User talk:Skookum1/Archive 1

Welcome!
Hi Skookum1, and a warm welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you have enjoyed editing as much as I did so far and decide to stay. Unfamiliar with the features and workings of Wikipedia? Don't fret! Be Bold! Here's some good links for your reference and that'll get you started in no time!

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Most Wikipedians would prefer to just work on articles of their own interest. But if you have some free time to spare, here are some open tasks that you may want to help out :

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Oh yes, don't forget to sign when you write on talk pages, simply type four tildes, like this: ~. This will automatically add your name and the time after your comments. And finally, if you have any questions or doubts, don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Once again, welcome! =)

- Mailer Diablo 08:10, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Native American name controversy, too
Hi Skookum: Like I said on the BC talk page, be bold! Go ahead and make edits, that's what wikipedia is about. I had never made the connection between Siwash and sauvage even though English is my tird (superfluous "h" omitted) language, thanks. :-) However, the etymologies of sauvage and sauver are quite different. Sauvage comes from the latin silva which means forest or bush; for comparison, it's selvaggio in Italian. Sauver comes from salveo (salvere in the infinitive) in Latin, "to be in good health". Quite different meanings, but French has so many homonyms that it can get confusing. It's almost as hard to spell as English. BTW, French does have proper nouns that are capitalized, like names of people, countries, provinces, etc. It just doesn't have proper adjectives. So one would write Canada or Colombie-Britannique, someone from Canada would be un Canadien, or from BC un Colombien. Adjectives, on the other hand, are never capitalised. So it would be l'histoire canadienne. Cheers.  05:05, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Sauvages canadiens
I'll recant the thing about sauvage, then; seemed like a good idea at the time, though (smiley). Interesting that the Latin for "to save" (as in salvation) would come from such a different root than the Greek sozo. That aside, the thing about capitalization and the name of BC was something WE (British Columbians) were taught in school, and was a bit of a bone of contention back in the 1970s. Have French spelling standards changed in the meantime or did we just have red-herring attitudes among our French teachers?? (mine was from Toulouse, not Tadoussac, dat's for sure).

Skookum1 08:30, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Prolly the latter. I did check in my Bescherelle. Maybe they were saying to use Colombie-britannique, as britannique is an adjective. But the Canadian French usage is Colombie-Britannique (both capitalized), as a quick google search should confirm. Interestingly, when I was a kid, some people argued that it should be Colombie-Canadienne, and I see from a google search that the usage as not completely died out. Luigizanasi 18:15, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Les Colombies variantes
Well, all I know is C.C. is a whole lot tastier than C.B. In fact, I'm not sure you can even eat radio crystals. . . . and they certainly won't get you drunk! The Colombie-Canadienne thing was (annoyingly) in vogue back in the early '80s. What its coinage and usage demonstrate is a lack of understanding of how BC got its name, or in fact any sort of respect for BC's history at all, or for the nature of the place; but that's Quebec for you (no offense, if you're a Quebecker - the last being a term for which I would be castigated, i.e. not using quebecois, but the reality is that quebecois is an French term, Quebecker a long-standing English/anglo-canadian one. Long digression, and this isn't a usenet group, so I'll leave off.

Skookum1 02:58, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Seton Portage Discussion
Thanks for the note. I haven't lived in Seton Portage for more than a decade and I now make my home near Boston, USA. As for the incident with police, it took place on the road in front of the band hall and is fairly close to how you describe it. I was actually there when it happened and I delivered the videotape to CBC and BCTV news that showed the dogs attacking the protesters on their own land. I was in the BCTV news studio for an interview when it was broadcast and all hell broke loose. I met with Van der Zalm a few weeks later. It was certainly an interesting time. I don't recall the French RCMP, but the members of the band were using their native language on a mobile communications network I helped set up, kind of like in the movie Windtalkers. Dtaw2001 20:35, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Chinook wind
I really enjoyed the additions you made to the Chinook wind article. I think of this as a little "bonus" for doing some wikification (making words into links). Since it's on my watch list, I got to see the real work done by people who actually know something about the subject. Thanks again.&mdash;GraemeMcRaetalk 19:27, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

