Talk:Maurice Duplessis/GA2

GA Review
The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.''

Reviewer: Dylnuge (talk · contribs) 00:18, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Hey, I'm picking this and Premiership of Maurice Duplessis up as part of the GAN backlog drive. I thought it'd make sense to look at them in parallel given that they're pretty inter-related and it should make assessing criteria 3 (broadness/focus) a bit easier, though if you have any concerns about that feel free to let me know.

My general style is to leave comments as I read the article and then ping when I'm finished reviewing; feel free to reply as I go or wait until I'm done, whatever works best for you. Also feel free to let me know if there's any specific areas you want me to focus on or if there's anything in my review that doesn't strike you as correct—I'm definitely not an expert and know I make mistakes. Thanks for submitting these and I am excited to get started! Dylnuge (Talk • Edits) 00:18, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Initial remarks: No carryover concerns from prior review (which was technically a pass, but one that was invalidated due to a lack of actual reviewing). Article is stable. Article is illustrated very nicely: photographs look relevant, captions look good. Lots of pictures here so I'll do a more thorough check of licensing but at a glance everything looks appropriately tagged as CC or public domain. Citations look good; easy to tell what claims are cited to. No copyvio detected by Earwig, and no apparent likely copyvio otherwise. Lead is a strong summary of the subject. Organization looks broadly reasonable. No immediate concerns with neutrality stand out, but as a political figure, I'll take a deeper look at this during the thorough review. The article is long (9548 words of readable prose at ), but no immediate broadness/focus concerns—it's evident that the subject is due detailed coverage of this nature, and I don't see anything missing immediately. Of particular note will be the overlap with Premiership of Maurice Duplessis, though again, at a glance, the sections on premiership look like reasonable summaries with main article links. Prose looks good overall; noting that I'm not deeply familiar with the intricacies of Canadian English and will probably be more likely to double check things I'd usually fix as I went. Overall I'm not seeing any issues in my initial pass; this looks really good! I'll be leaving detailed assessment notes as I go. Dylnuge (Talk • Edits) 01:18, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Comments


 * The nickname "Le Chef" is used rather frequently to refer to Duplessis, especially in the lead, second premiership, and commemoration sections. This mixed usage might be a bit confusing; I'd recommend using Duplessis in most of these places, but especially where two adjacent sentences use Duplessis and Le Chef alternatively.
 * At least as I was taught in school, if you have synonyms to use, avoid using the same word over and over. That's why I alternate between Duplessis, "he" and "Le Chef"/MLA for his premiership and the years leading to it, respectively. For me, it's not a bug, it's a feature that allows me to avoid constantly referring to Duplessis by surname only. But I will change it if that's an issue for you.
 * I won't push against it too hard. I do think there are points where it's distracting, and there are antipatterns (like said bookisms) that emerge from switching up wording just for the sake of it, but it's not a huge problem here.


 * As a minor but separate note on the above, 'Le Chef' appears in single quotes in the first usage in the "Duplessis as the incarnation of the Grande Noirceur" section, double quotes in the lead, italics in the second premiership section, and unadorned in the commemoration section. This should probably be consistent (I'd go for the double quotes, but I'm not aware of an MOS restriction on the other styles) each time the nickname is introduced in a section.


 * ...such as Jehovah's Witnesses whom he harassed. — Phrasing is fine but I would rephrase this to avoid the "easter egg" linking of harassed to Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Canada; e.g. something like ...including the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses. Note that there's no specific need to wikilink Jehovah's Witnesses separately here; linking the specific article about persecution under Duplessis is sufficient.
 * I think I fixed that


 * Lead section is excellent overall. I'll do a separate "neutrality spot check" below to confirm that descriptions are in line with sources, but nothing here strikes me as a problem.
 * (Optional) Made a few changes here directly but noting a pattern I'm seeing where common terms are wikilinked when they likely don't need to be: e.g. "baseball" likely doesn't need to be linked, but it's linked in both the "Studies" and "Law practice" section. Same goes for words like "rhetoric" or "minister". As a rule of thumb, wikilinks are best where a broader understanding of the contents of the linked article would add something for the reader. If a word or phrase is relatively common and a basic dictionary-definition understanding is sufficient, wikilinks aren't needed. Specific places, people's names, historical events with more detailed coverage in a separate article, political philosophies and positions, and words that rarely appear in modern English usage (like "sacerdocy") all make sense to link.
 * I think I fixed this issue as well, so I removed duplicative wikilinks.


