User talk:Ground Zero/Archive 1

Social Credit
Yeah, I don't know much about Social Credit, being an ign'rant 'mer'can (I was basically just trying to categorize Canadian political parties, and saw the problem relating to Social Credit) - it was referred to as the "Social Credit Party of Canada" in the article, so I used that. Obviously, if that's not what it called itself, we should use something else. Another problem, I'd add, is at Labour Party (Canada), which tells of a large number of different parties. Separate stubs on each one would be nice. john k 15:53, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The problem with "Labour" is that for much of the last century candidates were able to just declare themselves as they wished without there being a formal party so a lot of the candidates who ran as "Labour" were just individuals who had no connection with one another.

Anyway, thanks for the kudos on Social Credit. Do you have any info on Ken Sweigard?AndyL 17:25, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * Sweigard was also a Christian minister of some sort. I haven't been able to find much else, but I will get around to compiling his electoral history as a start.


 * As far as Labour goes, johnk, I'll take a look at it, but it may be best left as is for the reason that AndyL identifies. It may also be worth making the comment up front about it being a convenient label more often than it was an actual party. Thanks for your comments. Kevintoronto 13:40, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Reform
I agree with you completely, Democrat is a meaningless term. I also cut back severely on the grandstanding in the Reform Party of Ontario article. -SimonP 15:56, Jul 21, 2004 (UTC)

Kevin: I have no problem whatsoever with the changes you made to the Manitoba Liberal leadership site -- in fact, I think it's a better format than the one I used (I still haven't mastered Wikipedia formatting). I'll be creating similar articles for the Manitoba NDP & PCs in the near future, btw. CJCurrie 17:17, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Kevin: If you want to know more about Stan Roberts, look for a book by Trevor Harrison called "Of Passionate Intensity". Some of my information was taken from this source (although not to the point of plagiarism, obviously). ;) CJCurrie 20:11, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

FLQ and terrorism
Kevin: My decision to remove the word "terrorism" from the Kashtan and Caouette pages came after User:AndyL's comments on the Edward Schreyer page. I don't always withdraw my comments in the face of criticism, but in this case it struck me as valid -- mostly because I'd had doubts about using the term in the first place.

I personally think that the FLQ (the Chenier cell, at least) *was* a terrorist organization, and I suspect that I would have little difficulty acquiring evidence in support of this position. At the same time, the word "terrorism" invariably comes with high levels of political baggage, and has been used too many times for politically skewed purposes to be considered a neutral description (in most cases). I've long considered the CBC's policy of using the term sparingly as a good one [1] -- and it follows that such a policy should apply to domestic as well as foreign situations. (I would have some difficulty applying the term to the Mohawk Warriors vis-a-vis the Oka standoff of 1990, for instance.)

([1] how ironic that I should be referencing CBC policy in a discussion on this particular subject...)

There's probably a compromise term that could be used, to indicate that the FLQ were willing to use violent methods. CJCurrie 23:23, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Incidentally, I'd been using the abbreviation "FLQ" because the archaic computer that I'm currently using can't do accents! (Though I suppose I could have just copied someone else's text ...) CJCurrie 23:32, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The compromise that you've suggested sounds fine. My "natural" inclination is still to use the word "terrorist" in describing the FLQ, but even as I was writing it I had some doubts about using the word in a public forum. (Given the number of times that I've defended the CBC's policy on this front, I should probably make use of it myself.)

An alternate suggestion for a compromise would be the approach I took on the William Kashtan page -- use the word "terrorism", but only in conveying someone else's opinion. Something like "The FLQ were widely regarded as ...", for instance.

(Btw, is there any particular figure in Canadian politics that you'd like to see a page for?) ;) CJCurrie 02:10, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I can't promise anything about the two politicians whom you've named, but I'd recommend that you look over the Rod Bruinooge page that I created moments ago. This one has to be seen to be believed ... CJCurrie 23:38, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Terrorism
Kevin, While I personally agree that the FLQ was terrorist the fact is that terrorist is a subjective term. The CBC, for instance, tries not to use the word "terrorist" for that reason. One person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. AndyL 01:12, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Manitoba CPC-ML
re: "Thanks for catching my mistake."