P.S. regarding the comment you made in the talk page about possibly being too "chatty", I don't think so. I'm a chatty writer, too, and so I appreciate the style, which tends to make subjects more accessible to all readers. Some wikipedians view some articles as too chatty, so the "de-chatify" it, which is fine. Better to have a chatty (but factual and cited) story than none at all.&mdash;GraemeMcRaetalk 19:34, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Categories
Hi. I have noticed you adding some categories to mountain articles. Note that parent categories should not also be added to an article existing in a child category. For example, if an article is in Category:Mountains of British Columbia, do not also place it into Category:Mountains of Canada. Also, do not place mountains into Category:Mountaineering. If we followed that convention, there would probably be over 700 mountains in that category which is of little value. See Categorization for further information. RedWolf 05:35, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Categories and Mountaineers
Didn't know that about Categories, the parent-child thing; but I started doing it because I'd noticed entries that DID have both (can't remember which at present, Waddington maybe) and also because the Mountains Ranges of Canada list looked a little on the thin side; is it only for mountains which are in provinces that don't have a "Mountain Ranges of XXXa" Category going on?

The ten or twelve peaks I put the "mountaineering" thing on today are major mountaineerin objectives. e.g. Monarch, Queen Bess, Monmouth (actually forbidden to climb, but...), Garibaldi etc. I recently workeed with the Canadian Mountain Encyclopedia for a while (http://bivouac.com) and charted thousands of unnamed peaks, never mind thousands of named ones, that wouldn't make any mountaineer sit up and take notice; unless he were to climb them first. Anyway, was only meaning to put the Mountaineers category in mountaineering-significant mountains, not every mountain; same with Sir Sandford and Sir Wilfrid Laurier (the highest in the Selkirks and Cariboos, respectively).Skookum1 07:19, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Quantrill
Hey Skookum,

Nice tidbit on Quantrill. I wanted to warn you, though, not to forget to add that reference--there've been some minor POV wars over the page in the past and it would be good to make sure everything's referenced there. Keep up the good work! --Dvyost 00:39, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Riding articles
Good work on Coast Chilcotin, Skookum. I have made some suggested changes to bring it in line with other articles. Here are some tips:

Riding articles generally use only the riding name as the title, unless the riding name could be confused with something else, and then "(electoral district) is added. Usually with hyphenated riding names, there is no danger of confusion, so "(electoral district)" is not needed. But if there were a riding named "Kelowna", for example, "(electoral district)" is added to distinguish the article about the riding from the article about the town.

Another thing is that because Elections Canada uses an em dash (—) instead of a hyphen (-) to connect different geographical names, the riding articles also follow that convention, so we have Coast—Capilano, not Coast-Capilano.

Keep up the good work. If you have any questions, drop me a line on my talk page. Ground Zero | t 17:06, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Your comments on my talk page:
 * It's required with Cariboo and in certain other cases where I know there'll be an overlap, at least with a historical electoral district vs a historical region, e.g. Omineca, East Kootenay; even Vancouver was a one-riding thingie once upon a time, stretching all the way up to Atlin no less (before floatplanes).
 * Yes, indeed. The point that I was making is that the standard that has been set for the naming of riding articles is that "(electoral distict)" is not used unless there is possibility of confusion. In the edits you made to Coast Chilcotin, you had left a few redlinks (i.e., links that did not go to existing articles and therefore appear in red) becuase you had added in "(electoral district)" after the name. By removing that from the link, I was able to create blue links (i.e., links to existing articles that are about the ridings in question).
 * Coast Chilcotin is unhyphenated for some reason, even in elections canada records. 
 * I don't know why that is. I've wondered about it too. But if that's what Elections Canada uses, we should stick with it.
 * Trying to find broken-down census and poll data (by community) and also election expenditures, but none of that is on Elections Canada website. Any ideas?  Also sources for riding maps; I put up a request on the "batch" section of the Wiki Maps page. i.e. for historical riding maps; most current ridings, if not all (?), have maps.
 * I can't help you there. I don't have any sources beyond the EC website. Best of luck. Ground Zero | t 14:24, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Vancouver talk
Hey! If there are any tpoics you'd like to bring back from the archived discussions, feel free to cut & paste them back into the main talk page! &lt;font color=&quot;#2e8b57&quot;&gt;Peregrine&lt;/font&gt;&#91;&#91;User_talk:PeregrineAY&#124;&lt;font color=#006400&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;AY&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/font&gt;]] 01:19, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

