The 10,000 Challenge third anniversary

The 10,000 Challenge of WikiProject Canada (shortcut: WP:CAN10K) will soon be hitting its third-anniversary mark. Please consider submitting any Canada-related articles you have created or improved since November 2016. Please try to ensure that all entries are sourced with formatted citations and have no unsourced claims. Barnstars will be awarded to eligible participants.



You may use the above button to submit entries, or bookmark this link for convenience. Thank-you, and please spread the word to those you know who might be interested in joining this effort to improve the quality of Canada-related articles. – Reidgreg (talk) 22:52, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Windsor Light Music Theatre

There's a discussion at Talk:Windsor Light Music Theatre#Notability, if anyone is interested. Voceditenore (talk) 10:18, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Infobox park maps

I'm looking for some guidance on how to display a smaller scale map for an article I've been working on in the past few weeks, Living Prairie Museum. Another article with the Infobox parks template does display the correct scale, Kildonan Park. But whatever I do, it either displays nothing, or a map of all of greater Winnipeg. Was the red outlined map for Kildonan Park done manually or are they somehow auto-generated based on some parameter. I already have the coordinates inline,title in both articles. Thanks in advance. Jimj wpg (talk) 05:16, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

I believe the map for Kildonan Park is being generated from its Wikidata entry. Try adding the "coordinate location" statement (property P625) on the Wikidata entry for Living Prairie Museum. Mindmatrix 14:34, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
OK, thanks for the quick reply. There is a 'headquarters location' already. Can I delete that and replace with 'coordinate location', or keep both? Jimj wpg (talk) 15:53, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
Nope, still having problems. I looked at how the Imported Spanish Wikipedia was done. Whomever did that edit, the map doesn't display on es.wikipedia.org either. And the Infobox for Living Prairie now displays a JSON error:<mapframe>: The JSON content is not valid GeoJSON+simplestyle. Am completely lost on this. Jimj wpg (talk) 16:09, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
I had a quick look at it, but the source of the error isn't obvious. (Aside: I tried editing Kildonan Park to add the 'qid', and it gives the same error.) Mindmatrix 02:40, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
BINGO! I got it working! Had to delete the Spanish map reference in Wikidata, it wasn't working either. I notice I can select the zoom on the map itself. Pretty cool. The key in the LIving Prairie Museum article was to delete the Spanish Wikidata item and insert '| mapframe-zoom:
with a number around 14 to zoom in closer than the default.. Jimj wpg (talk) 09:40, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

CfDs of Category:Indian government districts in British Columbia and Category:Naskapi village municipalities in Quebec

Please review and provide your comments at:

Cheers, Hwy43 (talk) 23:47, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Pinehouse Photography Club

Pinehouse Photography Club

Maybe you heard of it or maybe you haven't. Although I have no association to the club anymore, as I did create it in 2017, I wanted to create the page because of all the notability they have received. Hope someone can help look it over, propose changes and even add pertinent information from a neutral perspective Thank you very much!!--Dreerwin (talk) 15:05, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Swearing

Hi everyone - what's the date when the new MPs will be sworn in? Has the schedule been put in place yet? Cheers, PKT(alk) 21:09, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

I cannot find a schedule yet. Walter Görlitz (talk) 21:12, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Incumbent PMs government being reelected.

Today (at least) two editors have deleted prime minister-designate from the bottom of the 2019 Canadian federal election article, on the argument that it's not used for incumbent prime ministers whose governments were reelected. But, we've always used prime minister-designate in all the Canadian federal election articles infoboxes, irregardless of if it's an incumbent prime ministers. Why is this federal election being treated differently? GoodDay (talk) 21:21, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

I am not sure about precedent on Wikipedia, but constitutionally, "Prime Minister-designate" only occurs when the current Prime Minister is defeated or resigns. It does not apply to incumbent Prime Ministers in Canada. Prime Minister-designate occurs only during the 'swearing-in of a new ministry". Her Majesty The Queen, by way of the Governor General, administers the Oath of Office and a new Prime Minister-designate is selected. As the incumbent Prime Minister was not defeated (or resigned) and the Liberal Party of Canada will continue to form the government, not form a new ministry, the Oath of Office is not administered and and therefore no Prime Minister-designate is selected. Mkdw talk 21:37, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
The practice of using pm-designate, elected president, appointed pm etc etc is commonly used for election articles of several countries. Shall we suddenly make Canada unique? GoodDay (talk) 22:48, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
Note we also use the same practice for the provincial & territorial general elections articles. Shall we now change all of those as well? GoodDay (talk) 22:51, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
When they have not resigned, they are not "role"-elect in any parliamentary system. Shall we suddenly make Canada unique in stating that they are? Walter Görlitz (talk) 23:13, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
How do the other Westminister-styled government articles handle it? The UK uses Appointed Prime Minister in all the UK general election article infoboxes. GoodDay (talk) 23:54, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
How do reliable Canadian source refer to the role as of today? We can continue to compound errors, but that would be a waste of time. Walter Görlitz (talk) 23:58, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
I prefer consistency over recentism :) GoodDay (talk) 00:19, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
I prefer reliable sources over consistent but original research. Walter Görlitz (talk) 00:22, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
Just might bring that up at WP:POLITICS or whatever WikiProject would be appropriate. But for now, will wait & see how things go concerning the Canadian federal election articles. GoodDay (talk) 00:24, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
  • The choices are between being factually accurate or not. If we have uncovered a recurring mistake, we cannot continue it under the pretense of precedent. The incumbent Prime Minister is not a Prime Minister-designate and under no circumstances should our articles on the Canadian Prime Minister state otherwise. A change back to it will need to be supported by accurate and reliable sources. That is the basis for all information on the English Wikipedia and no precedent or WikiProject guideline has the authority to override that site-wide policy and pillar. Mkdw talk 18:50, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in a case where a government party is defeated, the sitting PM has to actually resign the office. Conversely, as in the current case, PM Trudeau does not have to resign, therefore "Prime Minister-designate" is incorrect because he's still got the office. PKT(alk) 19:14, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

You are correct. Walter Görlitz (talk) 20:03, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
Partially. Canadian Prime Ministers can be defeated through general elections and by motions of no confidence in the House of Commons. In the case of confidence convention, one of two things may happen: a new election is called, or another party or coalition is given a chance to form the government. It is up to the Governor General to decide. In either case, the current PM must either resign, seek dissolution, or be dismissed by the GG. Mkdw talk 20:18, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

The Spurs up for deletion

Canadian Country Music group. Charted, but sourcing is thin. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 09:50, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Dan Carter

I need some assistance with Oshawa mayor Dan Carter (Canadian politician). There's a newly registered user who keeps trying to rewrite the article to be much less encyclopedic and more advertorialized in tone — and several times now, they've simply reverted it back to that tone when I've tried to restore it. They claim in their edit summaries that they're "updating" the article with new information, but none of the information in the article changes or is under dispute at all — the only thing they're actually changing is the writing tone in which the same information is expressed, away from encyclopedic and neutral toward a PR brochure that sounds like it was written by his own campaign staff. I also tried semiprotecting the article, but they appear to already have autoconfirmed status as they've been able to just keep editing right through it to readvertorialize the article again.

However, at present the page only has one other watcher besides me, so I wanted to ask if other people here are willing to help keep an eye on this. Bearcat (talk) 18:14, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

added to my watchlist......... PKT(alk) 18:56, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Request for information on WP1.0 web tool

Hello and greetings from the maintainers of the WP 1.0 Bot! As you may or may not know, we are currently involved in an overhaul of the bot, in order to make it more modern and maintainable. As part of this process, we will be rewriting the web tool that is part of the project. You might have noticed this tool if you click through the links on the project assessment summary tables.

We'd like to collect information on how the current tool is used by....you! How do you yourself and the other maintainers of your project use the web tool? Which of its features do you need? How frequently do you use these features? And what features is the tool missing that would be useful to you? We have collected all of these questions at this Google form where you can leave your response. Walkerma (talk) 04:23, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Canadian political party leaders

Where can I find precedent for Canadian political party leaders being notable? Thanks! Me-123567-Me (talk) 02:37, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

You can't, because there isn't one. There is no automatic notability for all political party leaders; the person still has to either pass NPOL by having held a seat in the party's legislative caucus, or be referenceable to a depth and range and volume of reliable source coverage that is strongly enough about her to get her over WP:GNG. Leading a political party in Canada does not work differently than leading a political party in any other country: you need to be able to write and source an article with some substance to it, and simply offering technical verification that she's been selected or elected as leader is not automatically enough in and of itself if deeper and more substantive sources are still lacking.
Such a consensus certainly used to exist, which is why you can still find a handful of bad articles about interim or fringe political party leaders that got kept at AFD a decade ago — but that consensus was deprecated several years ago now, precisely because it left us with entirely too many permanently unexpandable stubs about political party leaders who never got any significant coverage to improve the article with. So there's no automatic notability for political party leaders anymore: their notability is dependent on the quality and depth and volume of sourcing you can show, not on any "inherent" notability freebies. Bearcat (talk) 16:14, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

New MP's

I thought that newly elected MP's were not added to the riding infobox until they were sworn in. Is that correct? We have a lot that have already been updated. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 09:48, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Newly elected MPs are added to the riding right away. It's usually not possible for us to source the exact date of an MP's swearing-in at all, because it isn't all done at once — each MP gets their own personal swearing-in ceremony over the course of several days, but doesn't always necessarily get their own personal news story about it (a few might, but most generally don't). So we have no way of knowing or sourcing the date of any individual MP's swearing-in, and the only dates it's possible for us to use are either the date of the election itself or the date of the first formal sitting of the new parliament. It doesn't work the same way as the cabinet: cabinet positions (including the PM) do have to be sworn in before we update the cabinet position's article, but MPs can be get added to the riding article as soon as their election has been confirmed. Bearcat (talk) 11:41, 24 October 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 12:06, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
The successful candidate becomes an MP when the Returning Officer for their riding declares the results of the election. The oath-swearing is a formal requirement before they can sit in the Commons, but they already are an MP. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 03:47, 7 November 2019 (UTC)
See s. 128 of the Constitution Act, 1867, which states that "Every Member of the Senate or House of Commons" shall swear the oath of allegiance before taking their seats. They already are Members. Swearing the oath simply authorizes them to take their seats. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 03:57, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

As per previous notice about portal

Portal:Canada has been rebuilt ..any comments are welcome on its talk page. Stats at Wikipedia talk:Portal/Guidelines#Example portal.--Moxy 🍁 08:11, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Fort Nelson, British Columbia

Just tidied up Fort Nelson, British Columbia. I left some remarks at Talk:Fort Nelson, British Columbia#Tidy up but it could do with some extra eyes. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 09:08, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Detained Canadians in China (2018-)

Hello fellow Canadian editors - what do you think of Detained Canadians in China (2018-) ? I don't have an issue with the subject's notability, but why isn't it just a part of Canada–China relations, instead of a standalone stub article? PKT(alk) 21:05, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Be WP:BOLD and just merge it. -- P 1 9 9  ✉ 19:45, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
 Done ........PKT(alk) 20:04, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Mayors of Orangeville , Samuel Lackey was the thirty ninth mayor of Orangeville

Samuel Earl Lackey was the 39th mayor of Orangeville , list shows it at as unknown ,served as Mayor , 1965 - 1966. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:FEA8:80A0:D7B1:110D:F688:C785:E292 (talk) 19:54, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Do you have a reliable source to verify the information? I've done a quick search and could not find any evidence that a Samuel Earl Lackey was ever mayor of Orangeville. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 19:58, 12 November 2019 (UTC)
Toronto Daily Star, Thurs. Feb. 10, 1966, page 2. Article from CP refers to "Mayor Samuel Lackey of Orangeville" attending a meeting of officials from 35 Western Ontario munipalities. A family business that he founded has its website here but doesn't mention his time as mayor of Orangeville. Mathew5000 (talk) 04:39, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
I just checked that source. So I can attest that it certainly says he was mayor in 1966, but it still fails to verify who was the mayor for the rest of the six year "unknown" period. Bearcat (talk) 17:52, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Recently I noticed that the vote counts by party were incorrect in our articles on the 2011 and 2015 federal elections: [3][4]. At least, Wikipedia's figures differ from those on the Elections Canada website; I assume that Elections Canada is correct and we are wrong. Probably what happened is, Wikipedia has been displaying the "preliminary" vote counts all this time, which of course have all sorts of errors, as opposed to the "validated" or "final" vote counts. It is easy enough to correct the infoboxes and charts in 2011 Canadian federal election and 2015 Canadian federal election. But let me suggest that we do a coordinated, systematic check to make sure that these "preliminary" figures do not appear in other articles, such as the article on each electoral district with vote counts for each election. Also I have no idea whether this type of error (leaving "preliminary" vote counts in an article after the final vote counts are available) also occurs in our articles on provincial/territorial elections, municipal elections, by-elections, and so forth. People rely on Wikipedia for accurate data; how can we make sure this error never recurs? Mathew5000 (talk) 00:41, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