Not to worry -- I watch these Manitoba pages like a hawk. ;) CJCurrie 23:55, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Articles on votes for deletion
Kevin,

Just to give you a quick heads-up: Someone is recommending the deletion of some bio-pages for minor candidates in the 2004 federal election. As you can probably guess from my recent edits, my own view is that anyone who campaigns for the Canadian House of Commons is eligible for a Wikipedia article. Whether you would agree with this position or not, there are currently five "minor candidate" bios on the possible chopping block, and there hasn't been time for a consensus to emerge yet. Your contributions to the voting would be appreciated. CJCurrie 00:24, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Kevin: The other four articles are located directly above the Magnus Thompson article on the vfd list (and they're all "borderline" at this point). CJCurrie 19:42, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Kevin: Three more "fringe candidate" articles have been placed on vfd; they're listed in sequential order, with the first being Alex Kreider. The vote is currently 6-4 to delete. CJCurrie 17:26, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Adrien Arcand
Well, my thinking was that everyone already knows who Trudeau is where many don't know who George Drew is. Anyway, I think its sufficient to describe Trudeau as a "Liberal MP", saying "future Prime Minister" seems to me like priming the pump a bit (and needless given Trudeau's stature). AndyL 18:46, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, the "future Prime Minister" reference is more a style thing for me than a point of principle - if you feel strongly it should be mentioned then I'll defer to you. As for Drew, to be accurate, he was leader of the Ontario Conservative Party when Arcand was incarcerated and some years away from being Premier of Ontario or Leader of the Opposition in Ottawa. AndyL 19:27, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Arthur Roebuck
Would you happen to know (or be able to find out) what years Arthur Roebuck served as an MPP in the Ontario legislature?AndyL 01:58, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. Last I knew the Ontario Legislative Assembly website only went back to the mid-80s. Don't know when they put up a complete record of MPPs from 1867 but this is very useful. AndyL 22:42, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

1900 election
Hi, re the 1900 Canadian election, one table indicates there was one Independent Labour and no Laobur MPs elected, the second province by province table indicates one Labour MP (from BC) and one Independent Labour MP (Arthur Puttee) from Manitoba and when I check the Parliamentary website I can only find [[Arthur Puttee. Any way we can get to the bottom of this? Who is this BC Labour MP supposed to be? AndyL 22:36, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sam Spade== ==

You may want to vote on whether Sam becomes a sysop at Requests_for_adminship/Sam_SpadeAndyL AndyL 18:20, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

1872 Canadian election
I don't think George Brown led the Liberals into the 1872 Canadian election as he didn't run for a seat in Parliament that year. Any idea who, if anyone, was the Liberal leader?AndyL 19:16, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm going to remove reference to Brown from the 1872 election article until we get to the bottom of this. I think someone will have to pull up the newspaper microfilm for the Globe or some other newspaper from the 1872 election campaign and see if they can figure it out. Are you at a university? If not perhaps we can ask User:CJCurrie to look into it since he spends a lot of time at the libarary at Queen's. AndyL 19:36, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

You mention "The Liberals were officially leaderless until 1873 but Brown was considered the party's "elder statesman" even without a seat in the Canadian House of Commons and was regularly consulted by leading Liberal parliamentarians."

I actually added that to the Brown article a few minutes ago:) I was trying to say that after Brown's defeat the Liberals were considered leaderless but, you're right, while Brown was doubtlessly the "leading Liberal" in the 1867 election he wasn't necessarily Liberal leader in the way we understand the phrase. In the unlikely event that the Liberals had won the 1867 election Brown likely would have become PM but it seems he likely thought his chances of becoming Ontario Premier were greater (as it was he lost on both levels). Of course, had the Liberals won the 1872 election it's possible Brown would have been approached to be PM even without a seat (he would have then run in a byelection) not unlike how when the UFO won the 1919 Ontario election, Drury was asked to become Premier even though he didn't even run in the 1919 election. It might be more accurate, in regards to the 1872 election, to list several Liberal leaders eg Blake, Mackenzie (?) and one or two others rather than list a single leader but we need research before we can do that.