What archived discussions? Not sure how to find them. PS have you seen my list of BC-isms in the talk page of Canadian English?Skookum1 01:32, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Sir George Murray
Hi Skookum1,

If you want to turn a page into a redirect, it is VERY important that you use the move feature to move the original page to its new location. Copy-paste edits kill off the edit history, and it is a lot of hard work for an administrator to fix the problem afterwards. Snottygobble | Talk 02:34, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Maps
Well, I need descriptions for maps, obviously. The problem with BC is, that I don't know very much about its municipal boundary history, or possess the maps to review it. With Ontario, I have all the resources necessary to make maps. However, I can give it a try. Just let me know which riding you want, and a description of its boundaries. -- Earl Andrew - talk 05:27, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Basic info and long info
OK; basics on the first riding follows, and a lengthy explanation of certain online map resources:

Coast Chilcotin map

 * Elections Canada - Description of Coast Chilcotin] - NB no hyphen in riding name. Bivouac entry exists - Coast Chilcotin but needs improving.  I tried to find you description of the old Lillooet (electoral district) but can't even find current electoral-district descriptions (I can know pretty well by looking at a map what's in it; but the legal details are important in some cases, e.g. boundary towns), other than from the feds (that Lillooet riding link needs table-izing; I transferred the data by hand from Elections BC earlier tonight.  Reason I'm bringing it up parallel to Coast Chilcotin is they're much the same region, or involve the same areas.  Yale-Lillooet's description is online, though, at http://www.elections.bc.ca/map/edmap1999/yal.html (which says "Redistribution 1999" on it instead of "Copyright 1999" on it - does that mean Wikipedia can use it?)  Also found a http://www.elections.bc.ca/map/VAvaredistrib04.htm of the whole province in garish 11-colour; also "redistribution 1999", with links to each riding's own map (wow!); local riding maps are too details, very pencil-oriented and only in PDF in some cases (incl Yale-Lillooet's).  Guess you can "trace" using "layer" or something, can't you?  I don't know how to use my paint/image program very well (Paint Shop Pro); if it's easy give me pointers and I can go at 'em and at least we can get the current ridings done.

Coast Chilcotin's boundary description is bizarre in its length, but I'm familiar with this kind of thing from an infrastructure project at the Canadian Mountain Encylopedia which I'd been a volunteer editor at for a few years. The head guy there has this thing about "boundary walks", for ranges and regions and such, as well as detailed boundary points (in format bp=latitude/longitude and place name) and. . . well, let's just say I've "walked" a good part of North America, and of certain areas in detail within British Columbia. 45,000 peaks, 25,000 cols, thousands of miles and rivers and coastlines plotted, and I'm still sane (well, almost).

So I'm familiar with the turf and better do my part to start you up; or you'll be hopelessly lost in there without me or someone to guide you, or lots of time for a steep geographic learning/memory curve. So I'll make a rough outline myself, using Basemap, following the placenames (most of which I already know, and I have a general idea of the boundary; it's just a question of which communities and creekbasins are in or out, so I can almost handdraw it, really sloppily though, once I get and idea what's in and out; it's finding those obscure coastal bays and "heights of ground" that you have to know the terrain for, or have an idea where it's supposed to end up at least; and finding the main lat-longs; and whether Quesnel's in or not, and exactly which side of 100 Mile and Big Bar the boundary passed on and the like; once I've got that done you'll have a chart of the route, and you can use a blank digital map drawn from Basemap (there's a way to extract the image's TRIM data that it's generated from; I'll ask them how to get at it).

