Talk:Former colonies and territories in Canada

Proposal to change calendar from CE to AD
Consensus is necessary to change this.

Change. I never use CE. We didn't learn it in school here in Hogtown. I come from a family of PhDs — not me personally — and none of the kith and kin, to my knowledge, uses it.

I'm an agnostic, and I find "CE" offensive. It's pushy; it's obnoxious; it's fixin' somethin' that ain't broke; it equates "Christ" with "Common" which, if you have ever read any of the man's public pronouncements or admonitions, he was not. It's just really ridiculous.

It's offensive to rationalists and to religious both.

Is there a town in Quebec which is not prefixed by St or Ste? Few.

This country's historical traditions are not Parsi or Taoist, which might make the use of CE more reasonable.

Is this "CE" nonsense a fixation in any language other than English? No. It's a weird English language thing, that the rest of the world doesn't give a damn about. Varlaam (talk) 15:13, 11 May 2011 (UTC) (Muddy York)
 * oppose There is a trend among scholars towards using "BCE" and "CE" as year markers rather than BC and AD. Also all the other articles in this series uses this format like at  History of Canada and  Aboriginal peoples in Canada. More and more academic publications have been using BCE and CE, but especially BCE because they are discussing non-Christian cultures, religions, and politics. Opposition to BCE & CE tends to be on religious rather than academic grounds, thus demonstrating that using them involves submitting to a religious agenda. The World Almanac switched over to BCE and CE for the 2007 edition and other more popular publications are starting to follow suit. Moxy (talk) 20:25, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Portuguese outposts
This section of the article is really messed up, and needs some serious factual verification or rewriting. (The related articles at Portuguese colonization of the Americas and João Álvares Fagundes also have problems, but they are not as bad as this article.) First off, I removed the statement that Pedro de Barcelos set up outposts in Newfoundland and Labrador, because he didn't. It certainly wasn't in 1521 (as the article claimed); he died in 1507 (see page 281 of The Frozen Echo: Greenland and the Exploration of North America, Ca. A.D. 1000-1500), and no source I can find claimed that he set up any settlements in the New World at all. Further, the statement about the outposts of João Álvares Fagundes fails verification. The link (to Foundations of the Portuguese Empire:1415-1580) says nothing at all exploration in the area on the pages cited (464-465), let alone how long any outposts lasted, or why they failed. (In fact, the index to the book does not include any reference for "Fagundes" or "Álvares Fagundes".) There are two links on João Álvares Fagundes that discuss the Fagundes outposts: the first (from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online) dutifully notes the establishment of the outposts, although it says nothing about their fate) and the second (from Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage) explicitly states that there is no proof that native hostility was to blame for the failure of the colony, and does not provide a timeline for said failure. I also removed the link to the "land of the Labrador" (which was a piped link to the timeline on Labrador), because there is no discussion of any settlements there, only the initial Portuguese sighting and a "visit[s]" by John Cabot and Gaspar Corte-Real. In fact, there is only a single sentence about Portugal in the history section of that article, and it doesn't mention any outposts either. (Not that that means all that much; the impact of the outposts on the history of Labrador was fleeting at best; leaving them out of a brief history section is reasonable.) I removed the link to Bonavista, Newfoundland and Labrador, which only mentions that Cabot made landfall there, and the British were the first to settle there, not the Portuguese. I will wait a few days to see if anyone who has this page on their watchlist responds; if not, I'm going to take a flamethrower to the OR in that section, which will make it a lot smaller. (I will be doing the same to the related articles as well.) Hopefully there is someone out there paying attention who can help fix this section.  Horologium  (talk) 19:17, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and redirected the sub-stub at Pêro de Barcelos (and the newly created Pedro de Barcelos) to João Fernandes Lavrador, which makes sense, since the English, Spanish, Portuguese and French versions of the article are all single sentence sub-stubs referenced to the same English-language work, and which convey nothing that is not in the more substantial article on Lavrador, who is unquestionably notable.  Horologium  (talk) 01:09, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Norse vs Norwegian
An SPA who sole purpose seems to be change instances of "Norse" to "Norwegian" has went across multiple articles including this one and made said changes. What is the consensus on this change? Anyone else have an opinion?  He  iro 00:15, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Have reverted the changes - no evidence its red and his son leif ericson that formed the colony. All we know is it was a Norse style settlement - no clue who it was. Uneducated guess work - .Moxy (talk) 01:04, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Aboriginal
Not sure the new additions to the Aboriginal section fits into this article. The article is about colonies and territories not individual First nations or their alliances. Its abour land not peoples. - Moxy (talk) 21:32, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Agreed.
 * I also think the title is confusing, as this article is actually about the territorial evolution of North America, for example New France covered the entire eastern half of North America at its highpoint, so did British North America. The Russian section is odd as the Russian colonizations were in Alaska and California, not even within the territories currently covered by Canada in the modern day.
 * For post-confederation events under the section titled 'Territorial Evolution of Canada' I don't even see why it's included here as Territorial evolution of Canada has it's own rather succinct article, and is beyond the scope of this article which is all "former (foreign) colonies and territories in (what is now geographically) Canada". trackratte (talk) 03:31, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Don't agree. ...very clear tilte and leads to great information about the former places in Canada. We have articles dealing with North America etc... Stable for a long time. --Moxy (talk) 06:46, 12 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Places like "New Spain", and "Russian America" were never part of Canada, so why are they mentioned here as if they were? The Russians, Spanish, and Portuguese have never made any claim on Canadian lands. trackratte (talk) 16:50, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Read the sources...they made claims.....pls stop your odd POV all over....no one agrees..... Read a history book to see the language and topics covered. --Moxy (talk) 18:00, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I have. What Spain, Russia, and Portugal laid claims to were parts of North America which were not remotely connected to Canada at that time. You are applying today's situation to the past, where at that contemporary point in history Canada did not exist on the West Coast, or in the Arctic.
 * A response of "read a book" lacks substance and amounts to nothing more than mud slinging. This is an area of study that I have formally taken at both the undergraduate and graduate level, so I can assure you I am more than familiar with a great many general and constitutional histories of Canada. I have also been adding verifiable sources, so your attacks on my intellect are unwarranted. As you notice, I have refrained from devolving any difference of perspective experienced to accusations of a lack of academic rigor on your part, and I would trust you would do the same with me. trackratte (talk) 19:20, 12 January 2017 (UTC)