Talk:List of Canadian writers

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Oh my goodness, what a list! Are there 1000 unidentified names here? Please see List of novelists and Talk:List of novelists before going on with this. Ortolan88 10:31 Jul 30, 2002 (PDT)
 * And shouldn't people like "Bacque, James" be listed in the opposite order, as in James Bacque? --Ed Poor

Sorry, guys. I'm the offending list-adder. I'm brand new. I plan to do lots more work on it, like dividing them up by genre, and adding dates and brief description. Should they really all be "Margaret Atwood" instead of "Atwood, Margaret?" Blimey!! Sara Parks Ricker


 * Article titles are all in regular name order, which is much more legible. If you want your list to appear in Last, First, well you can, but you'll want to do the links as Last, First so that the links point to the correct title. (By the way, when signing your comments on talk pages, you can just hit the tilde three times: and the wiki automatically puts in a link to your user page. It's a lot handier than typing it out by hand!) --Brion VIBBER
 * The inverted order for names was essential in paper encyclopedias, but now by typing "Atwood" in the search box it's easy to find every article that mentions the name. Eclecticology
 * And hit the tilde four times if you want to add a date/time stamp with your name.


 * Long lists with just names on may not be as informative as shorter annotated lists.


 * Just a thought, but how about starting with the article Canadian literature? It's a survey of the whole field and a great place to  add links to smaller, shorter lists of novelists, poets, essayists, historians, whatever, as you go along, possibly annotated with dates or names of best-known works.  Some such shorter list articles are already there, waiting to be filled in.  If you take that approach, when you get to the novelists, you might consider cutting the list of Canadian novelists out of the List of novelists page and replacing it with a link to your new "list of Canadian novelists" page.  And do check those links I mentioned.  There's a lot of history there on the problems and opportunities of lists in the Wikipedia.  And, welcome and keep on keeping on!  Ortolan88 11:23 Jul 30, 2002 (PDT)
 * I like your point about splitting out the Canadian novelists from the longer world list. It could also happen with several other countries.  List of novelists is already getting long enough that it is starting to react slowly to edits, and its multiple links mean that it also loads more slowly.  I still feel uncomfortable about segregating novelists from other writers though - a good writer will often do well in several genres, and this kind of fragmentation does not do him justice.  Eclecticology 14:34 Jul 30, 2002 (PDT)

Thanks, everyone. I read up on the problem of dropping lists and fleeing. I promise not to. And, Ortolan, I'm VERY familiar with the Canadian literature article, because I WROTE IT. (That's how I came to have such a gigantor list in the first place.) What I plan to do with the list is add dates and a work of significance with each entry. I don't want to make it JUST a list of novelists, though. What about a genre division like: poets, novelists, literary critics, then one for "inter-genre" writers, such as Atwood (a critic, novelist, poet, and more)? Sara Parks Ricker
 * What a maroon I am! I figured out you wrote Canadian literature about 5 seconds after I wrote that, and so noted in a bread-and-butter letter on User_talk:Sara Parks Ricker.  Look at it this way, I was hoping that you as a "list-adder" (and I really don't think that means some kind of snake), would be inspired by the excellent Canadian literature entry.  Friends?


 * I do think shorter, categorized and annotated lists are the way to go. I'm not so sure about "inter-genre", very few novelists haven't written articles, reviews, or poetry or a non-fiction book, but very few inter-genre writers are known for being inter-genre.  Why not just put Atwood on all the lists she belongs on, linking to one article where all her literary achievements are presented together?  I'd guess that to Atwood it is all "my writing" and that she doesn't have a poet hat and a critic hat hanging there next to her novelist hat.  Vladimir Nabokov was a wonderful critic and a great lepidopterist, but he's still Nabokov the novelist.  Ortolan88 10:35 Jul 31, 2002 (PDT)
 * Yes, Nabokov is probably best known as a novelist, but his most important literary work is likely his translation of Eugene Onegin with the accompanying "Notes on Prosody". We also have separate lists for science fiction and fantasy writers even though these probably should appear as novelists or short story writers.  Let the annotations show that a writer wrote in several genres.  Eclecticology 11:27 Jul 31, 2002 (PDT)


