Talk:W. A. C. Bennett Dam

Not POV, exactly
I won't place a POV tempalte on this for now, as what's there is rankly factual but it does come off as a rebuke at Hydro; yet none of it is POV language, though there's a certain POV logic/presentation to the story. The article shoudl primarily be about the dam, asnd the Tsay Kah Dene, though important to the story, is only part of it. What's needed here is some of the engienering coverage; the write pu of Bonner and Shrum et al is rather POV in falvour and tehre are more specficis that can be profided so as ti give it a more netural tone; and Bennett was widely commented upon for naming things after himself, or after his "staff" - cabinet minsters etc. Ray Williston I don't recall being a "leader of the province" -a cbainet minister for sure, but was he even Deputy Premier? - no, there never was such an office under WAC - so the description there strikes me as editoriazied quite a bit. the Gordon M. Shrum Generating Station should also have its own article, as it is a separate building, and likewise of engineering and architectural interest; This is one article that is simultaneously "engineering, politics (and not just FN politics) and environment/geography content all has to be eventually covered.  In an NPOV fashion, which is tricky to do with politics and environment....Skookum1 (talk) 14:56, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * See my comments below for my own bullet points that echo Skookum's sentiments from 3 years ago. The point of view has continued to concentrate on things other than engineering, electrical power generation, tourism, economics, and water management. Those 5 categories are the focus of most treatments of large hydro dams. I like to saw logs! (talk) 07:18, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

way better photo
here is a way better image of the dam for some "member" who wants to upload it:

http://baden.nu/Williston.jpeg

It is from BC Hydro public domain:

http://www.bchydro.com/planning_regulatory/site_c/document_centre/stage_2_reports.html

Stage 2 Report: Consultation and Technical Review

--189.188.227.71 (talk) 07:22, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Two River Policy v Two Rivers Policy
I see the addition of the name of this policy, but to me the plural form resonates; maybe both were used. My understanding, however, is not that it means the Peace and Columbia Rivers, but rather Bennett's insistence that the Columbia and Kootenay be kept as two separate rivers, rather than allowing the Americans to build a higher dam south of the border that would have merged the two streams into one very large lake encircling the Selkirk and Purcell Mountains; it was about this that he stonewalled both Ottawa, who were willing to go for it, and the Americans, who were demanding it. Peace River was the result of a compromise proposed by him where he would build Peace River to compensate for the reduced capacity for the intended High Columbia, which I'm not sure where it was supposed to be; maybe just south of the border; the Treaty Dams were also his way of ensuring British Columbians jobs in the exploitation of the Hydro capacity. Anyway largely at this point wondering if it's plural or singular "Two River(s)", and it's an important policy though obviously I don't quite have the details down-pat but needs an article eventually; I know it's gone into in detail in Paddy Sherman's bio Bennett! but don't have a copy handy.Skookum1 (talk) 04:11, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Caps/initials in name
I see there are spaces in the name as given; not sure if Hydro uses that, I think it's just W.A.C. Bennett Dam with no spaces between the caps; it's custom in BC to omit the periods entirely, though ultimately the official name is what would go here.Skookum1 (talk) 04:11, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Shortened footnotes
I took the liberty of converting references to Mitchell's book to the shortened footnotes format. This might be useful for the UBC students who intend to work on this article in the next few weeks. Bouchecl (talk) 18:11, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Merci, Bouchecl! The Interior  (Talk) 21:08, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Outline for revised WAC Bennett Dam article
Norma's part:

Introduction (see my sandbox) and section 2

--Heatheralyse (talk) 06:10, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Heather's part:

1. History

1.1 WAC Bennett and high modernism 1.2 Two Rivers policy

Ben's part:

1.3 surveying the land 1.4 construction of the land (maybe including naming)

Norma's part:

2. Economic investment and opportunity - all three will mainly use Stanley and the Mitchell source 2.1. Province of British Columbia 2.2. BC Hydro 2.3. Local community and workers Travis' part:

3. Social Impacts 3.1. Aboriginal communities 3.2. Local residents Kayla's part:

4. Environmental impacts 4.1 Downstream 4.2 Upstream and Williston Lake

Normaromann (talk) 04:00, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Looks good! Just one minor note; section headings should not be capitalized (except for the first word). So "Local Residents" would be "Local residents", for example. See MOS:HEAD for more information. Inverse Hypercube  (talk) 04:08, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I read the outline and the (sandboxed) introduction, and I believe you should add (at least) a section describing the facilities and the construction process. Since the W. A. C. Bennett Dam purpose is to generate electricity, you should also mention the generating station, its capacity and average output. Good luck and enjoy your experience on Wikipedia. Bouchecl (talk) 05:52, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Heather I think you forgot your own name? You did history right? I just added that and I also added my sources Normaromann (talk) 00:51, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Revising the article
I just changed the introduction to announce what will be coming later as part of our revision of the article. Normaromann (talk) 01:27, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

