Talk:William Lyon Mackenzie

unsuccessful
I am a decendent of william mackenzie and share a name but the susesfulness of the rebelion is a mater of opinion                *sorry about spelling*
 * I can't help but wonder why you're telling us this. The Last Melon 01:26, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
 * yeah, your as bad as those people who go around pretending to be descended from king arthur or the tsars of russia lol. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.171.129.66 (talk) 18:02, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Correspondance with Papineau
It would be interesting to have more details on his correspondance with Papineau in the failed attempt to unite the uprisings in both Upper and Lower Canada.
 * Did Mackenzie and Papineau really correspond much? From what I've learned, they simply happened to have the same goals, but didn't have much to do with each other beyond that. The Last Melon 01:27, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Even if it was just once, it would be worth mentioning. Suddenly, that makes Papineau's struggle not only against English speakers (as it is taught in schools in Quebec), but against British Emperialism. Arasaka 14:17, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes he had some contact with Papineau and also John Nielson who was another Quebec reformer. He also visited Quebec city with the purpose of meeting Lower Canada reformers. It was partly Papineau's corresondence that induced Mackenzie to open rebellion. Papineau wanted a parallel action in Upper Canada to dilute the British resonse. One inducement was that the rebellion in Quebec had drained British regulars from Ontario - Fort York arms and munitions were kept for safe keeping in Toronto city hall guarded by only two sheriff's men and the notion was that these items could easily be obtained by the rebels on marching to downtown Toronto. Gerald RW (talk) 15:16, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Attempted Assassination
It says in the timeline that there was an attempted assassination of Mackenzie in March 1832, yet it isn't mentioned in the article. Does anyone have anything on that? The Last Melon 01:28, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

The article says "Tory magistrate William Johnson Kerr arranged to have Mackenzie beaten by thugs" which is weak. Actually, Kerr along with several accomplices dragged Mackenzie out of the place where he was meeting with a few associates and attempted to beat him to death in the street, very nearly succeeding, only prevented when friends and concerned neighbors intervened. Mackenzie was seriously injured and unable to even sit up for several days; however, he limped back into action 4 days later. Kerr was convicted of the offence but received only a small fine thanks to his Tory connections. At the time of the event Kerr was a justice of the peace, member of the assembly and government canal manager; he was of course subsequently 'punished' for his actions by being given higher posts. Mackenzie as well as competing journalists published detailed descriptions of the whole affair in considerable detail. Gerald RW (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:37, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Traitor
He was obviously a disloyal traitor to his own people - the canadians and the british. he even wanted canada and gb to join america. He wasn't fighting for us canadians, he was fighting for himself and hoping the usa would annex canada. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.171.129.65 (talk) 15:25, 29 January 2010 (UTC)


 * YOU GO HOME! Mackenzie was a brave patriot who loved and fought for the people of his country. Canada is not the country of the British Empire and oligarchs, but the country of CANADIANS! 2605:B100:1132:3AB7:9412:FDA0:9F39:91D9 (talk) 15:44, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

I really don't think Mackenzie was aiming to get Great Britain, apart Upper and Lower Canada, to join the USA.

And even the Canadas, he seems to have wanted as independent republics. Though how long such republics would remain separate from the USA, given the proposed American political system and likely influx of American settlers, is open to qluestion. LeftAlberta1968 (talk) 01:56, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Mackenzie as mayor
"Mackenzie was largely ineffectual as a mayor". This was a busy year for Mackenzie but he did get some things done. When he became mayor, the only sidewalk was some hemlock bark laid on the street near a tannery; there were no paved or wooden streets (jokes about hats in the middle of Yonge street concealing an entire man who had sunk into the street ... seated on his horse); there was no water system; sewage drained into the streets; garbage was dumped in vacant lots; there was no city plan. During Mackenzie's term at least one street was boarded (a vast improvement over mud), a Board of Health was established, a city plan put in place, a common sewer begun; however, the city council was limited by lack of revenue and dealing with a second cholera outbreak. The council was controlled by reformers who were hamstrung by the adversarial family compact dominated colonial administration. A good part of the first council's effort was directed at sanitation and public health issues in response to the cholera epidemic of 1832, further complicated by a repetition and the governor's interference in the situation. However, Mackenzie's performance was seen as poor (it was even suggested he was responsible for the cholera outbreak, perhaps because he personally provided ambulance service to victims) and he polled last in his ward in the next election. More detail on this period would be appreciated; this site has some good info http://www1.toronto.ca/wps/portal/contentonly?vgnextoid=bd98757ae6b31410VgnVCM10000071d60f89RCRD Gerald RW (talk) 17:08, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Section heading
'Background and early years in Scotland, education and what has happened after that, 1795–1820' seems rather long and oddly phrased for a section heading. Should it be changed to Early years or something similar? Dunarc (talk) 15:12, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Further Reading and External Links Sections
The "further reading" and "external links" sections have become large and hard for readers to navigate. In the spirit of WP:Further Reading and WP:BOLD I have moved these sections to this talk page at the top in the "Refideas" template. Works written by Mackenzie have been placed in the "Bibliography of major works" section. Z1720 (talk) 02:04, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Compiling bibliographies for research is a major activity of historians and scholars here.-Should be restored for our readers. - Moxy 🍁 10:58, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I think compiling great research for use in the article is important, but it should be used in the article as references whenever possible, not put in further reading and forgotten about. MOS:FURTHER says "Further Reading" should contain a reasonable number of publications". 21 works, as documented above, is beyond reasonable in my opinion. If a reference cannot be used as a citation then we can restore it to the Further Readings section. Z1720 (talk) 14:08, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

