Talk:List of regional district electoral areas in British Columbia

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I do not understand the naming convention used here. I have worked for two of those regional districts in the list and I have never heard the areas referred to like that. They should be called "Electoral Area x". We call them Area x for short. On the Regional Board, the rural directors (ie. the politicians representing these areas) have a little plaques in front of them with "Electoral Area x" written on them. So my question is what was the source used for this list? With permission/consensus I would like to change these names. With time I will expand the "Regional District, British Columbia" page in order to communicate a better understanding of them.

PS. The vast majority of people living in these E.A.s have no idea what E.A. they are in. This term is really only used by the local governments. maclean25 22:44, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Statistics Canada of course. They are listed as such by statscan, and I notice that Elections Canada uses it this way as well. -- Earl Andrew - talk 23:36, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Statistics Canada is based in Ottawa, for one thing, and Ottawa rarely uses the same language/terms as BCers do....I don't think StatsCan names shoudl be a priori here, most of all because the names used are NOT how these places are best-known, which is "Electoral Area X, Y Regional District". There's a difference between the name given/used for a census area and how the area itself relates to its citizenry, and to the Regional District it's a part of.  The Regional Districts themslves do not use these terms, but use the full-form just described.  I say change 'em all, because nobody's going to search for them in the format given, and all will be targets of redirects from the "Electoral Area X" form.....Skookum1 (talk) 17:44, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Ahhh, I see. These seem to be the names of Census Subdivisions which conviently enough follow the borders of electoral areas (as well as municipalities). Well, before I mess with anything I will put a Request for Comment on the Canadian Wikipedia Notice Board. If articles do get written about these I suspect we will end up using redirects. The 'Fraser Valley x' format has the advantage of distingiushing between RDs, but is only used by federal agencies (inconsistently I noticed) to manage unincorporated areas. The 'Electoral Area x' format is what is used by the RDs and electoral areas themselves but require additional notation in order to distinguish between RDs.  -maclean25 01:42, 18 July 2005 (UTC)


 * How is it inconsistent? They always use Regional District X. But anyways, I agree redirects are in order to the names recognized by the federal agencies, unless you can provide a link to better names :-P. It's just that StatsCan lays it all out nicely so I can understand. :) -- Earl Andrew - talk 03:44, 18 July 2005 (UTC)


 * I meant inconsistent in the choices of designations. I see on Elections Canada they sometimes use Regional District X and sometimes call the poll by its community name. For example in Chilliwack-Fraser Canyon they say "Boston Bar" and not "Fraser Valley A" but in Abbottsford they say "Fraser Valley H" and not "Sumas Mountain" (sorry no links, ElectionsCanada is not a link friendly website). And I just shut down when I saw StatsCan started calling them Fraser Valley Subdivision x (I just didn't want to consider another options). -maclean25 04:16, 18 July 2005 (UTC)