The problem, ultimately, is that people rush to fill in the article with the preliminary figures right away, but then there isn't always a thorough or sustained effort to actually update it with the final numbers once the novelty of the election has worn off. Ideally, what we really should do is institute a rule that we don't add any numbers at all until we have the final validated results from the election agency — but this would be very hard to enforce, because new editors will still swarm the article to add the preliminary numbers if they don't know or understand what the rule is or why. There are lots of things that amateurs mess up on here, creating more work for us to fix, because they don't understand things correctly — like the difference between municipal population and "population centre" population; the fact that the winner of the election does not instantly become the new incumbent prime minister or premier, but is still only a designate for at least another couple of weeks; the fact that PC after a politician's name means they're a cabinet minister, not a Progressive Conservative; and on and so forth. So the preferred solution would be to just hold off until we have the final numbers before we actually start adding any numbers to our articles at all — but how to actually enforce that effectively is a harder problem to solve. Bearcat (talk) 18:09, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
(Raises hand) - I've been spending time adding preliminary data to Federal ridings in Ontario. I find even prelim. results are better than a blank table. I think the most salient point you make, Bearcat, is that "there isn't always a thorough or sustained effort to actually update [them] with the final numbers...." It would be a good challenge for a task force of some kind.......PKT(alk) 19:03, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
Would it be feasible to create a "preliminary results" tag when election tables are being updated with non final results? This would also be helpful in other election-based articles as well. Grognard Extraordinaire Chess (talk) Ping when replying 01:17, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
Yup @Chess: - see Durham (electoral district), for example; it just requires "prelim=yes" in the headline of the table. Most of the 2019 results are tagged that way. PKT(alk) 01:24, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
@PKT: It would probably be helpful then to make a hidden category of "election pages tagged with preliminary results". Unfortunately I'm unable to do that due to unfamiliarity with template syntax. Grognard Extraordinaire Chess (talk) Ping when replying 20:22, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

2017 CFL season

Note: The infobox at 2017 CFL season, isn't matching the infoboxes of all the other CFL season articles. GoodDay (talk) 00:30, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Update: Problem solved. GoodDay (talk) 00:45, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

It appears that @Blaixx: wants that article to be different from all the other CFL season articles. Wish he'd explain here, why. GoodDay (talk) 03:09, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

GoodDay, my apologies for the reverts and lack of discussion. As for an explanation, I personally prefer the “infobox sports season” template to the “infobox league season” one currently used on CFL pages. “Sports season” is well maintained as it is used by the NHL, NBA, and MLB season pages, plus it contains useful parameters such as average attendance and regular season leaders. If your only concern is consistency with the other CFL seasons, I am happy to start converting the other CFL year pages. If you have other concerns, we can continue to discuss them here or elsewhere. BLAIXX 16:43, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
@Blaixx:, Consistency is my major concern. I would indeed be content, if you were to add the Sports season infobox to all CFL season articles. GoodDay (talk) 16:46, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
Unfortunately I can't promise implementing the infobox on all the artciles in a timely manner as there are over 60 CFL seasons! What I can do is start at the present year and work backwards so there is only a single transition in styles for someone iterating through the seasons. I can also agree to not make any changes until after the Grey Cup as these pages are likely to experience high traffic this weekend. BLAIXX 17:28, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
That would be great. GoodDay (talk) 18:01, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

North Mountain

An anonymous IP has been attacking me on North Mountain (film), over the inclusion of an actor's name in the starring= field of the film's infobox. The person in question, Johnny Terris, was not one of the film's main stars, but merely a supporting character — but when I tried to remove his name from the infobox on those grounds, the IP has been reverting me and making entirely unfounded accusations that I've been waging a personal vendetta against Terris "for years" to block him from having a Wikipedia article at all. Never mind that there have been two deletion discussions (neither of which was initiated by me, so I was the "instigator" of absolutely nothing whatsoever) which both reached a deletion consensus — and while I did comment in both of them, I merely commented on the article's lack of conformity to the notability and reliable sourcing standards that an actor would have to pass to become eligible for an article, and never once said so much as one single solitary word against Terris as a person. So their accusations are quite simply false.

But, of course, if I sustain this into a revert war or try to editblock the IP for making personal attacks, I'll just look like I'm misusing administration tools for my own benefit. So is somebody else willing to step in and warn the IP against making unwarranted personal attacks? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 23:45, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

 Done   Aloha27  talk  01:53, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
This is an interesting case. The guideline is that the infobox should match the poster's billing block, but the only poster I could find had no billing block. Clearly the individual is non-notable, so that's a good reason to exclude the name, but the underlying problem of the anon accusing you is separate from that. Walter Görlitz (talk) 20:25, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Anybody know how to fix up shortnavlink? Having trouble with them in the infoboxes of the CFL's Ottawa Senators seasons 1925-1930 articles. They keep navigating towards List of Ottawa Senators seasons, instead of List of Ottawa Rough Riders seasons. -- GoodDay (talk) 00:41, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Heck, out of frustration, I've tried deleting those links, but to no avail. GoodDay (talk) 01:37, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

GoodDay, I've made a couple of edits that I think fixes your issue. I haven't applied it to the rest of articles in case it's not what you were aiming for. Maxim(talk) 14:50, 26 November 2019 (UTC)
Thanks Maxim, that's exactly what was needed. I've applied your solutions to the other articles :) GoodDay (talk) 15:28, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

List of Canadian women writers in French

Earlier this year, a user created List of Canadian women writers in French. The thing about this is, Wikipedia does not have a single other example of "List of [Nationality] writers in [Language]" for any other possible combination of those attributes, while we do have many other examples of the more general "List of [Nationality] writers" but Canada does not yet actually have one of those at all. So I'm not seeing a compelling reason why a list of francophone Canadian women writers would need to stand alone as a separate topic from starting a more general list of all Canadian women writers. Accordingly, I've proposed on the article's talk page that we move it to List of Canadian women writers, and expand it to include anglophone and indigenous-language women writers as well — so I wanted to ask if anybody else has any other input into the discussion. Bearcat (talk) 17:05, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

At best, the list is poorly named (it would have to be something like List of French-language Canadian women writers, as it is the authors who write in French instead of the list being in French). Perusing Category:Canadian women writers, it is evident that there are so many women writers that List of Canadian women writers may become overwhelmingly large (let alone a potential List of United States women writers). I've also inspected {{Lists of women writers by nationality}}, each list of which contains a tiny subset of entries from the respective categories, for which I can glean to discernable inclusion criteria. Frankly, I think such lists would be so large as to be meaningless, performing a role better suited to categories. Mindmatrix 17:39, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Merging vs. separating minister portfolios

I've been working on some of the pages for ministers (e.g. Minister of Transport (Canada)) and looking at some of the other minister pages, it seems like there is not a clear distinction in some cases when past positions should be merged into the current portfolio, or when past positions should be separated into their own articles. I was wondering if there was a way to build some consensus on this. I'll describe some examples to show what I mean since I'm sure not everyone dives this deeply:

Case 1: Completely merge into current 'successor' position

  • Minister of Agriculture (Canada), where the successor position is legally not the same but has most of the responsibilities of the former role. Includes all ministers from both roles, which is probably the most basic example.
  • Minister of Crown–Indigenous Relations, interestingly one of the more aggressive examples, since this ministerial role has existed (or not existed) in various forms, including periods where there wasn't a title that included reference to indigenous peoples (e.g. from 1936 to 1966, these responsibilities were part of the portfolio for Minister of Mines, Minister of the Interior, and Minister of Citizenship). Includes any minister who may have had this role, including people in those other roles I mentioned.
  • Minister of Fisheries, Oceans, and the Canadian Coast Guard, connects various fisheries related positions and defers to other minister articles when it seems appropriate to delegate the role to another position (e.g. deferring to Minister of Fisheries and the Environment for the 1971-1979 period)

Case 2: Explicitly only the current position

Case 3: Sort of a hybrid or other case

  • Minister of Transport (Canada), this was my doing. Originally it only had transport ministers, but the Minister of Marine was about a 6 year offshoot of Fisheries that only dealt with marine transport and was completely merged into Transport after, so I have the Minister of Marine information on this page. But there's a separate page for Minister of Railways and Canals, and it's not clear if that should also be merged, since that position is basically just a precursor for the existing Transport portfolio.
  • Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, a mixture of combining separate ministries of similar names (one from the 50s and 60s, and the current one established in 1994) and linking to separate ministries in the in-between periods, except those ministries are their own title (e.g. Minister of Manpower and Immigration)
  • Minister of Western Economic Diversification and all the other regional economic agencies, admittedly poorly cited articles that consider Navdeep Bains (the 2015-2019 successor to all these roles) as the current 'Minister of X agency', which is not correct

There are a lot more examples under each scenario, and not a lot of discussion about this through the noticeboards previously. I took a peek at how the UK does this and it also seems a bit mixed. I didn't go through every article, but the first 10 or so I opened seem to keep as much as they can on the existing minister page, keeping a tree of every reasonable main precursor position, but also have a bunch of pages for defunct ministers.

On one end of the spectrum, I could see a case where we only keep the current iteration of the ministry (and move all previous positions to separate articles), but at what point is it considered 'the current iteration'? On the other hand, we could try merging as many into the current position to give an idea of what the continuity is, but how much gets merged, especially if it was previously coming from multiple departments? What do people feel is the most reasonable way forward? ArmosNights (talk) 03:12, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