 * Also on the note of wikilinks, avoid "sea of blue" issues where two links appear directly next to each other, like with Conservative MP in the Studies section. Most readers won't expect that those are two different links.
 * Fixed this one


 * After three years of studies, Duplessis was admitted to the Bar of Quebec on September 4 or 14, 1913 — Is this a case where one source says 4, another says 14, and there's no other sourcing either providing an accurate date or noting the uncertainty? It might make sense to just say September 1913 and use a footnote to explain that the precise date is uncertain or disputed.
 * Fixed this one


 * Four years later, Duplessis attempted a second run to the Legislative Assembly, campaigning among working- and middle-class families by paying personal visits to them and tracking his opponent's move. — I'm not clear how the end of this sentence fits on to the rest of it; "and" here could read as separating "tracking his opponent's move[s]" from "campaigning" or separating it from "personal visits".
 * Whatever, I deleted the last fragment. It was in the French original, but I agree it just doesn't fit well. And anyway, politicians not tracking the opponent's moves? Kind of weird if you want a successful campaign.


 * In his victory speech, Duplessis reportedly declared that "[t]here stands before you a future Premier of Quebec" — I think using a bracket to convert "here" into "there" is confusing; one option is just to replace the entire word. Alternatively, "here" fits with the grammar of the sentence if you drop "that" (i.e. Duplessis reportedly declared "here stands before you a future Premier of Quebec"
 * The bracket is there because "There" is the first word in the sentence. The quote goes: "There stands before you a future Premier of Quebec". If I write "there" without the bracket, it would imply that the quote is part of a larger sentence even though it's not. But again, you probably know better because English is my third language.
 * Ah I get it now. In that case, it should be written "[here] stands before you a future Premier of Quebec"; even though "there" and "here" share letters, they're different words so the standard is to just replace the whole word and put the replacement in brackets (there are some exceptions to that like adding a -s suffix to make something plural).


 * (Non-issue, just a note) If you're planning on bringing this to FAC (which you should, IMHO!) I believe that the image gallery format can be contentious there, where people prefer that images are distributed into the article. I don't see a problem with this usage, and this isn't a GA-review comment, but I thought it worth noting in case you have FA in your future sights (which again, I think you should, this article is very high-quality IMHO!).
 * Generally I can't be bothered doing that :). I mean, if someone wants to read MOS like crazy and implement the smallest details possible, go ahead, but I think that the most important thing is a well-structured article with comprehensive coverage, good sources and which is written in proper English. Whether it has some style issues is kind of irrelevant at this point, even if it costs me a successful FA nomination. But if you want to mentor me over that and you know how to prepare FA nominations, I will gladly accept your advice.
 * Fair enough! I also haven't done anything with FAC; I brought it up because I think these articles are in exceptionally good state, but I'm probably useless for actually knowing what to do once you're there.


 * Couple of cases where the past progressive ("has seen", "was following", etc) is used in place of the simple past tense ("saw", "followed"). Unless this is a Canadian ENGVAR thing that I am incorrect on, I believe I have fixed the incorrect uses I noticed, but feel free to double check this and all my other copyedits to ensure they aren't just me being wrong on engvar stuff.
 * Yeah, it was just poor grammar. Thanks.


 * as a new leader of the parliamentary caucus — I think this should be "the leader" but wanted to check that he wasn't one of a number of leaders before changing.
 * Yep.


 * Did Houde designate Gault after he lost his riding but before the results of the election took effect?
 * He lost his riding in 1931 (see one paragraph above), then lost his mayorship in April 1932, but improbably held on to the position of the leader of the Conservative Party (that is a bit of an oddity for a Westminster-style parliament, but that's how it came). Then, while resigning, he designated Gault to the premiership, and the party was royally pissed. That's more or less the story.
 * Fascinating!