 * When I spoke of Elections Canada, I meant the actual legislation regarding district boundaries. I have not searched all of the legislation, but from what I have seen recently, they seem to use Regional District X. As for StatsCan, they are very consistent, in at least their lists of CSD's in the province. -- Earl Andrew - talk 04:23, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Uh, last time I looked up riding boundaries - albeit for historical ones like Coast Chilcotin, the legal language primarily used boundaries of Land Districts and Township parcels (TPs); this is partly answered because old legislation couldn't have used RD boundaries as they didn't exist yet (RDs were come up with c.1967 and not before). I haven't looked at the legislation for more recent gerymanderings, I mean electoral redistributions, but it's not as if electoral districts coinide with RDs or their electoral areas; they may do so when said boundary folllows a landform, such as a river, creek or spine of a mountain range, but I remain unconvinced.  I also dont' think that comparmentalization-of-data systems based 3000 miles away have much to do with the way British Columbia works (including the supposition/imposition that RDs are the same as counties and should be used as such; which in fact is OR).  Can you cite me a passage from current legislation using Regional District Electoral Areas?  if they do that, it's only because they're following the census subdivisions; but by no means is this consistent.  RDs as a whole do not resmelbe ridings; Lillooet is in the SLRD, but is in Chilliwac-Fraser Canyon, most of which (esp. population) is in the Upper Fraser Valley (formerly the Fraser-Cheam Regional District, now t he Fraser Valley Regional District).  Electoral Areas are really only significant to Regional District articles and census figure computations; nobody else thinks in terms of them or has much use for them (or for RDs...but taht's a side issue).  What's next - Category:People from Squamish-Lillooet B instead of Category:People from the Bridge River Country?  Not Category:People from Boston Bar but Category:People from Fraser Valley H???!Skookum1 (talk) 21:45, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I have added "Electoral Area B" to the Central Coast Regional District. It's a unique one, because it is actually defined as the "Bella Bella 1" Indian Reserve (Heiltsuk First Nation). As a result, you won't find it in Stats Can (or most other such places, because it's numbers will be recorded as "Bella Bella 1".AshleyMorton 01:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually, in general, I hope everyone is taking note of that in population numbers - if an Indian Reserve exists within the boundaries of the Electoral area in question, it will not show up in the Census Data - you'll have to find it and add it.AshleyMorton 01:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Which means original research, which is the problem with using reginoal districts and electoral areas as if they were region articles; they are only "valid" as census districts (see my main post below).Skookum1 (talk) 18:14, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Central Coast B will have to be re-directed to Bella Bella if and when that page is created. --Curlingstub.png Earl Andrew - talk 03:57, 7 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Maybe. See, the problem is that "Bella Bella" as a community can be interpreted a number of ways.  For instance, the post office bearing the designation "Bella Bella" is not actually within the boundaries of the Reserve (it's on a neighbouring island), and there is a (much smaller) non-Reserve population in that location (who are therefore actually in Electoral Area A).  So it's not a one-to-one correspondence.  In fact, the use of the name can be politically-charged, in connection with concerns by the Heiltsuk First Nation (for whom the "Bella Bella 1" Reserve is their primary home) about naming.  As a result, until I (or someone more capable than me!) writes a coherent, responsible, NPOV-but-still-politically-aware article that describes the situation, I'm concerned about re-directing to something that isn't really a one-to-one matchup.  But, yes, after that, it definitely should be. AshleyMorton 16:18, 8 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok, I'm not sure the number of the reserve, but from your description it appears to be "Bella Bella 1" In this case, Central Coast B, British Columbia will re-direct to Bella Bella 1, British Columbia while the community of reserve will be at Bella Bella, British Columbia. Make sense? --Curlingstub.png Earl Andrew - talk 16:25, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm here about something else (see below) but in trying to follow the discussion above and not having maplinks to refer to, are you sure Electoral ARea B isonly the reserve? That's odd because I don't think reserve residents voet in Regional District elections as the RDs don't include band governments in their structure.....are you sure there's no non-native residents/territory in Area B?  And re "Bella Bella 1" the issue of having numbered-IR articles is problematic; coordinating them all (if they all get made, numbered-reserve articles) with band-government articles) is a job and a half....tricky because gov articles, community  articles, and resserve articles don't necessarily coincide, and the community articles also often have non-native releavance as well; a web of articles evern for a locality like Nimpo Lake or Anahim Lake.....discvoering taht they have to be coordinated with the electoral areas/regional districts - because that's how the census data is sorted - makes it even more complicated.  Sigh.Skookum1 (talk) 15:58, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Origin of regional districts
I can't remember if I posted anything about this on Talk:Regional districts of British Columbia but I'm curious as to the year and circumstance of the genesis of the RD system, and what came before. Also are there pd. maps of any kind that could show the electoral areas in each regional district? This is partly to help with community articles; i just started Dewdney, British Columbia and need to know what electoral area of the FVRD it's in, and in general with tiny communities finding population stats seems hard because of Statscan's main pages dwelling on "census metropolitan areas", a demonstration to me of the urban focus of Canadian priorities....also curious about decommissioned municipalities, like Dewdney, as to how to find info on them; I think Boston Bar and Spences Bridge used to be incorporated, too, for example, and Sandon and so on.....although maybe not Lillooet was non-municipal for the longest time (the Govt Agent ran things).Skookum1 (talk) 15:58, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

name format
I gather some wikipedia guideline somewhere is what produced the name format used here; I don't like it, as people don't say, "Squamish-Lillooet A, British Columbia" they say "Electoral Area A, Squamish-Lillooet Regional District". The name should at least be "Squamish-Lillooet Area A" if not "Squamish-Lillooet Elctoral Area A". It may be convenient to shorten the names, but it's WP:OR in terms of being a new coinage......Skookum1 (talk) 21:32, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