I'm not good at making maps look pretty; unless I use various copyrighted sources, including what follows, but I have a pretty good idea out what's out there in the way of data sources on-line:
 * BC Provincial Basemap
 * "Land and Resource Data Warehouse Catalogue" ( as they so prosaically call it)

The latter is much more complicated and detailed - and a bit harder to figure out - than the former, which it's supposed to supersede but they've been online together for over four years now. The American equivalent is Topozone but it's a lot clunkier and there are a few new free digital-map sources coming up; GoogleMap can't be this detailed, I don't think; don't know much about their dataset but I'd be surprised given what I've seen of GoogleWorld. Maybe with bigger processers and storage but I dunno; that amount of data, more detail than Bivouac or Peakbagger and interlain with point-information sets, including moment-by-moment potentially the way they're talking/hyping. But why? Why not just have real nature, instead of a digital copy of it? Ah well, but it's fun to make drawings from anyway, no matte what the google lords have in mind...

Point is it takes a while to learn how to use Basemap/LDRWC; easiest things for you to know right off other than the intuitive buttons along the top of the map are the unintuitive ones. "Find Location" is the most immediate thing for you to know The coloured bars are "drill down" and will summon up elevation and datasource and date and such if you click on contour lines or on contour-points (little x's), and whether it's icefield or swamp or water etc. Most of the other buttons should be fairly obvious; of the two tools at right one measures area and one measures distance; the result is a string of data points in one of two formats; the finer the scale you'll get down to seconds of latlong, from about 1:80,000 up it's minutes only.

Bivouac has a parser for these data compilations into their data format, but it seems easier enough to do (can't remember if the parser is public; think it's on an editors-only page).
 * In the LDRWC there's way more layers of information and you have to play with the folders at right to find your way around but for your purposes just use Basemap and the "find location" when you get lost.

And so it's not just all names on a map or dataset, check out some images from the area:http://www.cayoosh.net which is my own site (gotta get a proper Userpage written sooner or later).Skookum1 07:33, 24 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm honestly very lost. What is it exactly you want me to do? -- Earl Andrew - talk 02:36, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm still kinda lost. Anyways, please fogive me, but I am boggled down with school work, and will be for the next week. I would be happy to make some maps afterwards though (December 3 and on). do you have MSN or AIM? I could talk to you over that, it will make things easier.

Using Basemap - pointers
You'll also notice when you move the mouse around the map you get the precise latitude and longitude; when you click on it with the information tool on you get the precise latlong; depends on how far you in on the scale setting how precise it will be. If you have the plus-sign tool on you can click and drag an area, which is the quickest way to zoom in when you know when you're going (rather than do one enlarge-click after another and have to wait for it to reload each time; the alternative is at the bottom left, where you can type in the scale you want and go there right away instead of waiting through successive clickings; fine-grain contours start at 1:79,999 and go down from there ("larger"); that rate's slightly different on the LDRWC. But for map-drawing you'll need smaller-scale maps than that; in the 1:2,500,000 range somewhere I think to cover all of Coast Chilcotin (it's vast and has squiggly boundaries because of the terrain).

Digital map data Other than Basemap
There are other digital things I have around that are public domain, though; I'll look up the links and get back to you later. Some are hillshadow maps, with contours shown by light only, and there's the DEMS digital-point sets which you can download from some federal site somewhere; you need a map-renderer to translate them into points; one guy in the prominence theory online community developed a program called WinProm that interpolates TRIM data or DEMS into contour maps or whatever you want to do; essentially three-dimensional model of the topography. The hillshades will make cool foundations for maps; I tried "painting" them but I got no good map colouring skills (like, which end of the crayon is the sharp one,'n stuff) and the results weren't good. So since you've already familiar with Wiki standards if you're willing to do it, all the better. I tried putting maps on Chichagof Island, Baranof Island, Queen Charlotte Islands and Alaska Panhandle and maybe one or two others, using something I found in WikiCommons, but they're not very good; I'd like to do some for the coastal iceaps from BC on up, but the it's been Basemap I've been trying to use. I guess should have been looking at the hillshade stuff, but again I can't digitally-draw very well, and I don't have a good sense of illustrative colour, although of course I know where things are and where the placenames should go; just not how to make them look pleasing. I know what maps are needed, and what should be on them; I just can't draw them well.