ArmosNights, I'd say I'd favour Case #1, without prejudice, of course, to renaming in the future. Otherwise, we'll end up with an unwieldy amount of former ministerial portfolios. We should, however, have separate articles for statutory departments—note that some portfolios are still named differently (by enabling legislation) than their minister.
I would actually merge the "Solicitor General of Canada" article into the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness article, as a separate section. It's unlikely that title is ever to be used again.Doug Mehus T·C 03:44, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
Huh, I think the way Minister of Crown–Indigenous Relations is doing it is actually causing some accidental confusion. According to the PCO (archived— I can't find anything dealing with ministries on any current revision, unfortunately), "Superintendent-General of Indian Affairs" continued to exist as a title, and Crerar et al had it as one of their portfolios, it's just that there was a period of time where it was always held concurrently with another ministry. IMO the page should be edited to replace the "Minister responsible…" header with something more apt ("held concurrently with…"?) or even have the division deleted entirely and the situation explained in the prose.
Anyway… my opinion is that ministry pages should be merged provided there is a clear and unambiguous continuity between them. Agriculture → Agriculture and Agri-Food is a perfect example: assumes much the same responsibilities, has a similar/related name, extraordinarily unlikely the previous title will be revived as a separate portfolio, and it even has the same minister during the transition… it is effectively the same post, even if not legally. All the "Case 1" examples are similarly apt to me.
Other cases are murkier, though. The evolution of the Natural Resources portfolio is so roundabout, coming from a merger of two other positions that themselves were formed by the reorganizations of other posts as responsibilities were shuffled around, that including all its predecessors on a single page would be cumbersome, if nothing else. IMO a page like this would be best handled with the list covering only the modern incarnation, but with a History section that outlines the evolution (akin to the Fisheries page). Same with Public Services and Procurement: though a straightforward merger of two posts, those two posts have long enough histories that putting them all together would just be a bit much.
Western Economic Diversification looks like clear overcorrection. ISED may have taken over the duties, but the "WED minister" has clearly fallen by the wayside and I'm not aware of it being used for Bains, even quietly, in any official context. Industry is, I think, another portfolio where we should lean towards keeping things separate because it's so messy. — Kawnhr (talk) 06:18, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
Really good feedback! I'm leaning similarly to both of you: merging where possible and having some sort of separation where necessary. I think some other feedback might be good, then maybe a guideline can be workshopped for ministries and departments because I can see it being overwhelming and causes some inconsistency for a lot of Canadian government pages. I wouldn't mind helping write this guideline. Mostly replied this early to let you know where the PCO ministries guideline moved! This is the new guide website, I've referenced to it on the ministerial history pages I've been working on. Seems to be the same format as the old one, just a new spot. It's been such a good quick resource and a good launching point for finding the appropriate statutes. ArmosNights (talk) 15:09, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
Oh, excellent, thank you for that! I perused the ministries pages many a time and was saddened to see its loss, so I'm happy to know I just missed the reorganization. Also, I just realized that I forgot to weigh in on the page you were actually editing, so: I think there's a clear succession from Railways and Canals (and Marine) to Transport that that makes sense as a single article, too. — Kawnhr (talk) 18:46, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
No problem! And yeah, re:Transport that was my feeling too, it's partly that situation and when I was making the Minister of Northern Affairs page that got me thinking this might be worth getting some consensus on. ArmosNights (talk) 20:08, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
ArmosNights, I generally agree with what Kawnhr said, so kinda surprised she (apologizes if wrong pronoun) replied with "huh?" I would also say that some ministerial portfolios, especially junior ones, may not be notable (i.e., Middle Class Prosperity, which oversees virtually nothing; it's more or less a ministerial assistant, presumably, to the PM, to PCO, and/or the Minister of Finance). Thus, those should just be merged into the Cabinet of Canada article.--Doug Mehus T·C 19:53, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
It was a surprised "huh" at the Crown-Indigenous Relations article structure, cause it is a pretty odd way of structuring it, not at you. I'm not sure how I feel about merging smaller cabinet portfolios yet. I'd generally favour keeping whatever ones are current (even smaller ones, unless they're concurrent with other positions like Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, and older ones can be merged or standalone depending on whether they have some level of notability (perhaps a "List of defunct ministerial positions of Canada" or something along those lines for the ones with like, 1 or 2 people ever, with links to ones that have their own pages) ArmosNights (talk) 20:07, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
ArmosNights, In the case of the Minister of Seniors, I'm OK with keeping that one, but if the Minister of Middle Class Prosperity ends up being only a single minister serving this ministerial assistant-type role, how is a full page only an infobox, a single sentence, and a list that includes only a single name helpful? I think in such cases, we can just note the office of the minister in the applicable person's article page infobox as a separate office (like we do for the Senators whereby we don't create a full article for Facilitator of the Independent Senators Group).
Thanks for clarifying what Kawnhr meant. Apologies for the misunderstanding. Doug Mehus T·C 20:11, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, I think we can keep strange existing ones like Middle Class Prosperity separate for now until there's legislation saying whatever they are (likely when Parliament is back). If it's just to be held concurrently with the other new post (Associate Minister of Finance) then I feel like the latter is a page worth having and the former would just redirect. ArmosNights (talk) 15:38, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
ArmosNights, Yeah, though, really "Associate Minister of Finance" has no justification in legislation. It just sounds official. Practically speaking, it's like the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance—with the Minister of Finance's Cabinet supplementary pay package (since Trudeau's government received criticism for paying "junior ministers," made up of mostly women, less than full ministers who have actual statutory responsibilities). Interestingly, even Chrystia Freeland as the reinvigorated Deputy PM has no added seniority. Will be interesting to see if she's also the primary minister to act for the PM in the event of his incapacitation.
To ArmosNights and Kawnhr, for the ministerial navbox template:s that are created and transcluded at the bottom of articles, what are your thoughts here? Do you think we should only create templates for ministers with actual portfolios—i.e., not those assigned as an assistant minister to a statutory minister, and those which oversee one or more federal departments, agencies, or Crown corporations? Doug Mehus T·C 16:47, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
The ones for specific portfolios? Like Template:CA-Ministers of Transport? I think there's space to do those for any continuous portfolio. For example, one could do one for Northern Affairs (even though they only look over part of a department) because that role has shifted between departments and positions in the past. Notability guidelines suggest that every historically elected MP will get a page at some point, so it would be easy to include for navigation purposes.
My thinking on those and with the earlier discussion on merging information in pages is to do connectivity by portfolio. If we use Fisheries as an example, and based off what I'm seeing already on pages: prioritize the current Ministerial post (e.g. Minister of Fisheries, Oceans, and the Canadian Coast Guard), include on the page a list of the ministers (or reference to other positions that have held those ministerial roles, e.g. Env ministers that also held Fisheries), then have a navbox for "Ministers of Fisheries and Oceans" and include all the precedent roles and links to ministers holding those roles in the navbox. It would help with the traceability of portfolios, and including every minister in the navbox is less onerous than including every minister on the page (for roles where there were multiple predecessor roles like those that Kawnhr mentioned). It also seems to follow the precedent used by some of the current pages, like Fisheries, where the idea is that going to the current Fisheries minister page will give you an idea of who held that kind of role previously, and include it there instead of on other pages where it's possible. ArmosNights (talk) 18:25, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
That makes sense to me. Someone looking for a list of fisheries ministers is really just looking for who was in charge of the fisheries department and policy— so including ministers who were responsible for the portfolio during a period when the ministry was abolished is reasonable. I'm torn on whether it's better to include them right on the page or just grey it out and provide a link to the minstry in question— the former is undeniably more helpful but the latter feels "more correct" (to only list actual ministers)… — Kawnhr (talk) 04:10, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

template:Ontario MPP biography

This template no longer works, see John Morison Gibson or Alexander Franklin Campbell. -- Zanimum (talk) 21:09, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

The Legislative Assembly seems to have recently changed the structure of its website urls; instead of "http://www.ontla.on.ca/web/members/members_all_detail.do?locale=en&ID=[###]", they're now at "https://www.ola.org/en/members/all/[NAME]". I just changed the template to the new structure, and used Gibson as a test case to see if I did it right, and it works correctly on him — but for obvious reasons, it's going to be a big multi-editor project to get all the MPPs changed over to their new URLs. Is there any commitment to getting it done, or should we just strip those URLs entirely because changing them over is too much trouble? Basically all that needs to happen on each article is replacing ID=### with the appropriate name, since the transcluded part of the template has already been corrected otherwise, but there are just so many MPPs to deal with.
If there is a willingness, then obviously we should start with incumbent MPPs and past and present party leaders first, since they're the highest traffic articles in the bunch — but after that, the simplest thing would probably be for each person who gets involved to take exclusive responsibility for one letter at a time so people don't repeatedly bump into each other on the same articles. Bearcat (talk) 20:25, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for updating the template. Is there any way someone (not necessarily in this notice board), could script a replacement? Most new IDs are parallel to the page name. It wouldn't work with some entries like Thomas Dent (Ontario politician), which not only doesn't have the bracketed text, but also has a middle name, thomas-roy-dent, but it would work with most. -- Zanimum (talk) 22:03, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
That would be awfully tricky, precisely because of the sheer number of pages where our titles don't match theirs (either because of the disambiguator or because they include a middle name and we don't.) I suppose it might theoretically be possible, but a lot would still have to be done manually. Bearcat (talk) 23:30, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Felix Rossignol

Notice

The article Felix Rossignol has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

It does not meet the notability criteria for biographies.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. DA1312 (talk) 00:37, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

The PROD tag has already been removed, apparently the subject played 14 NHL games. PKT(alk) 12:02, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Leadership election pages listing potential candidates

It's long been the practice for pages on leadership conventions or elections to list prospective candidates (ie possible candidates) whose names have been mentioned in major media. Should this continue at Next Conservative Party of Canada leadership election or should the practice end? 199.119.233.171 (talk) 13:17, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

As long as they're backed by reliable sources. GoodDay (talk) 13:42, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
Ahunt does have a valid point; to an extent, the first few days after the announcement of a leadership convention are always a flurry of journalists just throwing every name in the book out as a potential candidate. There isn't necessarily any value in documenting that for posterity; we really should list only the people who are still being discussed as potential candidates after a couple of weeks, rather than everybody who ever had the question asked. But you're also correct that since listing everybody who was named by at least one reliable source as a possible candidate is the way things were done in the past, we would need a more active discussion about it rather than discontinuing it over the objections, valid though they may be, of one editor. And GoodDay is also correct that either way we require reliable sources; I caught (and removed) one person in the list whose potential candidacy was "referenced" solely to a Twitter tweet (and not even her own, but somebody else's), which is not appropriate sourcing for inclusion in such a list. Bearcat (talk) 14:45, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Bio of Vic Fedeli

- don't really understand how to edit an article but was reading and it seems to be very one sided article. Like my Wikipedia fair and it seems this is a PR article. No mention of Fedli's role in the scandal that removed Patrick Brown from leadership race nor of the 8 million dollar lawsuit Fedeli filed against Brown. Not interested in a hachet job, just a fair and balanced article. https://globalnews.ca/news/4661141/patrick-brown-book/i — Preceding unsigned comment added by Northof401 (talk • contribs) 00:12, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Andrew Scheer's status

Why is CBC news calling Scheer interim leader of the Conservative party? I thought he hadn't resigned as leader & won't do so until the party chooses a successor. GoodDay (talk) 16:04, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

I just want to mention that this discussion is currently occurring on the 44th Canadian federal election talk page. I'll add a request for comment (or GoodDay will) over there. - MikkelJSmith (talk) 16:55, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Battle of Batoche

The Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment done by Keegantannahill has really made a mess of the Battle of Batoche article. The article is no longer formatted properly and features an overtly one-sided POV. It would be greatly appreciated if any editors specializing in Canadian history articles could make some necessary fixes. An article of this historical importance should not be so poorly maintained. TrailBlzr (talk) 04:15, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Trudeau Cabinet

Hi,

I have a problem that I don't know how to solve. When you look at Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion it lists Carla Qualtrough as the officeholder but Filomena Tassi serves as the Minister of Labour. So I don't know how to reconcile the two. Labour and Employment to me are one in the same. What distinction do we need to draw? There was a user who moved the page Minister of Employment, Workforce, and Labour to Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion Snickers2686 (talk) 06:19, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

A separate article Minister of Labour (Canada) needs to be created. GoodDay (talk) 13:32, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, this is a weird situation because of the names involved— the portfolio originally being "Labour", then "Employment and Labour", but now "Employment" and "Labour" are separate, so what gives? But looking into it, "Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion" would seem to be the successor; the ESDC's organizational structure lists Employment first, and three of four deputy ministers are of Employment. It is also, of course, keeping the majority of the portfolios, and Qualthrough has more governmental experience than Tassi, which further hints at the hierarchy. So I agree with GoodDay, there needs to be a new "Minister of Labour" article for Tassi's role. — Kawnhr (talk) 20:28, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
Because "Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion" covers such an incredibly broad area, there's more than one minister responsible for different aspects of it — but Labour isn't actually a separate ministry, it's just a department of EWDDI. Essentially, the Labour department oversees things like employment equity, workplace harassment and violence prevention, workplace safety standards, that sort of thing — Carla Qualtrough basically oversees the economic broad strokes of the employment market, while Filomena Tassi oversees a lot of the particular workplace-oriented programs and policies. But again, Labour isn't actually a separate ministry — it's a department within ESDC/EWDDI, not a standalone ministry. Bearcat (talk) 15:29, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
Bearcat, Are you more or less favouring what I said above, that we don't need standalone articles for these junior ministerial portfolios that are essentially like ministerial assistants with small secretariats (some with a handful of staff or less)? I think we can list the office in the infobox of the applicable minister's biography, but honestly, do we need a Minister for Middle Class Prosperity that is essentially just a Minister of State with a handful of staff in either of the Finance or Privy Council Office departments/offices? --Doug Mehus T·C 02:09, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
I would agree that we don't need a separate article for Labour; however, the article about EWDDI does need to do a better job of explaining that labour is a separate sub-portfolio within the aegis of EWDDI and not just a discontinued old title for the minister of EWDDI. Bearcat (talk) 16:30, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
I'll go along with whatever yas decide on. Being as it's the Westminister system, cabinet positions are created out of thin air & easily abolished, without parliamentary consent. GoodDay (talk) 16:35, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

Image question

File:AerialArmstrong.jpg has been used for some time to illustrate our article about the Armstrong, Ontario in Timiskaming District — but earlier today, an anonymous editor altered the caption from "Aerial view of Armstrong" to "The other Armstrong (Thunder Bay District)". From the Google satellite view it looks like they might be correct, as the hamlet of Armstrong at the top of Ontario Highway 527 definitely looks closer to the geography depicted in the photo than Earlton does, but I can't say this with any definitive authority as I've never actually been to either place.