copyvios
https://copyvios.toolforge.org/?lang=en&project=wikipedia&title=William+Lyon+Mackenzie&oldid=&action=search&use_engine=1&use_links=1&turnitin=0 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Moxy (talk • contribs) 07:18, October 28, 2020 (UTC)


 * I agree that there's a copyright problem with the article. I think what happened was a previous editor copied Mackenzie's bio from, changed a few words in every sentence, then didn't cite their work. Last month I referenced every paragraph that used biographi and tried to summarize the information to remove the copyright vio. What I'm doing now is using books to research Mackenzie and trying to replace the biographi sentences with info from the books. I'll put my book reading on pause and do another copy-edit to try to remove more of the violations. I will take any help I can get, so feel free to help edit the article! Z1720 (talk) 14:35, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Section sizes
Hi you added the Section sizes template to the talk page, but I am unsure what to do with this information. Should the larger sections be trimmed? If so, what can be deleted from the article? Thanks. Z1720 (talk) 19:05, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Wanda Gzowski
I find the reference to "a woman who married a descendant of Mackenzie named Wanda Gzowski" stilted. Wanda Casimir Gzowski was the great-granddaughter of Sir Casimir Gzowski and a relative of the broadcaster Peter Gzowski. The wording implies that no one knows who she was. I suggest we omit "named Wanda Gzowski." TFD (talk) 20:10, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi I went back to the source to see if there was more information about Wanga Gzowski, but there is only one line about her. The source does not verify that the Wanda Casimir Gzowski you mention above is the same person buried with Mackenzie. I will take out the line if other editors think it should be removed, but I don't think the wording implies that we don't know who she is. Rather, it is just mentioning that a person who married into the family is buried in the same plot. Z1720 (talk) 20:23, 14 April 2021 (UTC)


 * The Queen's Own Rifles of Canada Regimental Museum and Archive says that Wanda Gzowski was a great-granddaughter of Sir Casimir, and the Ontario Archives says that her husband was related to Mackenzie. (This article uses her father-in-law's book as a reference.) I don't have access to Sewell's book, but he would have recognized the name and probably assumed his readers did as well. But I would go along with just deleting it. TFD (talk) 21:10, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
 * This sentence has been removed, as suggested at the FAC. Z1720 (talk) 16:10, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Rob Ford
I don't know how much weight this has, but I found the late Rob Ford's comments at his inaugural interesting: "In closing, I’d like to add that Toronto’s first mayor, William Lyon Mackenzie, was a bit of a rebel. He was a colourful character who was not accepted by the establishment because he fought against privileged and for the little guy. My plan is to be more successful than he was." TFD (talk) 21:21, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

I am not a Torontonian, but I suspect that WLM enjoys a certain amount of prestige in that city simply as a result of having been the first mayor, and people tend to glorify the first person to hold a particular office, like Americans with George Washington.

Plus, he probably has some vaguely remembered reputation as a rebel, which seems to be what Ford was referencing. LeftAlberta1968 (talk) 02:05, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Some notes on my bold edit
.

I'm not able to spend time going through, in detail, the whole article, but I can run my ETVP (=Easy to Visually Parse) script on it. The main changes, in this case, are (1) applying a consistent citation style (so all the citations are now short-form) and (2) the full citations in the main biblio listing are in a form that is much easier to read and to check.

I made a couple of small changes to the headings for the citations, much of the background for which is set out at WP:BCC. In particular, the term "References" is scrapped, and the short citations are under "Citations". Short citations are themselves a subset of "Notes", which is why they appear as a subsection of the "Notes" section. Method in my madness!

The script makes a large number of checks for MOS errors, but found only a few p which should read pp. So congratulations to the authors of this article for their diligence.

This change falls under the terms of WP:CITEVAR, so if anyone doesn't like it, they are entitled to revert it, and I won't object. But I hope that won't be necessary.

Comments welcome.

--NSH001 (talk) 15:38, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Serving with $atan?
The summary pane notes the following:

In office 1845–1834 Serving with $atan

Serving with $atan? what's up with that?

Sounds like obvious trolling. LeftAlberta1968 (talk) 02:03, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Where do you see this? I did a ctr+F search and could not find it. Z1720 (talk) 02:26, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

I didn't see anything. Someone else said that they saw "Serving With $atan" in the summary panel, and I said that whoever wrote "Serving with $atan" was likely trolling. LeftAlberta1968 (talk) 01:36, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Mention of grandson
Surely the fact that his grandson served as the prime minister of Canada merits a mention outside of the disambiguation, where it remains uncited? — V ORTEX  3427 (Talk!) 08:51, 11 June 2024 (UTC)