 * Duplessis got safely reelected with a margin of 1,202 votes. — Not strictly necessary, but a percentage might be useful here as well to illustrate the size of the margin compared to the total votes.
 * Done


 * Taschereau resigned amid the corruption scandals on June 11, 1936, and handed over the premiership to Adélard Godbout, who was forced to call an election on August 17. — There's a citation in the middle of this sentence but not at the end; if it's the same source, the cite can probably just be moved to the end.
 * Yep.


 * The sections on Duplessis's Primerships are titled "First term (1936–1939)" and "Second premiership". Personally I think the titles should be consistent with each other (either structure is fine)
 * Made it consistent


 * Among the most known laws of the time was the Padlock Law — This seems strangely phrased; I would expect that Duplessis had some involvement in the passage of the law, but this language is passive and makes it sound like the law was just a thing that he benefited from.
 * Rephrased


 * The lead mentions that Duplessis assigned himself the role of Attorney General (as opposed to it being standard for the Premier to fill that role), but it isn't actually mentioned that this happens in either section about his Premiership; the text just jumps straight to in his capacity as Attorney General. It seems like this would merit a specific mention.
 * I think this one should be evident from the infobox that he held this and that position. When I made research for the article, I generally found references to Duplessis doing something and that was it. Whether it was Duplessis wearing the hat of Chief of Cabinet (Prime Minister) or the hat of Attorney General was irrelevant as the person is the same. Also FYI, in Westminster-style systems, the leader of the largest party asks (in this case) the Lieutenant Governor to swear in a cabinet, and if the LtGov agrees that they are going to have sufficient parliamentary support, swears them in. The composition of the cabinet itself is decided within the party, which essentially means that the party leader deals the cards, particularly so if we have a strongman leader like Duplessis. So no, the office of Attorney General of Quebec and Premier of Quebec were not necessarily held by the same people, but in this case they were because Duplessis wanted it and that's the end of the story. I don't think this merits a mention given that no source mentions how exactly he chose his first cabinet.
 * My personal sense is that the prose should work without referencing the infobox, but I don't feel super strong about this, and I'm fine with it as is if there's not much more detail about it available.


 * That challenge was rebuffed as well as after his surgery on strangulated hernia (see relevant section), the leader of opposition decided to quit drinking altogether on his doctor's advice. — I'm not a huge fan of inter-section links where they can be avoided; in this case, I think the hernia surgery is straightforward enough and relevant enough to the chronological story that it'd be worth just explaining it again here instead of linking. That said, if you do want to keep the section link, it's pointing to the wrong section—should be "Death, funeral and the end of the dominance of the Union Nationale" and not "Private Life" (where the hernia isn't brought up).
 * Better?
 * Yep, this works!


 * Statements at the end of both paragraphs in "1944 election" are missing citations, as well as the the first paragraph of "Second premiership"
 * I put the ref for the last two sentences, but I think the linked article describes the situation pretty well. As for the first paragraph of the second premiership, both sources in the last sentence state what is in the end. I could not put the two refs at the end as each ref only covers some of the reasons for the longevity of his electoral machine. Maybe MOS-wise it's better but putting them in the end IMHO violates WP:OR by implying both sources state that all of the reasons apply even if they don't both refer to all reasons.


 * The reign itself could be described as having authoritarian tendencies. — "could be described" is an editorializing middle ground between factual wikivoice and attribution of opinion. If reliable sources agree that the reign had authoritarian tendencies, you can just say it. If it's the subject of modern debate, you should attribute it instead.
 * I think most sources agree that his rule was not really democratic (you can read the summary in the "Historical debate" section), so I changed this to a milder version of "he was authoritarian".