WP:notability re these articles & cat
Land districts are notable, health regions are notable, forest districts are notable, environment regions are notable, tourism regions are notable, regional management planning units are notable....and while regional districts are equally notable (though actually much less significant than nearly all of those just named), electoral areas are only notable in respect to regional district taxation and bylaws, they do not play a role in community life nor are they useful or relevant as regional subdivisions of British Columbia. Clearly there are people who think so, i.e. Wikipedians who've decided to impose regional districts as the main demarcator of subidividing BC with, which is just not valid at all. A bot has just added "articles without sources" to a number of the electoral area stubs; and really the only source/reference that can be provided is the electoral districts' own pages and maps and tax schedules, which are trivial in nature relative to regional geography, which is apparently what somebody out there in wikiland long ago thought these articles should be. I know that, for example, around Lillooet the Yalakom Valley and the west side of the Fraser north of town is one electoral district, and the Texas Creek Road and west side south of town is another, and that Seton-Shalalth is another....which I think is the same EA as the upper Bridge River Valley....but for the life of me I've never heard anyone say "I live in Electoral ARea X", except maybe at regional district board meetings when somebody's bitching about something stupid the RD has done in their area. Communities matter, valleys matter ("valleys" as in a form of regional community, which is often how things are in BC); but electoral areas do not matter. There is little point to this list, or to any of the article in question; any that are written as regional-geography pieces are inherently original research; those that are just census-tables, which really is all that's citable about them except their tax revenues, should just be merged to their respective regoinal district articles. This is especially so because of hte name-format that has been imposed on them, just because Statistics Canada has this shorthand that nobody else uses (ditto for IRs); it's just not relevant - "Comox Valley A" is where? Does it really matter? I say throw prod or db on all of them and be done with it; this list actually has no reason to exist. It's like having a List of integers where each line is 1, 2, 3, 4 etc and nothing more. The category has even less reason to exist, escept that these few articles do so far exist; they have no reason to. Similarly the breakdown categories like "people from the such-and-so RD" and "settlemnents in the such-and-so RD" are not relevant or notabile eitherr; nobody t hinks in those terms escept Wikipedians. Somebody will say t hey're from the Cariboo or the Kootenay(s), but nobody will say they're from the Cariboo Regional District or the Regional Distirct of East Kootenay unless they work for the regional district. And regional district categories, as I've slowly been cleaning them out, should only be used for institutions, buildings and parks run by the regional district; they are not relevant in terms of regional geography; mountains are classed by mountatin ranges, rivers and streams could perhaps be classed by which basin they're in; provincial parks by which landform they're in, or which Ministry of Environment region they're in (though in public websites they're often mentioned as being in which forest district/region). This list to me is representative of the WP:Undue weight placed on regional districts, and its very existence points to distorted importance of the electoral areas. And Statistics Canada, as with the name-format for IRs, is only one citable govenrment system; for IRs BCGNIS and CGNDB and so on use "Pavilion Indian Reserve (No.) 1A", not "Pavilion 1a", which is actually a transposition of the French usage into English. Not even basemap bothers with "Electoral Area A, Comox Valley Regional District", much less "Comox Valley A". And when you have "Electoral Area A, Greater Vancouver Regional District", which remains that EAs proper name though no doubt if it exists someone has mis-titled it to "Metro Vancouver A", it's not even a unified area - Indian River and Wigwam Inn have very little to do with Brunswuck Beach. I say ditch this article, and the attached category; it's pointless for them to exist and any attempt to "amke it so" is a combination of undue weight and original research/synthesis. Statistics Canada is only a census source; it has nothing to do with the way people live. There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.....Skookum1 (talk) 18:14, 15 August 2009 (UTC)