About the Prominence Data Sets
The thing I worked on at Bivouac involved the plotting of the prominence relationships of all mountains and their "key saddles" or "cols" with more than 300m of prominence. What cols are is the highest of all the ridge-lines ("lines of prominence") leading to the next-higher peak, which in Bivouac's terminology is a line parent; I can't remember the term used by the American groups (Peakbagger and ) who first developed prominence as a pasttime and form a semis-cientific research community; Bivouac by comparison is a climbing and outdoors community with a lot of people with geographic interest and map-use ability and not a few programmers. The U.S. sites also contain data, and links to other sites, giving prominence data for Europe, Asia, and so on and further discussions on prominence stuff; their key thing is access at least to topographic maps and elevation data, whether visual or digital There are lots of other mountain and outdoors sites but none are so extensive or thorough as Bivouac, Peakbagger and Prominence.org in plotting comprehensive indexes of North American (incl. Mexican) summits and their key passes, higher mountains, regional relationships, and other completely useless but also fascinating detail.

Utility of DEMS and TRIM data?
Well, not completely useless, which is why I brought it up. Unlike the DEMS data, which is more detailed - but because it is so, it is also difficult to process rapid, complex large-scale calculations such as Bivouac functions on; so Bivouac needs a less fine-grain but also focussed interpretation of the landform. As a result, an obscure and impossibly large calculation of the algorithm giving the shape of the North American continent's surface against sea level, i.e. the volume of the continent, would be theoretically possible, at least on a much more easily calculations-needed rate than for the totality of DEMS data; and the topographically-plotted prominence data extends into areas not covered by DEMS anyway. Useful? I dunno; seems like it might be; precise measurements of mass, coastline, and so on; maybe even being able to measure it in real time using satellite interfeeds (GPS conversion is already in place on all sites mentioned). Pretty esoteric but the data set is there; if some earnest Wikipedia cartographer with digital skills wants to take a stab at writing a Wiki map-renderer using DEMS or TRIM, I'm sure the guys at prominence.org or peakbagger would help you with the data (I don't have the TRIM stuff they do; only the Basemap stuff and a few other sites I haven't played much with yet).


 * In the building of Bivouac's main infrastructure dataset - coastlines, rivers, we compiled 1km-point mapped the coastline, including that crazy strip along BC and Alaska (see British Columbia Coast, which I created - and oh, yeah, does it need maps because of all the placenames - many of which are needed to illustrate article as there's history or industry or First Nations locations attached to them]] - we plotted everything out at 1km-apart latlongs clicked from Basemap or Topozone displays, or a variety of other digital maps available for purchase that they own. The Bivouac guy wants eventually to flesh things out to a 200m data set; there's already a 10k data set, and 100k data set (k=km in bivouac-ese); but the length of work to do just the 1km data set - which still needs up to a man-year of editing and the dataset resulting is more something of the detail needed for Googleplex-y stuff than for seat-of-the-pants geobase programming....but I digress (Ever heard of a book called The Phantom Tollbooth, or its Demon of Useless Tasks)?

Other than the hillshade and DEMS stuff I think I've got some other digital data here of some kind, but can't remember what. As with all of the above it's probably best if we correspond by email so you can receive rough mapimages and digital data from me directly; I'll post some linked stuff here but if you want to email use the email link at http://www.cayoosh.net and replace the _at_ appropriately.Skookum1 06:42, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Bivouac is also a growing index of towns and placenames, although that is not its primary purpose.