 * but also through asserting its power to taxation, which Duplessis successfully did in 1955. — Can you clarify what this means? I can't tell if this means that Duplessis levied taxes that the federal government didn't want, rejected taxes that they did want, or something different.
 * Explaining this would require a lot of context, and it is available in the Premiership of Maurice Duplessis article. In short, during WWII Canada asked the provinces to let Canada levy the taxes the provinces would have for the time of war because of the war effort and the need to centralise financing, and they agreed. Instead, the feds would send subventions back to the provinces. This should have ended with the war. However, after the war ended, the feds broke the promise and continued to levy the taxes and send subventions, and oddly enough most provinces were OK with that, except for (in early post-war years) Ontario, and Quebec. Duplessis absolutely HATED that arrangement. In 1954, Duplessis devised a plot in which the Legislative Assembly would pass a law that would impose a small provincial personal income tax (15% of the federal tax), but insisted that the provincial tax be deducted from the federal tax. The governing federal Liberals were pissed because that would deprive them of revenue because of a rebellious province that would always remind everyone of some "provincial autonomy" stuff. But Duplessis succeeded in making the federal tax bill smaller to pave way for the provincial taxes. So that's how he asserted that power. If you have a way to write that in a couple of sentences, I would be grateful to know, but I can't imagine a way to do that.
 * This is fair; I also wrote this comment before reading the other article and I agree the context is given clearly there.


 * Additionally, the situation of majority French Canadians still remained worse than that of the Anglophone minority, as the latter dominated the business world of Montreal, the financial centre of Canada at the time, took most of the top jobs available, and had substantial autonomy within the province. — This sentence is grammatically valid, but somewhat hard to follow since the commas are used to mix different types of clauses (also this article seems to mostly not use commas before the last items in lists, so technically that last comma should be removed). I don't feel super strongly about this, but if you can see a way to reword it that might be helpful.
 * Better?
 * Excellent!


 * Last sentence of the last paragraph in "Death, funeral and the end of the dominance of the Union Nationale", and last sentence in the last paragraph of "Private life" are both missing citations.
 * The first sentence need not be cited because the most common definition of the Quiet Revolution is that it is a period in the history of Quebec that starts from the 1960 election and whose end is often placed in either 1970 or (more often) the 1980 Quebec referendum. This should be uncontroversial.
 * I added a source to the second sentence.


 * In his later life, his relationships with other women were quite idiosyncratic: he believed that he had to behave in a strictly aristocratic and gentelmanly manner towards them even if in real life his comments to them would often come across as risqué — Maybe I'm just tired but this isn't reading clearly to me; is it that his beliefs didn't line up with his behavior, or that his behavior didn't line up with the rest of his character?
 * He wasn't an aristocrat, and also that behaviour was ungentelmanly. I clarified this sentence, and I hope it is better now
 * New wording is great!


 * Yves Vaillancourt, who analyzed the period from the perspective of administration of welfare, stated that social justice was in disrepute. — another case where I may just be tired but I don't totally understand this sentence.
 * I fixed it. The original says: La justice sociale était fort malmenée au Québec sous la férule duplessiste et s'il y en avait quelque part, c'était ailleurs que dans les milieux gouvernementaux et en dépit des actions menées par l'UN prise comme parti ou comme gouvernement.


 * Dion, just like some other historians, also tends to agree on the validity of Duplessis's defence of the provincial autonomy. — The "other historians" should probably be attributed in text (not just citations). I also find this a little tricky to read; I believe the sentence essentially says "Dion agrees that Duplessis's defence of the provincial autonomy was valid", but it initially read to me like it was saying "Dion agrees with other historians on whether or not Duplessis's defence of the provincial autonomy was valid". Consider as an alternative: Dion views Duplessis's defence of provincial autonomy as valid, which is a position shared by Vaillancourt. (I excluded Gélinas et al. from that because they weren't otherwise mentioned in the section, but the same idea would imply if you think it's crucial to list all three sources; I think this alone gives the sense that some modern scholars see provincial autonomy as a valid cause.
 * Frédéric Boily disagreed with this reasoning as he thought that this comparison, if interpreted in the sense that Duplessis's regime was populist, just like those of Perón and Brazil's Getúlio Vargas, is somewhat simplistic. — Another case where the sentence might be technically valid but the clauses make it hard to read. Consider as an alternative option for phrasing: Frédéric Boily disagreed and found the comparison somewhat simplistic, as it interprets Duplessis's regime as a populist one similar to the regimes of Perón and Brazil's Getúlio Vargas.
 * There are a couple more cases where a sentence is getting "split" down the middle by a separated clause (usually with commas, em-dashes, or parentheticals) throughout the article. This is especially prominent in the "Historical debate" section. Most of these are OK, but they could be made more readable (i.e. less complicated) by pulling the separated parts of the sentence together. For instance, consider:
 * Here the independent clause of the sentence (the one that can stand alone as a full sentence on its own) is "Catherine Frost saw many similarities between Duplessis and Éamon de Valera." Keeping this together instead of placing a dependent clause in between the subject and the verb makes things easier on the reader, as in:
 * Catherine Frost saw many similarities between Duplessis and Éamon de Valera in comparing the nationalism in Ireland and that of Quebec.
 * or:
 * Catherine Frost compared the nationalism in Ireland and that of Quebec and saw many similarities between Duplessis and Éamon de Valera.
 * or even:
 * Catherine Frost saw many similarities between the nationalism of Duplessis and the Irish government of Éamon de Valera.
 * I'm calling this out as a general thing, but it's worth noting that the occasional sentence structured this way isn't a huge problem.
 * I'm calling this out as a general thing, but it's worth noting that the occasional sentence structured this way isn't a huge problem.