In the meantime, I've reverted the IP's edits and removed the image from the Armstrong-in-Timiskaming article pending confirmation — if it's wrong, then the correct solution is to remove it from the article, not just to leave it there with a caption saying it's the wrong one — but I wanted to ask if anybody else has any input into this since I can't definitively say for sure which one it is. Bearcat (talk) 18:24, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

I've never been to either place, but I agree this is likely the community in Thunder Bay District. The three-way intersection of Highway 527 with King Street and 1st Avenue is quite distinctive, and the adjacent rail tracks match the satellite and map views of Bing and Google Maps (as do numerous structures and streets, and the escarpment or tree line just south of the tracks). There is a similarity with Earlton, in that 8th street has a similar shape (to the intersection of King Street and 1st Avenue), but the third intersection (the Highway 527 arm) is missing, and the road visible at the bottom of the pic is also missing. (The Earlton location also has the Trans-Canada highway at an angle to the tracks, which does not appear in the pic.) Mindmatrix 19:04, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
I have been to both Armstrongs, and the IP editor is definitely correct. Armstrong in Timiskaming District is flat and rural, whereas Armstrong in Thunder Bay District is in the wilderness. The difference is easy to tell. I will restore the previous image for Armstrong, Timiskaming. Regards, -- P 1 9 9  ✉ 19:09, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

Article issues

There are comments at Talk:National Hockey League#Article issues for anyone interested. Otr500 (talk) 13:48, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

TSN & CFL

The article TSN needs updating, as it signed a 'new' contract with the Canadian Football League, in 2019. GoodDay (talk) 16:53, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

I take it that you mean The Sports Network. Walter Görlitz (talk) 19:21, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
Yup. GoodDay (talk) 19:21, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

Inconsistency around listing senatorial office

I've long noticed there were inconsistencies with how senators are listed in their infobox, but not until I started poking around in various senate and senator pages did I realize just how vast and widespread this problem is. The office is variously "Senator", "Canadian Senator" or sometimes "Member of the Senate of Canada"; some senators are "for" a province, while other senators are "from" a province; and their constituency (as it were) is variously Division, Province or Province (Division) or just Division (or Division senate division)… sometimes it's even left out entirely. In short, literally every part of a sentence as simple as, say, "Senator for Quebec (Gulf)" will vary between pages. It's a huge mess.

I checked to see if a specific form had been established by guideline or consensus, but didn't see anything (not that I really expected to). I think, given the state of this, we ought to decide upon this right now and start getting these pages in order.

I don't have any strong opinions on whether it should be Senator, Canadian Senator or Member of the Senate of Canada, nor on "for" or "from"; but I do have opinions on how constituencies. My view is that it should be standardized as "Province (Division)". This is how the website of the Senate renders senatorial divisions, and the listing of province first is also how various lists on Wikipedia do it. The other official source, PARLINFO, uses only the division (for example), but from my POV that construction does not give enough information at a glance, which is what an infobox is for. Meanwhile, despite being so common on Wikipedia, "Division, Province" doesn't appear in official sources at all, so we should probably move away from it.

— Kawnhr (talk) 02:34, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

Whatever is decided should be added to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Canada-related articles#Federal or provincial office. Mindmatrix 15:20, 17 November 2019 (UTC)
@Kawnhr: In the case of a senator from a province other than Quebec, is it proper terminology to refer to the senator's "division"? For example, the Senate's own website does not use the word "division" unless I've overlooked it. Mathew5000 (talk) 01:54, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
@Mathew5000:, I went looking for an answer and came away even more confused. The Senate's website's big list has "designations", but then their bios frequently talk of "divisions" (eg: for Joseph Day's official bio: Senator Day represents the province of New Brunswick and the Senatorial Division of Saint John-Kennebecasis.) Meanwhile, PARLINFO has "senatorial division" when searching through its database, but then "senatorial region" on individual pages! So I guess inconsistent terminology is just inherent to the Senate, and isn't just Wikipedia's problem.
So I'm not 100% sure that "division" is the proper terminology in any context, just that it seems to be the most commonplace and accepted (it appears throughout Hansard and dovetails nicely with the actually-definitely-correct use the Senate having four regional divisions). For self-designated senators specifically, I don't know if there's proper terminology since it's kind of unofficial to begin with, but judging from Day's bio above it seems to be accepted usage. I certainly think it's best to stick with "division" for all members, unless there's strong evidence to say otherwise. — Kawnhr (talk) 06:25, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
I would agree with that - in fact I'd mention that the treatment in List of current senators of Canada is probably as acceptable as any (ie, "Province (Division)") because it appears that not all of the Senators have a designated division. PKT(alk) 13:58, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

I don't recall that there's ever been any discussion around standardizing the "consensus" format for a senator's infobox. Even for MPs, there's actually a lot more divergence than you would think — different people do different things according to their own personal preferences; some MP articles were created a long time ago before infoboxes became a thing at all, and have never actually had infoboxes added at all; and on and so forth. So even if there is a consensus to come up with a "standard" format for them, that's only half the battle — a project of actually applying the standard to senators' articles would still have to be undertaken. But on the basic question of whether there's ever been a formal consensus established in the first place, I don't believe there has. Bearcat (talk) 20:41, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

I've noticed a bit of inconsistency for MPs, too, but nowhere near as major… the big divide seems to be on whether the riding name should be in the office itself (eg "Member of Parliament for Toronto—York"), or if it should be in a separate constituency= field. Wouldn't be a bad thing to establish a standard format there, either, IMO. — Kawnhr (talk) 04:06, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

OK I spent way too much time looking into this and here's what I found:

  • Senators from Australia, Ireland, France, Brazil, Chile, Nigeria and Mexico are keen to just use "Senator" without specifying national origin. The US specifies "United States Senator", and that may be to avoid confusion with the office of State Senator. (There are some that do list national origin, like Argentina, but they are rare.)
  • For seems more common than from, again with the major outlier being the United States. I also lean towards "for" because it's consistent with MPs being for a riding, and because it better reflects the common official language of a Senator "representing" a province.
  • As said before, the "Province (Division)" construction is official use. PKT also makes a good point that it's better for sorting and consistency for senators that do not have divisions.

In short, I propose using "Senator for Quebec (Gulf)".

Just to be clear, I'm not expecting everyone to make this a priority and rush off to edit literal hundreds of articles over what is, all things considered, a fairly minor thing. The impetous for this was me poking around on articles for senators, noticing the inconsistency and being annoyed by it, but also not wanting to unilaterally impose my own style guide. My hope is just to establish a consensus, edit something if I come across it and for others do the same. — Kawnhr (talk) 17:55, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

@Dmehus, MikkelJSmith2, Bearcat, and Arctic.gnome: Friendly pings to editors who have been involved with Senate of Canada and related articles over the last little while… any thoughts? — Kawnhr (talk) 17:59, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Kawnhr, I haven't read everything here, but as I understand it, only Quebec has official Senatorial divisions. I don't think we need to say the senatorial division in their title; rather, we can note the division as a separate line item for their office in their infobox. Outside of Quebec, much of Ontario and the atlantic provinces, the senatorial divisions have been dissolved. For instance since Senator Nancy Greene Raine was forced into mandatory retirement, her replacement Senator Yuen Pau Woo, of Vancouver, has just been a senator for British Columbia. So, he is probably the closest thing to a Senator from the Thompson-Okanagan/Similkameen region. That said, Senators don't have constituency office responsibilities; they represent the residents of each province in the Senate of Canada.
So, I guess my !vote would be, in terms of stylization of titles and office names, Senator from Province, and then in the infobox, mention their senatorial division.
Cheers,

Doug

Doug Mehus T·C 20:41, 26 November 2019 (UTC)
Dmehus,Kawnhr, I would agree with Doug here, since each Senator (besides QC ones) kind of do their own thing. One thing though, I would add Canadian. So, we should probably do 'Canadian Senator for Province', since it's the normal way and the most important thing. As for the division, I guess we put the division in the infobox, due to the fact that it may not be present at times. I'm basing myself on Senator Day's page since it's probably the one I've seen the most (I modified the infobox when the PSG was formed). - MikkelJSmith (talk) 13:14, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
MikkelJSmith2, Where would you add Canadian? I don't think that's necessary since the senatorial office is context-specific. It should be evident by the province they're representing, no? In the case of the U.S., U.S. Senators are commonly styled as that (i.e., U.S. Senate) whereas in Canada, you don't see Senators referred to as Senate of Canada Senator John Smith. ;-)
But otherwise, I agree with the rest of what you said.Doug Mehus T·C 15:55, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
Dmehus: So, I guess my !vote would be, in terms of stylization of titles and office names, Senator from Province, and then in the infobox, mention their senatorial division. Right, yeah, I'm mostly concerned with the infobox; how it gets mentioned in the prose has a lot more leeway and I'm not concerned about setting a guideline there… basically anything works there so long as it conveys the correct information.
And yeah, I know that divisions outside of Quebec are self-described and mean nothing— as you say, Nancy Greene's de facto successor was not from the Interior— but they are official enough to be tracked by the Senate, which I think makes them worth chronicling. — Kawnhr (talk) 05:14, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
Kawnhr, Yes, it's worth chronicling, so long as we make sure to note that essentially the Okanagan Similkameen senatorial division was dissolved after Ross Fitzpatrick and/or Nancy Greene Raine (not even sure what her senatorial division was-she might've just been British Columbia) and Yuen Pau Woo is just British Columbia, I think? --Doug Mehus T·C 05:57, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

It's correct that Quebec is the only Canadian province that has senatorial divisions enshrined in law. In all other provinces, a senator is constitutionally appointed to serve the province, not a division — although senators do have the option of self-designating themselves as the senator for a particular "division", that designation exists only on paper, has no formal standing in law, and does not have any independent existence that outlasts the person's term the way an MP's "riding" does. So our practice on here has always been to denote senators as serving the province rather than a "division", since legally and constitutionally that's what they do — we'll note the self-designated division if the senator uses one, but we don't reify it into their official title. Bearcat (talk) 16:49, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Alberta has long provided names for its senators. I don't know if it's a legal requirement, nor do I think they're elected. Also, in both cases, the PM is not required to accept the recommendations. Walter Görlitz (talk) 17:33, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Canadian whisky

I am seeking some advice at Talk:Canadian whisky#Criteria for Distilleries and Brands section regarding which distilleries should be included in a distilleries/brands section. There is some disagreement about what, if any, criteria should be used to merit inclusion. Thanks. maclean (talk) 07:00, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Pre-Confederation electoral districts

Earlier today, I noted the recent creation (within the past few days) of Berthier (Province of Canada electoral district) as a separate topic from Berthier (electoral district). I note that there are a small number of other standalone articles about the pre-Confederation electoral districts of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, as categorized at Category:Electoral districts of Canada East — but only for Quebec, and only for a small, random and non-representative sample of Quebec electoral districts. No electoral district in Ontario has such an article that I can find at all, and most Quebec districts don't either — instead, by and large, our articles about the Parliaments of the Province of Canada link mainly to the post-Confederation districts (or occasionally even just the city that a district was based in) even though those articles mostly don't adequately address their pre-1867 representation histories at all.

And, in addition, there's a remarkable inconsistency of naming format, with this one disambiguated as "Province of Canada electoral district" while with just one exception all of the others are disambiguated as just "Province of Canada" — which seems a bit of a bad choice, as a reader who was unfamiliar with Canadian political history might mistake that for a suggestion that confederated Canada has or had a province with that name rather than that it was an electoral district in something called "the Province of Canada".

Accordingly, I wanted to ask for some input from the rest of the Canadian contingent: should the pre-1867 electoral districts of the Province of Canada be treated as separate topics, with separate articles, from their post-1867 continuations in the post-Confederation Parliament of Canada, or should they be merged back to the post-1867 articles with some expansion to add content about the pre-1867 histories? Personally, I'm inclined to the merge approach, because I don't see how pre-1867 Berthier and post-1867 Berthier are really separate topics at all, but I wanted to ask for outside opinions since clearly a few people have thought differently in the past even though they've never really finished the job. Bearcat (talk) 20:16, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