The article on Alexander Mackenzie says that after the Liberals won the election Mackenzie was the fourth person asked to become PM and the first not to say no so it seems that in 19th century politics even if Mackenzie was "Liberal leader" in 1874 this did not mean he'd automatically become PM if the Liberals won the election. Of course the same situation existed in Britain where Lloyd George became Liberal PM during WWI even though he was NOT Liberal leader and did not become Liberal leader till after he'd ceased to be PM. 20:23, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

All I know is what it says in the wikiarticle. No source is listed, unfortunately. The parliamentary website does say Mackenzie was Liberal leader from March 1873 so we're safe in saying he was Liberal leader during the 1874 election even if he wasn't the automatic choice for PM.As for 1867 and 1872 we need to do more research. AndyL 20:40, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Before we can add a footnote or anything we need to know who the leading Liberals were in the 1872 election. Probably Blake and Mackenzie, maybe one or two others, but I'd rather not say that until we know for certain. AndyL 20:53, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

According to the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, Blake stepped down as federal Leader of the Opposition in 1871 when he became Premier of Ontario. Then, when dual representation was abolished he resigned as Premier in order to run for re-election to the House of Commons in 1872. Following the election he was offered the leadership of the Liberal party but declined due to ill health. AndyL 21:12, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Early Liberal Leaders
(This is a summary of some of my recent comments on Andy's page.)

The short answer is that the Liberal Party didn't have an official leader in the 1872 campaign.

Digging into the DBC reveals the following: In Canada's first parliament, the Liberal Party was dominated by Alexander Mackenzie and Edward Blake in Ontario, and by Luther Hamilton Holton and Antoine-Aime Dorion in Quebec (I'm not sure who the NS leader was, and many of the NB "Liberals" were actually tacit supporters of the Tory government). There was no official leader. A move was made to bring Brown back in 1869, but this failed. Afterwards, Mackenzie became the main "coordinator" for the party in the Commons.

In the 1872, Mackenzie was the leading figure in the Ontario campaign (Blake was ill), but was not an official "leader". He had no influence over the Liberal campaign outside of the province.

Contrary to what the parliamentary site has, Blake was *not* the federal Liberal leader from 1869-1871. He *was* the provincial leader during this period (or I should say most of this period -- the record is actually a bit ambiguous even here). CJCurrie 02:20, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I misread the 1911 Britannica article I cited above. It mentions Blake's dual mandate in the federal and provincial parliament but only identifies him as opposition leader provincially. AndyL 02:26, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Saskatchewan Socreds
I discovered this information while going through a general overview of Saskatchewan's political history. [I'm just digging up the information now from one of my files ... ah, yes ...]

The Socreds expressed a desire to merge with the Tories in early 1970, and the Tories agreed in March of the same year. Formal merger occurred in 1971, albeit that it was under the PC name.

Roy Hardeman Bailey (who ran for the Sask-Tory leadership in 1973, and was later a Reform-Alliance MP) began his career as a Socred. CJCurrie 20:49, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

My understanding is that the Sask Tories attempted to consolidate a general "anti-Liberal" campaign around themselves in 1921, but failed miserably. My recollection is that they ran only three candidates, and had no leader. (The situation is covered in a book called The Progressive Party in [or of] Canada.) CJCurrie 21:37, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Dick Collver
I actually have a fair bit of information on this figure -- I just haven't turned my attentions to the Saskatchewan political scene yet.