Vancouver
sorry, that was not based on anything in particular. I just saw an anonymous edit that didn't look completely legitimate, and I changed it. You seem to know more about Vancouver than I do, so I will defer to you. Thanks, and see you around the wiki, :-)  --Alhutch 22:52, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Lillooet
Thanks for cleaning up the article. Although I don't have a specific interest in that article, I do have an interest in Canadian geographical articles in general; I've edited almost every one at some point in time, ususally to add a stub notice, a category, a cleanup tag, or to do the cleanup myself.

So long as the article flows well, is wikified, and isn't an amorphous blob (as this one was when I tagged it), I'd consider it "clean". It should also respect Wikipedia's Manual of Style. I've made a few minor changes to the article, and removed the tag. By the way: excellent work! Mindmatrix 15:44, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Colour codewords for obsolete political parties?
Hi Skookum, Sorry for not answering sooner, but life has been interfering with Wikipedia in the last couple of days. I don't know much about templates and colours to used in them. I have vague memories of some discussion taking place in Canadian wikipedians' notice board in the past. However, the best place to bring up the question about defunct party colours is in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Electoral districts in Canada. The people designed the templates and colours mostly participate there. Luigizanasi 17:17, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Electoral districts in Canada
Thank you for participating in this Wikiproject. I have read your comments on the project. In the future please place your comments on the subpages linked on that mainpage, such as WikiProject Electoral districts in Canada/Election results and WikiProject Electoral districts in Canada/Demographics. Right now the project is still at a designing phase wherein a prototype article is being designed. I am using Langley (electoral district) and a few (random) others to experiment. Please use the resources available at the Wikiproject and design a prototype article yourself. I would like to know how you envision a page to look like. --maclean25 04:50, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Skookum, you've made a great start. I took a look at Yale (provincial electoral district) and made various edits. Most of the edits related to fixing the links. NDP and CCF do not get you very close to British Columbia New Democratic Party. I'd recommend using the latter. Conservative Party of Canada is not the correct link for the British Columbia Conservative Party. The general election article titles following the format "British Columbia general election, yyyy" whre "yyyy" is the year. If you use ===sub-title=== for a section heading, Wikipedia automatically generates a tables of contents. this is a bit of a problem where you've put the election sub-heading in a table for some of the elections, which then don't appear in the table of contents. I have suggested using sub-heading instead to avoid this. And one last thing, the Wikipedia style is to capitalize only the first word of of a sub-heading in an article (same for article names) unless the words are proper nouns, e.g., ==See also==, not ==See Also==. Similarly, the usual style is to write "general election", not "General Election". Keep up the great work. Ground Zero | t 04:02, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Will study the above when I can focus on it, but also wanted to ask you to please drop by the Talk page at Comox; I'm not sure how to approach the disambig thing. Should I just do what was done for Nanaimo - where the city gets the main page and there's a blurb/link to other Nanaimos (I added the second blurb/link electoral district thing there and, um, created an intermediary unofficial disambig page - since there's so many of them); but on the case of Comox is goes to the people/language; I guess a straightforward disambig link could go there to all possible Comoxes (Comox is actually a very nice place) disambig page. It used to be like that with Lillooet, but since there was a St'at'imc article already I directed native-culture stuff over that way, other than via the Lillooet Tribal Council which appears on the main Lillooet disambig page; true enough that in Nanaimo's case the Sneneymux have never called themselves the Nanaimo people; Nanaimo is purely an anglicization, like Kitsilano (Q'ahtsahlahno, "August Jack" if you're talking about the guy). What I'm looking for is some kind of logic on this, if there needs to be. Some names it's obvious (Kitsilano, if spelled that way) but in the case of Comox it's not; the word has both meanings, and familiarly so. Same situation with Lillooet or Tshilhqot'in/Chilcotin and I know I'll run intop it again; BC has a linguistic alter ego and it's a sensitive issue to do right, IMO. What that is I'm not sure.

Comox is an electoral-district issue as to what to do with multiple ridings with the same word/name in it; when there's an existing page about something else entirely; and then there's the town page, which is equally important as also having a Canadian Forces air base. Recently I got my hands spanked (lightly) for turning something into a disambig because it screws up editors archives and monitoring; so I'm not sure what to do when I run into a "listing" problem. I know there's a procedure for this kind of thing? i.e. coming up with a standard strategy?