They should have separate articles, because which articles would you merge them to? The federal electoral districts or the provincial ones? After confederation, the districts basically doubled up, as the first few provincial parliaments in both Quebec and Ontario operated on the same boundaries as their federal counterparts. -- Earl Andrew - talk 20:20, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
I created two of the articles, for Beauharnois (Province of Canada electoral district) and Berthier (Province of Canada electoral district). Bellechasse (Province of Canada) was a pre-existing article. I agree the name for Bellechasse isn’t accurate, but that’s what it has. I think it should be «  Bellechasse (Province of Canada electoral district) ».
As for why they are separate articles, it’s because the Province of Canada is not the same as Canada. The districts were created by different laws, to send members to different Parliaments, at different times. And, the Province of Canada districts were all abolished in 1867. The fact that they had the same name doesn’t mean they were the same district.
It’s inaccurate to link to federal districts, which were created in 1867, in an article covering the 1st Parliament of the Province of Canada, for members elected in 1841. How is the reader to make sense of that? For instance, Bonaventure is the next one in the table of Canada East districts in the article for the 1st Province of Canada Parliament. It currently links to the federal district of Bonaventure (electoral district). The opening of that article says that Bonaventure was an electoral district in the House of Commons, for the Province of Quebec, that was created in 1867. That is not accurate for the Province of Canada district, which was created in 1841, to elect a member for the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada. What is the reader to think of that? How can a member be elected in 1841 to a district that the link says was created in 1867, for a different province and a different body?
As well, the template for electoral districts has an option for Province of Canada districts, separate from both federal and provincial districts. Why is that an option, if they are considered federal districts?
The reason there’s only a few articles at the moment for the Province of Canada districts is because I just started working on this project. My plan is to go through all the districts and make articles for each one, as a Province of Canada electoral district. I started with Beauharnois because it came first in the list of Canada East districts. One must start somewhere. :). There are 42 districts for Canada East and Canada West, in the 1st Province of Canada Parliament, so it will take a while. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 06:24, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
Commenting on Earl Andrew’s point, there was a substantial change for Ontario at Confédération. Canada East and Canada West had the same number of seats in the Province of Canada parliament, but at Confederation, Ontario got more seats than Quebec, so the electoral map for Ontario in 1867 saw significant changes from the map used in the last Province of Canada Parliament. There had also been an expansion in the Parliament of the Province of Canada about the mid-1850s. All of which indicates that there will not be a one-to-one correspondence between the Province of Canada map and the House of Commons map. Some rural ridings, like Berthier, may have been similar, but I expect others will be different. I think it’s best to treat the districts for the Province of Canada as completely separate from the subsequent districts for Ontario, Quebec and the House of Commons. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 12:50, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Well, firstly, it can't be random: if they need separate articles, then they all need separate articles — it's not "some need separate articles and some don't", it's "all or nothing". And secondly, if they need separate articles, then they have to all be disambiguated in a consistent naming format, rather than some being at one format and some being at another. Bearcat (talk) 21:00, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

If they require disambiguation then "Name (Province of Canada electoral district)" ought to be fine as a dab format, unless there are examples where two distinct ridings had the same name, in which case add the years. If there are some with unique names that don't require disambiguation, creating a {{R from unnecessary disambiguation}} at the disambiguated title is a good idea. I see there are quite a few in Category:Electoral districts of Canada East which are disambiguated with (Province of Canada). And shouldn't that category be consistent? If Canada East didn't have a separate legislature, the category should be renamed. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 21:23, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
I agree that all the electoral districts should have separate articles. However, there were 84 electoral districts in the 1st Parliament. I plan on working through the list, and creating new article to cover them all, but it's not something I have the time to do overnight. I'm going on the assumption that "There is no deadline."
I also agree with Ivanvector that the standard name for the articles should be "[Name of district] (Province of Canada electoral district)". That should cover most situations. To start that process, I think that all of the articles listed in Category:Electoral districts of Canada East should have that as their standard name. What is the process to re-name an article?
However, I disagree that the category of "Electoral districts of Canada East" should be eliminated. It's true that there was no Canada East legislature, but the Union Act, 1840, drew a distinction between Canada East and Canada West, and said that each of them had to have the same number of seats. Since the Union Act drew that distinction for the representation in the Parliament, I think it's important to maintain it for the categories of electoral districts. I hope to eventually start working on articles for the Canada West electoral districts, and at that time would want to create a category for the Canada West electoral districts.Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 09:49, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Right, I've checked out Wikipedia:Moving a page and discovered I have authority to move a page, as an autoconfirmed user! Learn something new every day: I thought only admins could do that. Based on the discussion here, I propose to re-name all articles in the "Category:Electoral districts of Canada East" that are in the pattern "Name (Province of Canada)", to the more explicit pattern "Name (Province of Canada electoral district)". (Just to be clear, I've been using "Name (Province of Canada electoral district)" for all the ones I've created. If an article has the other format, it was created by someone else.) Is there a consensus for that proposal? Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 16:35, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

I say go for it, there doesn't seem to be any disagreement here and it's doubtful you'd find anyone watching those really pretty obscure pages who's not also watching this one. For the most part you should be good to go, but you can run into technical problems that prevent you from moving pages. If you do, feel free to post about it here and one of us will take a look. Don't worry about getting anything wrong, anything can be undone on Wikipedia.
According to the guidelines (Wikipedia:Disambiguation) you shouldn't add a disambiguator (the bit in parentheses) to any title which is already not ambiguous. For example the title Kings—Hants is sufficient to identify that riding, so Kings—Hants (Nova Scotia electoral district) is unnecessary. I don't think you'll have that issue with any of the titles you're working on though, since they're all ambiguous with their predecessor or successor ridings, but just so you know. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:52, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
Have started changing them, and get this message afterwards: "Your move should now be reflected in the Wikidata item language link. We ask that you check this has occurred." I have no idea what that means? Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 19:21, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
I can show you what that means. Do you have an example of a page where that happened? Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 13:51, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
The notice is on some sort of "Special" page that comes up after the move is complete. I tried to link to one here but it didn't show on this page. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 20:14, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Global Television Network

Just a quick issue that I wanted to bring to everybody's attention. Over the past several years, a banned user has repeatedly used sockpuppets to conduct a slow-motion edit war, reinserting content into Global Television Network which is not relevant to the topic — specifically, in the "NTV" section where the 1969 launch of Telesat Canada gets mentioned as a factor in the failure of the first network application, the user has repeatedly tried to digress into an extended discussion of the ongoing ownership status of Telesat Canada literally all the way up to the present day. But Telesat's ownership status in the 2010s has absolutely nothing to do with its torpedoing of Global's original 1968 license application — so I've removed the digression each time I've seen it, because it's tangential and not relevant to the television network at all, only to have it come back again at a later date.

The real core issue here is that even though the page has 84 watchlisters according to its page information data, I have consistently been the only editor who has ever actually noticed this at all — the most recent time it was readded to the article again, I missed it and it stayed in the article for weeks until I caught it again today. So most likely, a large percentage of those 84 watchlisters are occasional or inactive editors, and accordingly I wanted to ask if some more active editors are willing to add it to your watchlists to help monitor for this in the future. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 21:29, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Bearcat, Thank you for the head's up. To be honest, that page isn't on my watchlist (maybe it should be as I do monitor Bell Media Radio). Anyway, I concur with the removal; it's, perhaps, worthy of the sort of mention at Telesat Canada but not there. I'm wondering, though, what I've often found works is when editors remove otherwise useful explanatory information I had added is to add it to a footnote (either in a reflist or a notelist). This removes it from the article as it's unneeded bulk; however, interested readers can mouse over the footnote superscript and read the note. Could something like that work instead? --Doug Mehus T·C 22:08, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
Watch listed it, Meters (talk) 22:39, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
I don't see the value in retaining it as a reflisted or notelisted footnote either, since it's simply not relevant to Global at all. Bearcat (talk) 22:54, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
Bearcat, Okay, fair enough. I just find sometimes that helps to stop the content disputes. Doug Mehus T·C 23:22, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

New Member

Hello! I'm Minecrafter0271. I am a new member. I love Canada, and I hope to make Canada-related articles even better. Cheers! --Minecrafter0271 (talk) 06:03, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Welcome Minecrafter0271! There are a number of active editors here who can help if you have questions. Regards, PKT(alk) 13:24, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Babysitting articles

As a followup to Bearcat's post about Global Television Network, I'm sure we all have a number of articles that each of us is babysitting against vandalism, POV, and other spurious editing. I figured we'd all appreciate a few more eyballs on these articles. I've listed a few articles on my watchlist which pop up annoyingly constantly. If you have any such articles on your watchlist, add them here. Don't feel compelled to add these to your watchlist, but having a few more people watchlisting each article is welcome. Mindmatrix 16:32, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Possible posting for pay?

A new poster has been extremely prolific the past few days: User: Torontopedia. It strikes me as "image-polishing" pieces, possibly posting for pay? Could someone with more experience in this issue and knowledge of possible administrative response please take a look? Special:Contributions/Torontopedia Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 00:23, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

I can post a warning on his talk page. I'm not an admin, but it's a start. Minecrafter0271 (talk) 00:29, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
Hello Mr Serjeant Buzfuz. I have responded to your concern on my talk page in a response to the message by Minecrafter0271. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Torontopedia (talk • contribs) 05:17, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

No Fly List Kids Legislation

Hi everyone - I found No Fly List Kids Legislation (Canada) while reviewing new pages this morning. It's a mess at the moment, and I'm not sure it's worthy of an article, but on the other hand it could develop into something. The article could use an experienced hand to make it a proper article, or to initiate deletion if that's the better course of action. Regards, PKT(alk) 13:50, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

This article has many problems. The title is meaningless, and doesn't match the name of any legislation in Canada. The article doesn't refer to the Passenger Protect Program (the official name of Canada's do-not-fly list), and frankly, the subject of the article should be merged to the (currently-redlinked) target I mentioned (if any of it were to be salvaged, that is). Third, twitter is not a reliable source, irrespective of the accountholder. And to top it off, it appears this is written as a news article or school essay masquerading as an encyclopedia article. I think the subject warrants mention, but not its own article. Mindmatrix 20:18, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
They were not flying to Canada so why would it mention that list?
Why does the title need to mat that of some legistation? It's discussing a WP:COMMONNAME of the term.
Tag the tweet then, but per WP:TWITTER, it's fine for this use. Walter Görlitz (talk) 20:25, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
Hmm, apparently I spent so much time searching for sources that I got distracted into a (related but) different subject. As for common name, what I see is legislation created as a result of advocacy from the group 'No Fly List Kids' (or 'No-Fly List Kids', depending on the source), but nobody seems to be calling it 'No Fly List Kids Legislation'. Mindmatrix 21:31, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
Move is appropriate then. Walter Görlitz (talk) 21:35, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

I've listed the page for AFD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/No Fly List Kids Legislation (Canada), because I agree that it's a mess — while the "No Fly List Kids" campaign could certainly be mentioned in the appropriate places (i.e. Passenger Protect Program and/or National Security Act 2017), this article as written is both misrepresenting the nature of the legislation (which was an omnibus update to Canadian security and anti-terrorism legislation in general, not a law specifically about kids being erroneously placed on the no-fly list) and not properly establishing the notability of the real topic (which is a lobbying campaign, not a law in and of itself.) Bearcat (talk) 14:57, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

List of villages in Canada

There are tables on the List of villages in Canada article that have multiple columns of numerical data with no column headings and no labels elsewhere I can see, so it's not possible to know what they represent. I've left a slightly more detailed note on the article talk page, but it doesn't give the impression of being a highly watched page. Thryduulf (talk) 10:41, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for flagging this. It looks like the columns are population, population change, area, and density. I'll verify and add headers now. -- P 1 9 9  ✉ 13:55, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
What's happening there is that for some reason the headers are present in the actual template coding in edit mode, but for some reason they're not displaying to the reader in pageview mode. I'm not sure how to fix that, and it may require some outside assistance from WP:VPT — I've posted a request there for a template coding aficionado to take a look and see if there's anything that can be done to fix it. Bearcat (talk) 14:38, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
Fixed. Since the tables are transcluded, the headers were "replaced" by new headers on the page. I changed those to table captions, and now the transcluded headers are shown. -- P 1 9 9  ✉ 15:51, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
Thank you both. Thryduulf (talk) 16:42, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

List of Canadian Inuit

I created an article today about musician Joshua Haulli, an Inuk singer-songwriter who received three Canadian Folk Music Award nominations in 2019 — but when I attempted to add his name to List of Canadian Inuit, I found myself completely mystified by the structure of the list. Specifically, most columns are using the {{sort}} template to control how the list sorts if a user attempts to rearrange it from default sort order, but the sort templates are using completely random number codes as the sortkeys — for example, Eva Aariak's birthdate of 10 January 1955 is sortkeyed as "112", her birthplace of Arctic Bay is sortkeyed as "008", Nunavut is sortkeyed as "039", and then there are blank entries sortkeyed as "053", "042" and another "042" in the death columns that she obviously doesn't have information for yet. Accordingly, I'm at a total loss for what these sortkeys are, or which sortkeys to even attempt to use in a list entry for Joshua Haulli.

Frankly, my only plausible guess about this is that the numbers might be trying to manually control the sort orders literally entry by entry — such that every number in the entire list would have to be readjusted every single time any new entry is added to the list at all, and thus turning the act of adding a new entry to the list from a straightforward addition into a three hour job of manually readjusting every sortkey in the entire list one by one.