 * It's ironic that the annotations on the list of novelist, such as the one that noted that Twain was also a journalist, etc, seem to cause so much confusion and make people think it isn't a list of novelists. Note under novelists that he was a journalist and then put his name on the journalist list and on every list it belongs on (stage performer, travel writer, short story writer).  That is a service to the reader.  Putting everybody who ever put pen to paper on a single list just doesn't take the reader anywhere.  They'll drop out after two screensful.  If Nabokov belongs on a list of translators, make a list of translators too.  Put Nabakov on it. But don't take him off the novelist list.  And check to be sure his main article is inclusive and accurate.  Just made a list of how to do this on Talk:List of novelists.  I'm sure you know, but it might help someone. Ortolan88
 * Although I have supported unified lists, I would never go so far as to say that including a person on one genre based list would imply excluding him on an other relevant list. Eclecticology

You could create a relational database of writers. One table would be the writers themselves. Another table would be a short list of categories such as novelist, translator, poet. A third table would link the first two tables. I've created such databases professionally, and it can be somewhat intricate to set them up (which is why I get the big bucks), but then they make the reports so much easier to generate. If anyone's interested, we could discuss the details here or on the mailing list. --Ed Poor
 * Your idea sounds fine in principle, but I don't know if Wikipedia is in a position to afford the big bucks. Assuming that you are volunteering to do the set up;-)) I wonder how integrable it would be with the bulk of the users' level of knowledge -- particularly in the light of the recent mailing list debate on parsing, and Wiki Markup vs. HTML. Eclecticology 15:09 Jul 31, 2002 (PDT)


 * Sounds suspiciously like Slotipedia - A Proposal. --Brion VIBBER
 * Interesting idea -- I'll be glad to look at the Beta version when it's ready. Eclecticology
 * Indeed. I would like to see Slotipedia get off the ground (although I'm not crazy about the name) and use it to generate these list automatically. When I started the Biographical Listing back in the mists of time, it was fairly easy for two or three people to add all of the new biography entries. Now it's next to impossible to maintain. With Slotipedia, Atwood could appear in List of Writers, List of Novelists, List of Canadian Writers, Literary Critics, etc. --Stephen Gilbert

I removed Frances Brooke, because she only lived in Canada 5 years, while her hubby was on business! Hardly makes her a "Canadian author"! Sara Parks Ricker

I'm a great believer in one-line comments (see first entry of this talk page), but some of the last group added have lots of misspellings, not to mention strong POV statements and sarcastic remarks. I hope someone who knows Canadian literature can tone them down without eliminating them. Ortolan88

let me fix thisTwo16 04:58 Jan 10, 2003 (UTC)

Canadain authors had a lot of stuff that I put on in a fit of giggles like Mordici being best drinking buddy in Canada, Margaret Atwood being a better poet than author, Irving Layton used his poetry to get laid and was quite vocal. The stuff about Northrop and  McLuhan being mortal enemies is true: (their respective desciples are unable to reconcil their methods of criticism and there is still enemity between them.)  Lau is (npov) bitter ex-hooker who proves it every time she is interveiwed and (not so  npov) who keeps writing the same book. She caused a libel scandel when she aired her dirty laundry with Kinsella.

Kilodney, who I am aqquainted with, would agree with  "misanthrope" and so would his  loyal  readers. Bertran Booker is an abstract painter who might have written theosophical spiritual treatises though he couldn't have had a wide audience. Now i remeber something about him being apoet (maybe)

Malcom Lowrey is a brit who wrote important stream of consciousness novel set in Mexico while he was drinking himself to death on the beach in BC should not even be on this list

Haliburton was 19th century humorist and delighted in mocking 'mericans ---

I don't know exactly where to a notion about a criterion for top ten inclusion in every field of endevour?

I dunno how many others like him there are, but i removed "*Brian Vanderlip" here and " *Vanderlip, Brian, Canadian writer " on LoPbN, after correcting the spelling from "Brain" I found #1 Google hit and about 27 not-too-similar ones; i would scream Del on VfD if anyone wrote the bio.