Are you also the kind of Wikian who can address the "historical provincial electoral districts" thing I've been onto; don't know if you'd see my notes; basic idea is to designate them as a subcategory of "British Columbia provincial electoral districts" (category) so there's no confusion when people are hunting around for their own/current.

And speaking of categories, is it possible to put categories on Talk pages?? What I'm wondering is if we had a way of linking a given riding's talk page to a "category" that was a bulletin board of current editing and questions relating to the site the talk page is attached to; so there's a common "category" page where the 15 or so people (so far) working on the electoral districts thing can come looking for comment or input or help/questions. I've left notes on talk pages attached to ridings or disambigs here and there because it was stuff that related to why whatever was on the front page; some of them are just plain "well, I did the best that I could, hope that's OK".

Whatever; I gotta go to bed. Got Victoria City (provincial) started but I gotta get up at 5:15 (it's 11:00pm)Skookum1 06:26, 30 November 2005 (UTC)


 * There's a lot here, and i don't have much time, but here's an idea on the Comox thing: make Comox solely a disambiguation page that lists articles with Comox in the title, e.g., "Comox can refer to the following articles:
 * Comox (people)
 * Comox (language)
 * Comox (federal electoral district)
 * Comox South (provincial electoral district)
 * Comox North (provincial electoral district)"
 * with each one linked. You could also put a short description after the title if the title is not self explanatory, e.g, "Comox—Courtenay, a former federal electoral district."
 * If you look at the Category:Canadian electoral districts, you'll see that the federal districts, at least, are broken down by province. In each provincial category, there is a sub-category called, e.g., Category:Defunct British Columbia federal electoral districts, so I think it would make sense for there also to be a Category:Defunct British Columbia provincial electoral districts. More later, Ground Zero | t 14:09, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Comox
Yeah, almost all Wikipedia articles about ethnic groups either have an "s" at the end of it (such as Frisians) or have the word "people" in it without the parentheses, such as Irish people, Welsh people, French people, Japanese people, Tibetan people, etc. I have noticed, however, that most articles about Native American tribes don't have the word "people" in it at all, and just state the name, such as in Mohave, Miwok, and Paiute. If there is more than one common meaning, then it will ususally have "(tribe)" at the end. But I think what we have now for the Comox is fine. --Hottentot 02:20, 1 December 2005 (UTC)


 * "tribe" is a loaded word in Canada so why shy away from it when trying to be 'proper'. Comox was one instance where the people/tribe name was the same as that of a community, a valley and several electoral districts; it happens from time to time here in BC, where native placenames are common.  The original Lillooet page only referenced the St'at'imc people; it is now a disambig and the people are at St'at'imc, which is the whole cultural group; the main political group (a bit different) is the Lillooet Tribal Council and so on.  I think this was the only usage I'd done of (people); if I come across any others I'll bring them into line; usually with First Nations (aka Native Americans, although to us up here that only refers to tribes withing the US) they're name-only; but there are exceptions; Comox was one.  BTW somewhere in Wikiworld I saw a more linguistically-derived spelling komox with accents/diacriticals; can't find the page again.  Sound familiar?  (no, not the IPA); it's a nominal point anyway as the word comes from the Chinook Jargon, not the Comox Language; the name Comox was given to them by their enslavers, the Laich-kwil-tach (Euclataws) at Campbell River, who labelled them "dogs" in the Chinook Jargon; nearly all Island Comox families have more immediate connection to Kwak'wala rather than the Comox language, which is now restricted to the mainland (Sliammon and Homalhko, aka the Mainland Comox)  peoples/dialects.  The linguistic maps continue to show the Campbell River-to-Comox strip of the Island as Comox (or, if they show it, Pentlatch, but it has been culturally Kwakiutlan since the days of the Colony.  (similarly such maps still show the Stuwix, the Nicola Athapaskans, but they were wiped out and/or assimilated into the Nicola confederacy of Sce'emx (Nicola Thompson) and Syilx (Okanagan).