That's obviously not how we should be doing this kind of thing, but I can't think of any other explanation for the random numbers. Can somebody else take a look at this and tell me if you agree with this assessment, and maybe help to tackle reorganizing the list in a more transparent and less labour-intensive way? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 16:02, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

I'd like to add that I've basically just confirmed that my guess was correct; if I re-sort the list on birthdate, the next entry after Eva Aariak becomes Enoki Irqittuq — and then if I go into edit mode, the sortkey on Enoki Irqittuq's birthdate is indeed "113", the next number after Eva Aariak's. And the four people in the list whose "region" is given as Manitoba (Susan Aglukark, George Hickes, Jordin Tootoo and Lucy Tasseor Tutsweetok) are indeed sequentially sortkeyed in the region column as "003", "004", "005" and "006". So the list is definitely trying to manually impose a sort order by sequentially numbering each individual entry, which is definitely not how we should be doing this. Bearcat (talk) 16:08, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
For dates, it may be useful to have a numeric key in YYYYMMDD format so the table can be sorted chronologically. For cases where just the year is shown, YYYY0101 could be used. For cases where it says "after YYYY" or "c. YYYY", I guess the same could be done. When two years are shown, I suppose use the first year. It wouldn't necessarily be truly chronological, but would help people find entries in any case. isaacl (talk) 18:45, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
The table format seems unnecessarily cumbersome, from both an editor and reader standpoint. Maybe it would be better to blow it up and put it into a simpler list, like List of people from British Columbia (by profession) or List of people from Alberta (alphabetical). — Kawnhr (talk) 19:02, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Wayne Keon

I just came across this article about a First Nations poet. It seems to have significant COI contributions. Could someone with an interest in First Nations writing (and access to reliable sources that I can't seem to find) take a look at it, and either add a few sources to the bio, or nominate it for deletion if warranted. I think this article probably merits inclusion on WP, but I simply can't find much in the way of sources to confirm this. Thanks. (There may be info about him in Native Poetry in Canada: A Contemporary Anthology (editors: Jeannette Armstrong, Lally Grauer) and Handbook of Native American Literature (Andrew Wiget), but I can't access the texts.) A Google Books search suggests other potential sources. Mindmatrix 15:57, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Note: I had earlier missed the fact that Native Poetry in Canada: A Contemporary Anthology is already used as a source. Mindmatrix 16:00, 8 February 2020 (UTC)
The problem with that source, however, is that it does not represent coverage about him — it simply represents a piece of his own work being used as metaverification of its own existence, which is not how you demonstrate that a writer is notable. There are, in fact, literally zero sources present in the article that represent notability-building reliable source coverage about him, so it's been nominated for deletion accordingly. And you're correct about the COI; in fact, Keonw was the article's original creator, so it's definitely an WP:AUTOBIO. Bearcat (talk) 18:16, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

C-SPAN

An anonymous IP, 68.227.160.152 (talk · contribs), has been hitting a significant number of Canadian politicians today with external links to pages on C-SPAN that compile short video clips of the subjects speaking in Question Period. I don't know (or care) whether this would be considered a valuable addition to an American politician or not, but I certainly don't see the value in it being comprehensively present as an external link on Canadian politicians — C-SPAN is an American media outlet, not a Canadian one, so its curation of a random partial selection of clips from Question Period is neither a reliably representative gauge of the importance of those speeches, nor an accurate reflection of the totality of the polticians' careers.

However, I wanted to ask for other input before I start attempting to remove the links: do other people agree with me that they're not useful or relevant additions to Canadian politicians, and if so is anybody willing to help remove them so that I'm not tackling the job entirely on my own? They've already hit more than 50 articles and are still going as I type this.

Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 19:29, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

I’d noticed them on a couple of pages on my watchlist and didn’t see the relevance. If it’s just a spammer I think they should come off. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 19:55, 8 February 2020 (UTC)
If there’s a consesnsus, I’ll delete from any pages I see it on, “irrelevant”. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 19:57, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

BetaKit

FYi, on BLP/N an editor asked how good BetaKit as source is, used on over 2,000 articles is no small fish. –84.46.52.252 (talk) 17:11, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Oshawa event

Dear Canadian editors: I am taking part in a Do-It-Yourself fair on Family Day, Feb. 17. Here's a link to an announcement. It's a walk-through event, and I'm going to be demonstrating how to edit Wikipedia and talking about the five pillars and the ins and outs of collaborative writing.

I'll have a projector and screen to show a short presentation that I had previously made for a local computer club, and a couple of computers for people who want to sit down and try editing. I'll have some paper sources on hand, the Wikipedia Cheat Sheet and some links to online sources about local topics so that beginners can find information easily.

Since those walking through the DIY event won't likely have accounts, I'm going to focus on improving existing articles, plus a few draft stubs in my user area. Here's a link to the organizing page I'm starting: User:Anne Delong/Oshawa Editathon; suggestions are welcome. I'd be happy if editors would like to contribute (but please find your own sources - don't use up the ones I have found before I get to show them on Monday!) I have no idea whether the DIY crowd will be interested in editing Wikipedia - I guess I'll find out! —Anne Delong (talk) 01:07, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protecting Athletics Canada and University of Guelph pages

Hi everyone!

I was wondering if it would be possible to semi-protect the Athletics Canada and University of Guelph pages, as I believe one or both pages may be vandalized or be disrupted, due to a recent story published by The Globe and Mail. The story was published this past weekend and is expected to continue gaining attention as it spreads across social media. While neither page has been hit yet, semi-protecting them may prevent it. Additionally, I will be editing both pages later today to add details about the story, which may result in individuals vandalizing either or both pages.

Thank you so much!

--Torontopedia (talk) 17:02, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Torontopedia: - the place to make requests like that is Wikipedia:Requests for page protection, where it's a pretty simple process. However in the two cases you mentioned, semi-protection would probably not be granted because there's been no vandalism yet. That being the case, the next best thing to do is what you did - mention your concerns here, to give a "heads up" to other Canadian editors. PKT(alk) 17:34, 11 February 2020 (UTC)
PKT is correct — in normal circumstances, we don't preemptively semi-protect articles in the expectation that future vandalism might happen, but apply semi only if and when a vandalism problem has already shown up that can't be adequately controlled by other processes. In a situation like this, the appropriate response is to do exactly what you did here, by bringing the issue to WikiProject Canada's attention to get extra eyeballs watching the page — but if and when vandalism does start to happen, that's when we'll start considering temporary semi-protection. Bearcat (talk) 15:53, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

McLellan/Freeland infoboxes

I have repeatedly attempted to add a year (2006) next to Anne McLellan's name in the infobox at Chrystia Freeland, where she appears as a predecessor in the deputy PM section. This seems highly necessary given the fact that McLellan is not Freeland's direct predecessor, there was a 13 year period between 2006 and 2019 where the office of deputy PM did not exist in any form. @GoodDay: has repeatedly reverted these edits, claiming this is "irrelevant" and that "Freeland is McLellan's direct successor, no matter how many years in between." This is simply not true; a 13 year period of vacancy means McLellan is an indirect predecessor of Freeland. I do not want to start an edit-war over this so I would like to achieve some consensus here for the edit. The same goes for the infobox at Anne McLellan where (2019) should appear following Chrystia Freeland's name. TrailBlzr (talk) 02:48, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm not interested in edit-warring over this. But, I don't see the need to have "(2006)" next to McLellan's name in Freeland's infobox & "2019" next to Freeland's name in McLellan's infobox. It says predecessor & successor, not immediate predecessor & immediate successor, in the infoboxes. GoodDay (talk) 02:54, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
It doesn't produce immediate predecessor because the preceding person is almost always a direct predecessor. In other words, someone who left office at the same time their successor assumed office. Displaying November 20, 2019 as the date Freeland assumed office, with McLellan listed as the predecessor, makes it appear as though McLellan also left office on or near that date. TrailBlzr (talk) 03:11, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
A footnote next to McLellan's & Freeland's names, would suffice. GoodDay (talk) 02:56, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
I can accept this compromise, will implement. TrailBlzr (talk) 06:00, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
Note - There is a 3-year gap between Pope Clement IV & successor Pope Gregory X; a 2-year gap between Pope Gregory XII & successor Pope Martin V. There's no "(1268)" & "(1271)"; "(1415)" & "(1417") in the infoboxes of those bio articles. GoodDay (talk) 03:04, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
WP:OSE. Articles about medieval popes are not relevant to contemporary articles about Canadian politicians. TrailBlzr (talk) 03:11, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
TrailBlzr, This is kind of meh. If that's all you're wanting, I generally support that, but I also like GoodDay's suggestion of a footnote, since it's a one-off type thing. That being said, it's quite likely we'll have another 10-15 spell between Deputy Prime Ministers, so maybe the parentheses is the way to go. Doug Mehus T·C 03:06, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
The issue with a footnote in this case is that it is redundant. Footnotes are generally used for full paragraphs that can't be included in infoboxes due to their sheer size (like at Battle of Britain). A single year does not require a footnote because it can exist in the infobox without appearing obtrusive. TrailBlzr (talk) 03:16, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
This version is the best. Do not use small in infoboxes per MOS:SMALLTEXT and the rest offers too much detail for an inbox—they're just supposed to be summaries of the article. Walter Görlitz (talk) 08:52, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
No one is proposing using small font. TrailBlzr (talk) 20:14, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
I can confirm, but I've seen it small in the past. Walter Görlitz (talk) 00:18, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
If not a year, then a footnote seems sensible to me. The thing about the Pope example is that, because of the drawn-out process of electing a new one, a gap between reigns is expected and normal. But Canadian offices don't normally have that uncertainty, passing from one holder to the next within a day or two; a 13-year gap is unusual, unexpected and overall noteworthy— especially in this situation, since the prior DPM didn't serve under the prior PM. A less-informed reader could easily assume Anne McLellan was a member of the Harper ministry; one who is slightly more on the ball and recognizes her from the news as an advisor to the Trudeau government might assume she only recently retired. I think giving no explanation is liable to confuse readers, and since the point of an infobox is to present pertinent information at a glance, some sort of clarification would be helpful. — Kawnhr (talk) 00:29, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

RSN discussion: Rocket Robin Soccer in Toronto rocketrobinsoccerintoronto.com

WP:RSN#Rocket Robin Soccer in Toronto rocketrobinsoccerintoronto.com may be of interest to this project. Walter Görlitz (talk) 19:33, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Absolutely no way that qualifies as a reliable source. Bearcat (talk) 23:14, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
As I suspected. RSN has additional details. You might want to comment there. Walter Görlitz (talk) 00:54, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
Oh, I see you did. TY. Walter Görlitz (talk) 00:59, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Article on Official Bilingualism

I've just deleted a large sub-section from the article on Official bilingualism in Canada, as it seemed irrelevant and also violated the policy on lengthy quotes from texts. Skimming through the article, it seems to me that there has been a lot added to it that is only marginally relevant to the issue of official bilingualism. I plan on reviewing the article in more detail, but think it would benefit from other editors taking a look at it as well. --Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 12:35, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Em dashes vs en dashes (again) in electoral district articles

This old debate has come back at Talk:Drummond—Arthabaska#Requested_move_28_August_2019. -- Earl Andrew - talk 17:02, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Earl Andrew, What's an "en dash? I thought it was em dashes or hyphens. I would say em dashes look nicer, but most people don't use them, so I'd favour em dashes with a redirect using a hyphen for each electoral district.--Doug Mehus T·C 15:57, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
Dash#En_dash -- Earl Andrew - talk 16:19, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
Earl Andrew, So, there's something in between a hyphen and an em dash? Talk about splitting CHs...Yeah, I'd definitely favour em dashes over en dashes, but still believe redirects should, or could, be created (where demand is there) using hyphens. Redirects using en dashes are unlikely typos, so probably not necessary.--Doug Mehus T·C 16:47, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
There are hyphens, en-dashes, em-dashes, minus signs and several other typographicaly similar symbols. Walter Görlitz (talk) 19:58, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
I've recently come across a really good example why, in my opinion, all electoral districts should have either "federal electoral district" or "provincial electoral district" automatically added to their names: Chicoutimi-Saguenay and Chicoutimi—Saguenay. Technically, since one uses an en-dash and one uses an em-dash, they don't qualify for disambiguation, but to the average reader, I think that distinction is simply not apparent. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 12:44, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
One uses a hyphen, and both should use one. I'm not sure why either would use anything but a hyphen. Walter Görlitz (talk) 12:46, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
The answer, as far as I can tell, is that the federal government uses an em-dash in the statutory names of ridings, so we use an em-dash, which creates difficulty in distinguishing if you aren't aware of this distinction. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 12:51, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Help with draft for Bruce Flatt (Brookfield Asset Management CEO)