History Section 1.1 and 1.2 of the outline
I posted the history sections 1.1 and 1.2 in my sandbox in case anyone is interested in looking them over before they go on to the article Sunday night. --Heatheralyse (talk) 00:30, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Improvements? Well, not quite
Now, I guess I am not a true "Ambassador" of whatever project or class you guys at the University of British Columbia must be, but I don't think the effort to improve the article was entirely successful. Let me list a few PROBLEMS I see so far.
 * Nothing is mentioned about who the "members of the Tsek’ene" are, or why this group is significant to the article. It is not wikilinked.
 * Williston Lake or Williston Reservoir? The article seems to get it wrong, and wikilinks are not done right.
 * What is a prostate? Now, I know what this word means in literally 100% of all modern literature. But the way it is used in the article is different. What we have here is a case of blatant plagiarism, made obvious by the odd phrase "a prostate civil society." Whoever copied the source of this phrase forgot that this should be quoted if it is to stand in the article. The concept mentioned in the article comes quite likely from James C. Scott and possible originates in the 1998 book cited in the article. I could go further and question Professor Scott's word choice and usage, but that isn't what we need here. I am questioning its usage in the article, as it steals away some of the peculiarities of Scott and places them in the Wikipedia, which I contend may violate copyright laws. I could also further state that the word in question may mean "guardian" if we consider its Latin roots, although this doesn't even fit. For anyone supporting the inclusion of the offending phrase, I ask you to first define the word and show me a modern dictionary definition of "prostate" that supports it.
 * Notwithstanding the specific word choice in that sentence, I find it quite a stretch to introduce all of this discussion of Social engineering (political science) and cultural undercurrents within an article about a hydroelectric dam. The article is also full of descriptions of the demographics, ethnicity, social status, and world views of the people who were displaced by the lake. Why do we distinguish some people's tribe or group and not others? Some of this is tied together haphazardly with important details about the construction, such as "these workers included members of the Tsek’ene, non-native residents," etc. Are these details that people are really wondering when they look up an article about a dam? Would anyone care if 207 black people worked on the dam but only 173 members of the first nations? Do we need to know whether the bosses were all "white" and "educated" and the "workers" were otherwise? If so, then someone research all the ethnicities that were represented, and add them into the article! I mean, if we are going to number some of the groups, we need to number them all!! Was there any houses of folks besides Tsek’ene that had to be moved or flooded? If so, what was their cultural background?
 * I had a few details about the visitor's centre in the article. This info was deleted. See old revisions to article. Again, a person visiting the page might be more interested in practical things (like the visitor's centre) and not the color of skin of the people who built the thing 50 years ago.
 * Surely at least one of you "ambassadors" has visited the dam and taken some pictures of the generating station, the penstocks, the floodgates, or the caverns inside? Maybe some of these details could be included in the prose section.
 * My basic question is this: Was this dam put there to serve the governmental and social agendas of its namesake and other bureacrats, or was it put there to make some money for the province or its people? It's like painting an elephant on the side of a bus and coaxing people to "ride the elephant to work." It's a bus, people. This is a dam, not a social studies project.
 * Please do a Google search of the phrase "prostrate civil society that lacks the capacity to resist these plans" and compare it to what is in the article, including the unfortunate spelling. I like to saw logs! (talk) 06:59, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Give them some time before jumping to conclusions. According to the plan posted in the section right before this one, there are two sections devoted to construction of the dam (which is something I pointed out above, btw. Bouchecl (talk) 17:32, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Uruiamme, thanks for taking the time to comment and provide some analysis. This article, like all of Wikipedia, is a work in progress. The article has indeed improved since the beginning of the year (compare then and now). Concerning your specific points, the "Tsek’ene" has been edited. Williston Lake or Reservoir is a good question. Williston Lake seems to be the official name Williston Reservoir is common alternative name. The article should cover 'a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature' but I tend to agree with you that the reference to the Scott article is stretching relevancy the factor. I also agree with you that the visitor centre is an integral part of the legacy of the dam. The article should go into much more depth regarding the operations of the dam since it was built, including the visitors centre (tourism), security, and erosion (sink hole). I went to the dam once, before the 2010 Olympics clamp-down on security but I don't know if I kept the photos (I'll check). maclean (talk) 02:54, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry I forgot the quotations! I read the source and cited the book and the page number. I wasn't intending to plagiarize!! Also, we are an environmental history class and issues such as the sinkholes have been deemed outside of our field of research for this class. --Heatheralyse (talk) 23:15, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I would be happy to know if there are fish ladders at the dam. I wonder who designed the dam? It is a bit unusual. I like to saw logs! (talk) 06:20, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