 * Both proved quite sympathetic to Le Chef and minimized the supposed rupture between Duplessis and what was after that. — not clear on the meaning of "what was after that"; it could either refer to the show that followed Duplessis on TV or the government that followed Duplessis the person. From context I think it's the later, but it might help to be more explicit here.
 * Jumping back up to "Historical debate", Opinions about him are so strong that being compared to Duplessis may be considered an insult. — Is this something that's generally true regardless of partisanship?

Alright, that's my deep read on prose! I realize I left quite a few notes here but hopefully it's not too daunting; overall I would say everything is in really good shape. I don't see any concerns about breadth or focus on this article—it seems like fitting and comprehensive coverage of a prominent political figure. I'll do a spot check on sourcing and neutrality (just checking that potentially controversial language matches descriptions in sources) tomorrow as well, but barring any issues there I think pretty much everything that needs to be covered is mentioned above. Please let me know if this all makes sense, if you have any questions, if you think I'm being too pedantic somewhere (it happens), if I misunderstood or misinterpreted anything, etc! Thanks for all your work on this article; I learned a ton reading it and I've really enjoyed this review. Dylnuge (Talk • Edits) 04:46, 26 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your review. I am on mobile, so I will address your points once I'm on desktop. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 10:10, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * No rush at all to address all of this; I realize this has taken a lot of effort and it is definitely in GA-state. Dylnuge  (Talk • Edits) 20:45, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Media Licensing

All media linked in the article that is not explicitly listed below is fine.


 * ✅ File:Camillien Houde et Maurice Duplessis 1948.jpg was taken after 1 January 1946, and thus entered the public domain in Canada after the URAA took effect, meaning it is likely still under copyright in the US. US licensing status is not listed on the file. However, it was uploaded to Commons prior to 2012, and thus is grandfathered in as allowed content. Updated to a check.
 * File:L'honorable maurice duplessis.jpg has the same problem and is explicitly tagged as non-PD in the US. Unfortunately, it was uploaded to Commons after 2012, and thus is not allowed under the above grandfathering and subject to Commons deletion policies.
 * File:Le catéchisme des électeurs, édition de 1936.pdf Not tagged with a US license, and I am unclear whether or not it falls into public domain in the US. It was published in 1935 (based on the copyright notice on page 4 of the PDF) and does not have an explicit US copyright notice, so it would be PD in the US if it was PD in Canada prior to 1 January 1996. Public domain notes that the prior-to-1946 rule applies only to photographs, and the standard rule is 70 years following author's death, so I suspect this is not PD in the United States, but a second opinion might be useful here.
 * ✅ File:Maurice Duplessis 1927.jpg is valid PD regardless of authenticity of authorship credit.
 * ✅ File:Arthur Sauvé, ca. 1930.jpg was missing a US-PD tag but was PD in Canada prior to URAA as a photograph taken prior to 1 Jan 1946, should now be tagged accordingly
 * ✅ File:KingPremiers1945.jpg was missing a US-PD tag but was PD in Canada prior to URAA as a photograph taken prior to 1 Jan 1946, should now be tagged accordingly
 * ✅ File:Grande Noirceur beer Maurice Duplessis.jpg is NFCC appropriately tagged with relevant fair use criteria.