Short version:

-political outsider in 1973, selected over Roy Bailey for his presumed skills in business -Sask Tory popularity in the 1975 election was artificially "boosted" by the NDP, who used them as a foil against the Liberals -Collver was known as an eccentric -- actually spoke about telepathy in an early interview as party leader -claimed he was still attempting to help the Sask Tories during his time as Unionest leader - by asking damaging questions of the NDP that more cautious parliamentarians would have avoided -was a key crown witness in the trial of Colin Thatcher, and provided crucial testimony re: Thatcher's desire to see his wife disappear

I may end up creating a page shortly ... CJCurrie 17:04, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Somehow, nothing from the article comes as an especially great shock ... CJCurrie 17:56, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Well, these are the same people who gave Grant Devine a landslide mandate in 1982, and that was more in response to the Canadian Constitution than anything else. Regarding Collver, though, I suspect that his brief uptick in the polls may have had more to do with national factors than anything else (ie. the Trudeau government was losing support in Saskatchewan, and the provincial Tories were displacing the provincial Liberals as the local opposition accordingly). I doubt the party could have won in 1982 if he had stayed as leader. CJCurrie 18:17, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Your assistance is requested
Kevin,

I've just created a page entitled Manitoba Minister of Labour and Immigration (which, for the moment, simply contains a list of the ministers concerned). This position was created in 2001; I've decided to include the province's previous Ministers of Labour on a separate list on the page as well.

The problem is, I'm having some difficulty getting the subject headers to match with the actual lists. I don't suppose you'd know how to resolve this particular problem. CJCurrie 23:42, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Canadian election wikiproject?
Hi there. I know that you are a regular contributor to Canadian election topics, and I was wondering if you thought it would be a good idea to create a Wikiproject to standardize some of these articles? --timc | Talk 02:51, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Reform Party
Oh, don't worry. I actually really don't much care, as long as the article doesn't get into blatantly meaningless bullcrap like "democrat-populist". Mostly I just had to get my two cents in while the debate was still open. (Can ya tell I never liked them much? *grin*) Bearcat 19:25, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Elections
Go ahead and email me the spreadsheets then. My email is rwashburn@sympatico.ca The reason for the dates at the bottom is, that it helps me tremendously, as I dont have to scroll up or scroll down. I guess it's because I am lazy, but I like it. Earl Andrew 23:02, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing
Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:
 * Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
 * Multi-Licensing Guide
 * Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the " " template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:


 * Option 1
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR
 * Option 2
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions to any U.S. state, county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace " " with "  ". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

Belinda Stronach
Kevin: Point taken about michealm--you've probably had more experience dealing with him than I have. However, I would say that when a couple of people reasoned with him about the "social democrat" tag on Stronach, he did back off. After several reverts and some discussion on the talk page, he droped it and went with the wording I had suggested "to the left of many conservatives." He certainly is difficult to deal with, though, and the Belinda Stronach article is not one of my priorities. If he responds to our current attempts at reason, it will be a small victory. I've often found that learning can occur when the motivation is right. We shall see. In any case, it is good to deal with reasonable people like you. Sunray 21:52, 2004 Dec 13 (UTC)

Where do we go from here? It's apparent michaelm won't accept anything but 'like I said, Belinda is a social democrat. She should join the NDP,' the evidence coming from sources he does not provide and ducks talking about, or that he himself disagrees with. What now? Samaritan 06:12, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC) (crossposted to Sunray and AndyL)


 * I would suggest that we wait to see what michaelm does. Since the page has been unprotected, he has been relatively moderate.  I note that he has been asking "Is this o.k." for many of his edits.  I would suggest that we continue as we are, editing his unsupportable statements (e.g. "fair trade").  As long as he accepts this and doesn't try to insert one of his pet opinions it should be fine.  I would suggest zero tolerance if he starts reverting reasonable edits.  In that case, I would suggest that we ask AndyL to block both his IP address and his user account for 24 hours (per Blocking policy: Vandalism).  If he continues with egregious valdalism, we block him for 30 days.  He cannot argue that he wasn't warned.  We could send him a message via the talk page about this just to be sure he is clear.  Sunray 18:19, 2004 Dec 19 (UTC)

*blush*
Aw, thank you! Why Samaritan? I guess I wanted to convey that I was a bit of an outsider, but ready to reach in and help. So it was that or Friendly Stranger, and, well... :) Your work here rocks. your small party pieces are among what hooked me on Wikipedia. Samaritan 00:19, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)