But to be honest, i almost feel like we owe him some record of the fact that he got on this list three years ago, and got his name scrambled in under 60 hours. Within a year it was also on LoPbN, with the same misspelling. At this point, there are about as many hits for Brain as for Brian, and this talk page is his only presence. --Jerzy·t 18:55, 2005 July 22 (UTC)

add articles or delete (red) dead links
Dead Links should be removed, if you wrote this article please add full articles for each new link, don't just list names where no information exists and please put dates with the names. Also there is a controversy concerning books published and publishers, so if possible add the ISBN to all books and add publishers names to books listed Thanks WayneRay
 * Catherine Bradford
 * Grover Gall
 * David Godfrey
 * Robert Goldsmith (1794-1861), first English-language Canadian poet
 * John Grey
 * Richard Grove richard is so well known in Toronto why is there not an article?


 * Wayne Arthur Harris Author of Rewind To Ancient Times (2002), Replay To Ancient Days (2005)
 * Jan Horner


 * Requests for new Canadian writer articles should be posted at Canadian wikipedians' notice board/Requests Dl2000 17:13, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Definition Question
Dumb question: is this for "Canadian authors" ~ which would include non-fiction authors, or is just for fiction authors "literature"? Are reporters (well okay "journalists") authors? Peter C Newman? Rod McQueen (business author)? William Shatner? Graham Yost? - screenwriter

Feldercarb (talk) 21:21, 5 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I believe it is for any published writer or author and I think there is a list for journalists and screenwriters as well. WayneRay (talk) 22:50, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The only requirement that's ever been applied to listings here, other than having written something, is that the person already have an article on Wikipedia; any name that gets added as a redlink or an outbound URL to the writer's own personal web page gets removed. Personally, I'd prefer to keep this list for people who've published something in book format, be that fiction, non-fiction, poetry, whatever, and use the separate List of Canadian journalists for people who've only published journalistic work in newspapers or magazines. There actually isn't a separate list for Canadian screenwriters right now, though there probably should be.
 * Conversely, however, we do have separate lists for poets, playwrights, short story writers and science fiction and fantasy writers, as well as a list for Quebec, but inclusion on those lists hasn't traditionally precluded being listed here too.
 * I'd be open to discussing whether we should narrow this list's scope to certain types of writers, but to date there hasn't been anything decided in that regard. Bearcat (talk) 01:37, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay - When I said journalist I meaning/thinking someone like Peter C Newman ~ not exactly a historian, but more than a reporter, has written one or more books. On the other hand, numerous business or "news" books often seem rushed or unfinished (example: All the President's Men, published I think before Nixon's resignation)~not really "literature"

I suppose someone who has written an autobiograpy would be excluded? Its really a one-time writing effort. Feldercarb (talk) 02:39, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Cookbook Authors???
Just last week, I prepared a Wikipedia article on Margo Oliver, a Canadian writer on cooking. Most of her output appeared in weekly newspaper supplements between 1959 and 1982, but she also published eight cookbooks, containing mostly recipes that had originally appeared in her column. However, Margo Oliver is by no means the only significant Canadian cookbook author. Madame Jehan Benoit's cookbooks are also well known in Canada (though, in my opinion, of dubious quality), and there are several others.

The heading of the "List of Canadian Writers" emphasizes literary productions, but surely this is too narrow a perspective?

Would anyone strenuously object to my adding Margo Oliver to the list and, later on if an article on Jehan Benoit surfaces, her as well?

Floozybackloves (talk) 02:05, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Actually, Jehane Benoît already has an article if you spell her name right ;-) Bearcat (talk) 02:10, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Oooopsy! Guess that says how often I actually look in her cookbooks! Anyway, should both of these cookbook authors be added to the Canadian Writers list?? Floozybackloves (talk) 04:02, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Jo Walton, science fiction and fantasy author, ought to be on this list, but I can't figure out how to add a new row to the table.Lucy Kemnitzer (talk) 18:08, 28 October 2016 (UTC)Lucy Kemnitzer

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