Unfortunately the easiest fix here for the first three is to remove or replace them. Dylnuge (Talk • Edits) 20:45, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * The first image is usable under a series of acrobatic loopholes I will never forgive myself for learning how to navigate. See edit summary where I added licensure for details. Alas, the second and third files still have issues.  Dylnuge  (Talk • Edits) 22:02, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

I never formally put this on hold; doing that now. No rush here and please let me know if there's anything confusing or that I can help with. Also noting that I still need to finish source checking here, which I should be adding in shortly, but there aren't any apparent issues at the moment and I don't expect this to impact the review. Dylnuge (Talk • Edits) 17:58, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Replied to a few things inline above. Improvements all look great here, thanks so much for all your work on this! Dylnuge  (Talk • Edits) 21:21, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Source Validation


 * ✅ Reliability looks good. There's a variety of sources in both English and French including reliable published books, reliable journals, and so on. There is one citation to a YouTube video, but the video appears to be a conference presentation at a conference of the Quebec historical society, which has a formal selection process for talks and appears to be a reasonable source (maybe not the most ideal, but also not heavily relied upon).
 * ✅ Despite a rather close race, Maurice lost to the incumbent, 1,328 to 1,612 votes. Duplessis at the time did not expect to win the riding anyway, but hoped that his good initial showing would make him a viable candidate as the opposition leader in the region. — Cited to Black; source says Maurice Duplessis suffered personal defeat for the only time in his life, 1612 votes to 1328...The results were not a surprise to him and goes on to describe how he used the loss to immediately kick off his campaign for power among the Conservatives.
 * ✅ Duplessis, in his capacity as Attorney General, enforced censorship of creations deemed immoral, whether by statutory authorization or simply at his will. Media outlets suspected of sympathizing with the communists would be closed down and the property confiscated by virtue of the Padlock Act. — Cited to two sources, an English language dissertation and a French language book . From the former, There was a double standard between this treatment of the commercial, mainstream press and the way the censors and the rest of the government manhandled the small-circulation newspapers of political fringe groups and ethnic minorities. Midway through the Quebec provincial election campaign of 1939, the Communist newspaper Clarte was suppressed by the Secretary of State, without consulting the censors... Duplessis insisted that if Clarte was suppressed - a move he, in fact, agreed with - all of the Communist press, including the Toronto and Winnipeg Clarion, be padlocked. From the latter, there is a decent amount of writing affirming the idea that this was a moral issue (though I don't speak French and am relying on Google Translate, so grain of salt needed on this).
 * ✅ Conrad Black suggests that during World War I Duplessis courted Augustine Delisle, a daughter of a prosperous coal trader, but his family disapproved of a connection that would unite them with a family of merchants. This upset him and it was probably then that he decided never to marry anyone. — Confirmed to source (Black), including From this point on, he seemed determined never to marry.
 * ✅ Interpretations behind the label and even the dates of the beginning of this "shameful" period vary, but generally revolve around the criticism of defending a regressive model of society, blocking progress and leaving patronage and corruption entrenched. — Three sources including one inline next to "shameful". The inline source is French and uses the word honteuse to describe the Quiet Revolution, which seems to translate to shameful (again, grains of salt). The third source  in particular describes the period as regressive and corrupt. Using a tertiary source to get a neutral perspective of common descriptors is valid.
 * ✅ This interpretation was challenged by numerous historians, who variously argued that the regime was conservative if not illiberal in its nature. — The source is a survey of other sources which describes Duplessis as incarnating the deepest religious and conservatives values and indeed summarizes a number of historians who present an illiberal picture.

Result
With the images fixes and various prose changes above, I'm going to go ahead and list this; I don't see any reason to hold off further given that most of the remaining things are debatable points of phrasing that you can decide to incorporate or not at your own will. All outstanding GA criteria have been addressed. Overall this was genuinely a quite excellent and fascinating article and I'm really happy you devoted the time you did to covering this topic in depth. Dylnuge (Talk • Edits) 22:10, 31 August 2023 (UTC)