WAC Bennett dam and high modernism aka, pegging the bogosity meter
We are writing about the history of the dam based on the scholarly literature available. It includes not only the logistics of its construction but also the social, political, and economic developments that lead to its construction. Accordingly to the literature cited here, the construction of Bennett Dam was part of a spate of dam building around the world which was influenced by an ideology of development which scholars have labelled high modernism. As an ideology of development, high modernism was part of the social and cultural circumstance that helped bring about the construction of the Bennett dam. --Heatheralyse (talk) 16:58, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, well the problem there is obvious. Scholarly work of this kind is driven by fashions. The fashion reflected here will be dead inside of twenty years, replaced by something else. Remember Scholasticism? Once the cutting edge in philosophy, now merely an historical footnote. Readers of an ENCYCLOPEDIA article on a dam do not want a tour of the latest social constuctionist bogosity, they want the facts. So write like Joe Friday, not like Joe Derrida. If you think all that stuff is important, then write a scholarly article and get it published in a scholarly journal. The key to any successful piece of writing is to know your audience. Ask yourself: what is the audience for an encyclopedia article? Whoever it is, I would suggest it isn't back-patting academics, trading the latest jargon the way kids used to trade baseball cards.

One other thing to keep in mind: the opening of the second paragraph is an exercise in circular logic. "Bennett’s convictions, and therefore the policies of his government, concerning hydroelectric development have been regarded as a manifestation of the ideology high modernity." Note that while we begin with a definite statement (Bennet's convictions) once we get into the meat of the sentence, it turns out that it's based on a passive construction (have been regarded), meaning that it's a violation of the NPOV policy of Wikipedia, that is, it's just some schmuck's opinion. Notice too that the opinion is illegitimately extended by a "therefore" so that if we reconstruct the process we get: IF it is the case that an ideology I designate as high modernism existed in 1963; AND IF it is the case that WAC Bennet subscribed to that ideology; THEN IT FOLLOWS that he must have held opinion x in regard to building dams; OR AT LEAST that building dams can be said to be a "manifestation" of said ideology. You can see then, that the whole process is circular nonsense. Even if we accept that something called high modernism existed (though clearly, it is implied, not in a conscious way, which is another problem), absolutely no proof is offered for the second assertion (WACB was a believer). So the proof of the propositions in the end rests only on the existence of the dam itself, hence, the argument assumes the conclusion before it even starts. Theonemacduff (talk) 16:06, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Proposed Further Improvements
Hi all, I just posted sections concerning the construction of the dam and I want to know where everyone thinks is needed to continue to improve this article. I'm aware that the new material has some duplication of information so over this week I'm going to go through the article and try to consolidate these factoids in whichever sections they seem most appropriate. I have also included a new image as a previous user had suggested we do. As far as I can tell the image should be ok by wikipedia standards as it is found in a free public domain document, however if I'm wrong we definitely need to use an image other than the one of Williston Lake that had previously been used. (I have removed the image as I do not believe it can verifiably be considered in the public domain as the user had suggested).

A couple of other items to suggest:

-perhaps moving the info about the naming of the dam after Bennett to the intro? It seems like that may be a better location.

-We may want to revisit the older version of the article found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=W._A._C._Bennett_Dam&oldid=481262406 it includes a few informative sentences about first nation migration and, as mentioned by Uruiamme, information on the visitors centre which should be worked in somewhere in the article even if it is beyond the scope of our course.

-In even older versions of the article their is brief mention of lawsuits being settled concerning the damage caused to communities by the flooding. Relevant? perhaps.

-Maclean mentioned the sinkhole incident which is documented online by newspaper articles, it could be included as a one sentence tidbit but I'm not sure of how relevant it is since it seems to be an isolated incident with no long standing effects. Still, if someone wants to put it in somewhere I wouldn't object but personally I'm not going to spend time tracking it down.

-Lastly I have covered some of the basic steps of the construction project but haven't delved into components such as the intake structure, details of the G.M. Shrum generation station, surrounding branch off developments in Hudson's Hope, etc. partially because of the amount of data I've already dumped is large and second because It may be too detailed for a wikipedia article. Thoughts?

-by the way, I talked to someone who has been up at the dam before and they don't believe there are fish ladders but I can't verify it.

--Biredale (talk) 21:27, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

this new info needs a reference + unexplained removal
I'm the reference. I was there. Could write a book about it. But, never mind. You know better. The BC Electric Company never existed and never started the dam project, as you will have it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 154.5.184.197 (talk) 04:38, 4 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Sorry, but that doesn't comply with WP:Verifiability. If it is common knowledge then you should be able to find a reference for it. Inverse Hypercube  (talk) 04:45, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

SinkHole?
People in the talk section mention sinkholes, but no sinkholes are mentioned in the article. Has something been removed from the article?

Wikipedia Ambassador Program course assignment
This article is the subject of an educational assignment at University of British Columbia supported by the Wikipedia Ambassador Program&#32;during the 2012 Q1 term. Further details are available on the course page.

The above message was substituted from by PrimeBOT (talk) on 16:05, 2 January 2023 (UTC)