For full disclosure, I work for Brookfield Asset Management. Bruce Flatt's page was moved to draft due to improper AfC review. I have resubmitted the draft for page creation but would appreciate some help in improving the content so that the page can be created again. Mrn helmers (talk) 22:05, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Request declined. I willingly help other volunteer editors who are contributing to Wikipedia out of a desire to add to it and make it better, without personal benefit. But you’re being paid to edit Wikipedia. Why should I help you do your job? Will you share the wealth, or are you expecting volunteers to do your job for free, while you get paid for our contributions to the article you’re being paid to do? I don’t expect other people to help me do my job for free while I get paid. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 00:06, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
Even if you shared the wealth, which could get every one of us blocked for undisclosed paid editing, it makes no sense to have those who can afford an article to get one. Walter Görlitz (talk) 00:37, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
Hi @Mrn helmers: - you should add {{Connected contributor|User1=Mrn helmers|U1-declared=yes| U1-otherlinks=(your explanation eg I currently work for Brookfield Asset Management)}} to the talk page of the draft article. PKT(alk) 01:33, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
@PKT: Will do!
@Mr Serjeant Buzfuz: I respect your approach and would not make demands of anyone here. My hope is that other editors will agree with me that Bruce Flatt deserves inclusion on Wikipedia and will then help improve the draft of their own accord. I am hopeful that the draft I already created is good enough but am sure there is always room for improvement. Thanks again, Mrn helmers (talk) 18:15, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jan Guenther Braun

Please discuss there. Bearian (talk) 13:57, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Old Acadian (pre-1884) flag

The page for Acadia— the old French colony, not the modern region— is currently sporting a flag I've never seen before (added in this diff from February). It's a great flag, but I can't find it attested to anywhere else on the net (including Flags of the World), and the "File:Old_Acadia_Flag.svg" page indicates it's not even used widely on Wikipedia. Does anybody have any knowledge of this flag, or is it someone's original work being (mistakenly?) passed off as something more? — Kawnhr (talk) 18:19, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

I’ve not got a source, but I wouldn’t rule it out. Regimental flags for the ancien régime were in the pattern of a white cross on four coloured quarters. This flag fits that pattern. For some examples, sadly in black and white, see this article: https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/MCR/article/view/17656/22306 Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 22:30, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
Very interesting, thanks for the link. Certainly seems a lot more plausible now. — Kawnhr (talk) 18:16, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Request two changes to the template for "Infobox Canada Electoral district"

As I'm working on the electoral districts for the Province of Canada, two thoughts have occurred to me about the template for the electoral districts, which I thought I would open for discussion over on the template page. Would welcome comments: Template talk:Infobox Canada electoral districtMr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 03:19, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi all. Following up on this comment. I got in touch with one of the template gurus, Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me | my contributions. They've produced a draft version in the template sandbox. Before amending the template itself, thought it best to ask for comment and (hopefully) consensus. If interested, please check out the Template Talk page. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 16:29, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
Two weeks have gone by, with no comments here or on the template Talk page, so I've asked Dreamy Jazz to edit the Template as outlined. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 18:10, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
Done! Thanks so much, Dreamy Jazz! Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 19:42, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Editwarring over unverified categories

Within the past several weeks, I've removed unverified and unsourced categories from a couple of WP:BLPs, only to have them reverted back into the article by people without adding any content that would properly support them.

First, there's actress Oluniké Adeliyi, who's being categorized as both a singer and a rapper even though the article contains no content whatsoever to verify that she's ever sang or rapped so much as one word in a noteworthy public context — even on a Google search, the strongest evidence of singing I can find is that she was a member of her church choir as a kid, and the strongest evidence of rapping I can find is a looped and soundless GIF of her making a hip hoppish physical gesture on a non-notable local talk show, and otherwise all I can find is a few sources which introduce her as an "actor, singer and rapper" before proceding to discuss her solely in the context of her acting. But, of course, people don't get categorized for every single thing they might have casually done at some point in their lives — if that were how it worked, then every person who has an article would always be catted as a singer (we've all sung "Happy Birthday" and Christmas carols) and a large proportion of people who have been alive since the 1980s would be catted as a rapper (nearly everybody under the age of 50 today has at least tried, albeit badly, to spit a rhyme or two, and even people over 50 who've tried it at least once aren't as rare as you might think) — to get categorized as a singer or a rapper, a person needs to show evidence that they've been notable as a singer or rapper. So I removed the singer and rapper categories on that basis a few weeks ago, only to have somebody revert me today without either adding content to the article to explain the categories or even stating a reason in their edit summary why either categorization would be warranted.

Then there's Luke Mockridge, a comedian who was born and raised in Germany, and lives and works in Germany, but is also being simultaneously described and categorized as Canadian on the basis that his father is a Canadian man who emigrated to Germany before Luke was born. But of course, that's not how nationality works — sure, it would make him eligible to claim Canadian citizenship if he wanted to emigrate to Canada, but it doesn't make him automatically "Canadian" absent evidence that he actually has emigrated to Canada. So I removed the Canadian categories several weeks ago, only to find out within the last two days that they've since been readded without any stronger evidence to bolster their presence.

So, for both of these articles, I wanted to ask for some additional input on whether the categories are warranted or not so that this doesn't turn into an extended edit war. Bearcat (talk) 13:20, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

According to Citizenship Canada, Mockridge would likely be a Canadian citizen by birth, being born abroad to a Canadian parent who was himself born in Canada: Government of Canada: See if you may be a citizen. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 13:40, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
I don't consider technical citizenship to be relevant to whether he should be categorized as Canadian or not. YMMV, I suppose, but to me he's not Canadian in any meaningful way, regardless of whether he has citizenship or not, if he hasn't ever worked in Canada. Bearcat (talk) 20:32, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
But that’s a personal, subjective view. Canadian law says he is a Canadian. For all we know, he holds a Certificate of Canadian Citizenship and a Canadian passport right now. If he doesn’t, he could apply for a Canadian passport tomorrow, without having to apply for citizenship. He could get on a plane (once they’re flying again), and come to Canada without any need for a visa or residency application. He could work the Canadian comedy circuit without needing a work permit. He can vote in Canadian elections from abroad. If holding Canadian citizenship under the federal law of Canada isn’t enough to be considered “Canadian” on Wikipedia, what authoritative, non-subjective test do you propose, that can be tested against reliable sources? Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 21:24, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
One other point: if he’s not Canadian, what is he? My understanding is that German nationality law is stricter than Canadian law. Just being born in Germany does not automatically make you German. It depends in part on your parentage, and how long the parent has been a German citizen. I note from the article that his nationality is described as Canadian and Italian, not German. If he’s not Canadian for the purpose of the category, shouldn’t the article be edited to remove the reference to Canadian in the lead and in the infobox, to be consistent throughout? But if the article says his nationality is Canadian, how can he not be included in Canadian categories?Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 22:24, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
There's a difference between citizenship and nationality, however. A person can be a citizen without being a national (a person who was born and raised in the United States, and has never lived in Canada a day in their lives, is not "Canadian" in any non-trivial way just because they have technical citizenship on paper by virtue of having had a Canadian-born parent, because if they've never lived here they're not a Canadian national) and a person can be a national without being a citizen (people from American Samoa are not citizens of the United States, but are still American nationals and thus still American) — but our category system is concerned with the nationality and not the citizenship per se. What would be necessary to consider Luke Mockridge "Canadian", for our purposes, is some reliably sourced evidence that his "Canadianness" is relevant to his life and work somehow. Bearcat (talk) 15:06, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
I'm afraid I'm not following this distinction. "National" is the term used in international law to designate a person under the protection of a particular country. "Citizen" is the term used in the domestic law of a country to designate the individuals who have the highest rights within the country. The terms are linked, but I'm not aware of any category of "national" within Canadian domestic law. For example, the article on Canadian nationality law deals heavily with Canadian citizenship. The article on Nationality comments: "However, in most modern countries all nationals are citizens of the state, and full citizens are always nationals of the state." As an example of the significance of citizenship in Canadian law, in 2006, Canada evacuated approximately 15,000 Canadian citizens from Lebanon, even though most of them had never lived in Canada: Canadians of convenience. Can you point us to any government source that indicates that there is a category of "Canadian national" in Canadian law, over and above Canadian citizenship?
I understand that your objection is that Mockridge lives in Germany and does not appear to have worked in Canada. But he's Canadian. Perhaps it's the category that needs to be tweaked, to only include comedians who've worked in Canada, rather than tying it to citizenship.Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 15:52, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
As for Oluniké Adeliyi, I'm with you Bearcat. I just rolled back the other user's edits, and will add the article to my watchlist, and also left a "please stop it" message on their talk page. If one or two other responsible editors would also watch the article, it would be appreciated. PKT(alk) 14:42, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
Bearcat and anyone else watching Oluniké Adeliyi - please step in if our 'friend' reverts again, and make sure to give him/her a level 4 warning. Or more, if you can. Cheers, PKT(alk) 01:44, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
Note that the text and categories about Adeliyi being a singer/rapper were first added by WikiWorldOne in this edit, a suspected sockpuppet of DarwinandBrianEdits. Second, BLPs require all categories to be supported by the text, and all text to be supported by references. If the editors that add these categories fail to supply the necessary references, then the categories must be removed. Mindmatrix 13:46, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for that, Mindmatrix. The individual has done it again, so I'm going to undo their edits again. PKT(alk) 15:58, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

CanRiding Template and changes to Library of Parliament

I noticed the Template:CanRiding links to the previous version of the Library of Parliament website (https://lop.parl.ca/sites/ParlInfo/default/en_CA/). The template provides a simple external link citation for federal election ridings.

It would be simple enough to update the URL the template uses, but it appears that the Library of Parliament has changed the unique number assigned to each electoral district. For instance Saskatoon City (electoral district) previously had an ID of 666. The new website changes the unique ID for Saskatoon City to 7664. Saskatoon City, Saskatchewan (1935-08-14 - 1949-04-29)

The CanRiding template appears to be used 210 times - tools.wmflabs.org. So a simple change of the URL will not fix the broken links on those pages.

One thought would be create a new template? Or perhaps integrate it into Template:Canadian Parliament links?

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Caddyshack01 (talk) 23:57, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Caddyshack01, I updated the template and the IDs on the pages. – BrandonXLF (talk) 18:53, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Anglos and Francos

FYI, Francophone Canadian/Quebecer and Anglophone Quebecer/Canadian categories are up for deletion.

-- 65.94.170.207 (talk) 12:46, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for posting this. I probably wouldn't have noticed otherwise. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 20:21, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Historical population stats at provincial article

Let's get a few eyes on this.....info not lost was moved...but still...see Talk:Provinces and territories of Canada#Demographic Evolution Section.--Moxy 🍁 00:55, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Watchlisting request

In the process of looking at Spouse of the Prime Minister of Canada today, I noticed that within the last few months, an anonymous editor had added content about the bullshit conspiracy theory that Justin Trudeau is the product of an extramarital affair between Maggie and Fidel Castro. Needless to say, this has exactly nothing, to the power of negative zero, to do with the actual topic of the article, which is the general concept of PM's spouses as a public role rather than unverified speculation about their private lives (and no, there definitely shouldn't be any content about the "Laureen Harper's having a lesbian love affair with her RCMP bodyguard" rumour, either!) — so I poleaxed it, but the fact that it spent about three months in the article before I found it implies that the article isn't adequately watchlisted. So I just wanted to ask if anybody else is willing to add it to your watchlists to help keep an eye on this in the future. Bearcat (talk) 01:20, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Done. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 04:15, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Soccer national articles during 1992-1994

So I have started work on the 1994 FIFA World Cup qualification (CONCACAF–OFC play-off) page which saw Canada just miss out on meeting Argentina by penalities over the two legs. Anyway I was wondering if any of you might have the national football articles for the Canadian journey to the play-off and ideally the two legs that were played from the Canadian newspapers as I don't want be bias to one nation (aka Australia). HawkAussie (talk) 13:13, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Prix Iris

I've posted an RFC at Talk:Prix Iris about the way the awards ceremonies are numbered, because the way we're numbering them on the English Wikipedia is different from the way they're being numbered both on the French Wikipedia and by Québec Cinéma itself. I know not everybody here is particularly knowledgeable about Canadian or Quebec film, but I still wanted to announce the RFC here in case anybody cares to offer input. Bearcat (talk) 17:38, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Lowercase or uppercase: indigenous/Indigenous peoples in Canada

Feel free to join this discussion. Marcocapelle (talk) 19:57, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for letting us know; appreciated. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 16:18, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

QC or cr?

Style question: should we always use "QC" / "KC", because that is the term in English and we're writing in English, or should we use the term "QC"/"KC" for anglophones and "cr" ("conseillier de la reine / roi") for francophones? I recently noticed two bios, each for a francophone lawyer in Quebec. One article, Perreault Casgrain, uses "cr", and the other, François-Philippe Brais, uses "QC". My own inclination is that when a term is bilingual, we should use the English version, but thought I would raise it here. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 12:24, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

Causeways

Just found some really bizarre text in causeway. I've removed it already, and investigated to find that it was added last year by an anonymous IP, but I just wanted to run it by people here to see if you think it's as weird and nonsensical as I did.


Now, firstly, causeways don't result in the formation of an island — causeways may be built between the mainland and a thing that's already an island, but they don't turn anything into an island that wasn't already an island. Secondly, Cape Breton Mainland what now? Bearcat (talk) 21:59, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Nonsense. This is someone's unusual opinion (i.e. original research). Even if we accept the logic that construction of a causeway impacts a landmass' designation as an island, logically the reverse would be true: a causeway would make the island it connects to not an island. But the argument is nonsense no matter what conclusion you draw from it. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 22:04, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
I'm beginning to wonder if our anonymous friend somehow misunderstood the word "causeway", and thought that it refers not to the "bridge" across the water body, but to the water body itself. Obviously Cape Breton's status as an island or not an island hinges less on the Canso Causeway and more on the Strait of Canso — but their whole argument only starts to make a bit of sense if you assume that they used "causeway" to mean the strait instead of the "bridge", and therefore assumed that the construction of the causeway meant the digging out of a water feature through what used to be solid land rather than the construction of a strip of new land across existing water. Which is obviously still not to say the argument would have any merit, but at least it achieves a logical basis for the "formation of an island" that's absent any other way. Bearcat (talk) 22:20, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Murray Dorin

Just a quick heads-up to everybody, an anonymous IP attempted to mark former federal MP Murray Dorin as having died on April 11, but without showing any reliable sources to verify that — and as of right now, I can't find any sourcing on the Google, either. As sometimes happens, this might have been an edit from somebody who actually has insider information, such as a relative — but as also sometimes happens, it could also just have been simple shits and giggles vandalism. I've temporarily semi-protected the page to prevent IP edits in the meantime, but obviously we should keep an eye out in case real sources start to report his death in the next day or two. Bearcat (talk) 04:50, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Sheila Shaen Orr

There are conflicting dates of birth for this person. The article states both 1945 and 1964. When doing a search, it comes up with two different dates of birth as well. I am in the process of doing updates and adding references to the List of people from Prince Albert. A source can't be added next to her entry until we have the correct date of birth. You might not think that is necessary as long as it says something about being from Prince Albert. But accuracy is key. Mr. C.C.Hey yo!I didn't do it! 22:27, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

I notice the article says "She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Saskatchewan Arts Board." [5] I wonder if that's a mistake. At the listing of the board of directors on the Sask Arts Board's website, Orr's name does not appear [6]. Nor does it appear in the list of board members 1948 to present [7]. At the Wayback Machine, she is not listed on the board of directors as of 2016 [8][9] (when the fact was added to the article[10]). At some point in the past she was on the Sask Arts Board's Indigenous Arts Advisory Committee (e.g. [11]) but I am not aware of any reliable source stating that she has ever been on its Board of Directors. Also, the article states that she teaches traditional arts at First Nations University of Canada, but she is not presently listed on the faculty page of its website [12], nor was she listed there in 2016 [13]. Mathew5000 (talk) 08:59, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
Regarding her birthdate, one of the references in the article documents her birthdate as 1964, which makes more sense than 1945 if she is indeed still teaching. I used the existing reference to support 1964 in the infobox. The other references should be checked, and updated to either current URLs or archive.org copies. PKT(alk) 12:09, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
@PKT: I don't find your reasoning persuasive (a 75-year-old is certainly capable of teaching, and in any event there's no evidence that Orr still is teaching) but I agree with you that the 1945 birth year is probably wrong, maybe a mixup with a different person named Sheila Orr [14]. There's an interview of Orr conducted by Heather Hodgson ([15] Google Books link, some pages omitted from preview) in which Orr says "I had a boyfriend who was the local artist on our reserve when I was 14 or 15, and we had plans to attend the SIFC Indian Fine Arts program together when I finished high-school." But SIFC didn't open until 1976 [16]. This does rule out a 1945 year of birth. All that said, I still think the sources used in the article are weak and some of the assertions made in the article appear to be incorrect (as I mentioned above). Mathew5000 (talk) 00:31, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
@Mathew5000: Your points are well-taken, but it comes down to whether or not there's a reference for a year of her birth. There's a ref for 1964, but I didn't see anything for 1945. I agree 100% that the sources need to be reviewed, refreshed and the article re-verified. The article is in relatively rough shape, reference-wise. PKT(alk) 00:46, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

Peterborough, Ontario

Hi everyone - I could use some support at Peterborough, Ontario - an editor insists on changing Canadian spelling to American, despite my explanation why Canspell is preferred. I don't want to tread on the 3RR rule. To a lesser extent, s/he has done the same at Castlegar, British Columbia. I'd appreciate it if another editor participated in this. Thanks, PKT(alk) 16:04, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Never mind. The editor got themselves blocked already.........PKT(alk) 16:30, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
Note that violating WP:3RR is permitted in cases of vandalism. And this was vandalism. I would never block an editor for reverting such disruptive vandalistic edits, as long as they'd taken the chance to inform the other why the edits were wrong. And changing spelling to an non-used English version is a violation of the WP:ENGVAR policy, not simply a content dispute. Canterbury Tail talk 19:05, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
I've been blocked for less, several times. Walter Görlitz (talk) 00:50, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Is there a place to request assistance on an article draft? Regarding Canadian States of Emergency

I'm working on an article on States of Emergency in Canada, and I'd appreciate some help if anyone would like to offer it: https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Draft:State_of_Emergency_in_Canada

Is there a place to request that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by TimeEngineer (talk • contribs) 22:24, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society, or Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste ?

Following up on my question about QC/cr above, I have another example, this time where I think we should be using the name in French. As I suggested in my earlier post, if an entity/rank/name has both a French version and an English version, like QC / cr, then I think we should use the English version, since we're writing in English. However, if there's only a French version, we should use the French version, since the people involved have decided to have only a French version. For example, we don't refer to the Quebecers Party; we refer to the Parti Québécois. Which leads me to the article on the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society. The name of the article is not the name of the organisation; it's an English translation of the proper name. (To the best of my knowledge, the SSJB does not have a bilingual name.) My reaction is that the article therefore should be Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste (currently a re-direct). Is there a guideline on this question somewhere, in the MOS or elsewhere? I've not come across one, but would welcome comments. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 02:21, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

Mr Serjeant Buzfuz It's covered at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Canada-related articles#French names. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 16:18, 18 April 2020 (UTC)
Our rule when it comes to French-named organizations in Quebec is not that we invariably default to the thing's official name — it's that we default to whatever name, whether it's the official French name or an unofficial English translation, is actually used by English language sources in the real world. Basically, the rule is this:
(1) If no alternative English name can be found at all, either because the English-language sources just refer to it by the French name without translating it or because the thing just doesn't actually have any English language coverage at all, then we use the French name. Examples: Parti Québécois, Incendies.
(2) If English-language sources settle on a consistent English name, then we use that title even if the name is technically "unofficial". Examples: Rhinoceros Party (which, surprisingly, never actually had an official English name at all), National Assembly of Quebec.
(3) If English-language sources are inconsistent in how they anglicize a French name, then we stick with the French name instead of editwarring over multiple competing English forms. Examples: Trois-Rivières, Université du Québec à Montréal.
In a nutshell, a thing's official name in a foreign language does not automatically win a naming dispute over an English form as a first principle — it's a question of assessing how the thing is or isn't actually referred to in actual English language sources, and using whichever title (regardless of its official or unofficial status) reflects the name that English speakers actually use. This is also, for the record, standard sitewide policy, as spelled out at WP:UE — because this isn't actually a uniquely Canadian issue, it's a question that affects every topic in the world whose primary and official name is in any language other than English. Bearcat (talk) 16:31, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

Result graphs for electoral districts

I've started making graphs for the results of various electoral districts (Example), but would like some feedback before making more. (Credits to this GAN for the idea) Username6892 03:13, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Personally I think it's distracting. However that being said, I think Wikipedia devotes far too much space to election results and the minutiae of data round them. So I'll forgo my thoughts on it and go with whatever others thoughts are. Canterbury Tail talk 11:06, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
If you look at the UK districts (where I got the idea from), you can see that they normally have a good amount of prose history, including writing about the circumstances of the elections (Ex. The MP supports Brexit in a very pro-Brexit constituency). Username6892 14:05, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
My impression is that they're awfully big images. For example, the graph for Davenport (electoral district) runs off the side of the page on my screen, which is fairly wide. It's good work, and graphs are nice for visualizing relative success of the parties, but I agree with Canterbury Tail that the graphs I'm seeing today are distracting. It would be quite good if they could be added in "state=collapsed" so that users can see them with a click. PKT(alk) 14:34, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
I think the main problem with autocollapse is the fact that the show button doesn't appear on Mobile view. I made a draft collapsible here, though it is currently on extended for that reason. Please review it if possible. Username6892 15:12, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
OK, understood - that would be an issue. I went back to Davenport (electoral district) and shrank the dimensions to 700 wide and 200 high, and I think it looks better & cleaner. Please have a look. PKT(alk) 23:28, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
checkYIt's good now, though I changed the height to 250. Username6892 23:47, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
What is the point of a page for an electoral district if not to list election results? - Astrophobe (talk) 16:13, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
I think they look nice and I think it's always informative to see these things in time series, so I like them. But I see two major complications worth considering up front. First, what is the minimum number of elections that a district needs to exist for in order for it to have a graph? 1 is obviously insufficient, 2 is silly, so would the idea be to have one for any district that was around for 3 or more elections? Second, your example of Thornhill in 2012 nicely illustrates that electoral districts themselves change in meaning over time, which makes the graphs potentially misleading; how about a vertical light grey line whenever there's major redistricting? - Astrophobe (talk) 16:13, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
  1. 3 is probably decent, though I lowered the width of those with 3-5 elections.
  2. I'm not sure if that's possible. Username6892 18:04, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Looks fine to me, but on the topic of clutter/data swamping: why don't we establish a guideline of showing only the most recent results, and hiding everything else under a "historical results" collapse? Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:16, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

Draft: Braden Paes

Hi there,

Hello fellow Canadians! I was hoping that someone could have a look at the Draft: Braden Paes page and let me know fo any recommendations or tips to make sure it is approved. Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Expertwiki6250 (talk • contribs) 15:11, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

I don't think he'll pass the notability criteria. He's only starred as single passing roles, nothing significant. Also note that IMDB cannot be used as a reference. Canterbury Tail talk 15:18, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for that info. So if we can find notice of his starring or lead roles he should have a better chance? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Expertwiki6250 (talk • contribs) 15:33, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

I do have to ask, what if your connection to Braden Paes? Canterbury Tail talk 17:20, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
That was my question as well. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 01:40, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

No connection really, I've just seen his work and worked on projects with people who have worked with him. Always hear about him figured he needed a page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Expertwiki6250 (talk • contribs) 13:02, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

What's important to understand is that actors do not automatically pass Wikipedia's inclusion standard for actors just because they've had roles: the notability test for an actor requires some evidence of distinctions that render his acting as significant. Now, if an actor has won or been nominated for a top-level major national acting award, such as a Canadian Screen Award or one of their predecessors, an Emmy, an Oscar or a BAFTA, then the article gets to exist as soon as you can add one reliable source which verifies the nomination or win, even if the article still requires more than that before it actually qualifies as a good article — but if you're shooting for "notable because he's been in stuff", then the test he has to pass is not just listing the stuff he was in, but showing reliable source media coverage about his performances in stuff: entertainment news articles about him, reviews of the films or television series he was in that single his performance out for dedicated attention, and on and so forth.
What you cannot do, if you want to make an actor notable enough for a Wikipedia article, is rely on IMDb, unreliable sources like "Net Worth Post", user-generated press release databases like Digital Journal, his own self-published PR from his own agent, or Q&A interviews in which he's talking about himself in the first person — your sources have to represent third party coverage in real print newspapers, magazines or books, writing about and analyzing his significance as an actor in the third person. Literally none of the sources you've used in that draft represent the kind of coverage that's required, however. Bearcat (talk) 19:24, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

evaluation

The article itself is written in a neutral tone, with multiple citations dedicated to each heading. However, I feel that the History section puts a lot of emphasis on Native American's struggle on the topic. I would have loved to see more historical context surrounding the history of LGBTQ rights in Canada, stemming from the influence of British culture. This can include the treatment of LGBTQ community before Canada became a British colony, back in Europe. A context in refugees and asylum as a part of the factors and thereby the population of migration from Europe to a new continent would also be relevant. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cathymeng123 (talk • contribs) 13:35, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

What article are you referring to? Canterbury Tail talk 13:56, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
Indeed. Firstly, what article are you referring to, and secondly, what sources do you propose we use to add whatever content you want to see added to it? It's never helpful to say "you should edit the article to say more about this", while not actually helping to provide any sources for us to say more about it with or even telling us what article you're even talking about. Bearcat (talk) 14:54, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
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