 * Ideally the stand-alone names should refer to the language, but there's always been a blur here between the political hierarchies/organizations and the linguistic groups; even before Contact. Even when classifying BC First Nations the tendency is to do so by lingustic group, but this is not always the case; not all the "Aht" peoples (the Wakashans of the West Coast of Vancouver Island) are in the Nuu-chah-nulth Nation, for instance; the Kwak'wala speaking peoples have three main political (and not exactly politically friendly) entities, the Kwagyuilh Northern Kwakiutl at Fort Rupert, the Kwakawka'wakw of the rest of the Queen Charlotte Strait (Curtis' subjects in the filmFrom the Land of the Headhunters), and the Southern Kwakiutl of the northern Georgia Strait and Johnstone Strait.  The Southern Kwakiutl, known to history as the Euclataws and to themselves as the Laich-kwil-tach, were invaders in the region, which was originally entirely Comox.  The Comox were submerged beneath their Euclataws masters, and ultimately absorbed - although some Campbell River families, of the Weywaikum group of the Laich-kwil-tach, maintain knowledge of their Comox heritage and language.  I'm not sure about around the town of Comox (just wrote up a column on a local legend about the people of that area; see Forbidden Plateau); from what I remember only the Sliammon and Homalhko are Comox in culture and language, and have been Kwakiutl-ized since their conquest.


 * Don't quote me on that - and I wouldn't put it in an article until I get the details right and the proper cites; I'm sure the story is in Chiefly Feasts, which is cited on the Laich-kwil-tach page; there's a class distinction between the Weiwaikai (Cape Mudge Band) and the Weywakum, who are on the big reserve in the town of Campbell; the Cape Mudge Band are the chiefly and high-ranking lineages, although there are some chiefly families among the Weywakum but the Cape Mudge chiefs were the highest-ranking of the invaders and were powerful among the Queen Charlotte Strait people when they lived there; the Weiwaikai have a legacy of prestige that's part of the legacy from the potlatch culture. Supposedly they didn't get along well with their neighbours and, knowing the Comox to be peaceable and vulnerable, swept east through the Johnstone Strait and came down upon the Comox, vanquishing them overnight.  For the next century they terrorized the peoples of the Georgia Strait, Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the Fraser River.  They also raided north to attack even the Tlingit and the Haida, and were considered in the fur trade era and colonial times as among the most warlike on the coast.  By the mid-19th Century, however, they were being raided by others, notably the Squamish (who had also expanded out of the head of Howe Sound to push the Musqueam out of Burrard Inlet, and were themselves adventurers outbound from the Shishalh Nation centuries ago.


 * The Kwagyuilh of Fort Rupert and thereabouts are their ancient kin and maintain political and some family and cultural ties, and that link is the reason that the Kwagyuilh did not join up with the Kwakawka'wakw when that group was formed, or rather renamed itself (Central Kwakiutl Council of something it used to be). Today's political divisions reflect the ancient division of the Kwakiutl; the reason the Kwakawka'wakw took the name - which means speakers of Kwak'wala - is because it was the same as that of the Kwagyuilh and they felt it didn't refer to them (much in the same way Nootka was used for all the Nuu-chah-nulth peoples, and not just those of Nootka Sound; they were also mutually hostile, for the most part).  The Southern Kwakiutl insisted on being grouped separately, even during the bad old days of the Indian Act, and their identity is distinct from the Queen Charlotte Kwak'wala-speakers; and similarly though far smaller in population and at the far end of the Kwakawka'wakw region the Kwagyuilh sought their own independence.


 * Complicating things further is the longtime mislabelling of the Haisla, Heiltsuk, Owekeeno and others as "Northern Kwakiutl"; their language is Oweekyala (sp?) or variants thereof; so the tribe/placename Kwagyuilh got transposed by non-native misuse, far to the north (Terrace and Kitimat), as well as into the Georgia Strait. Northern Kwakiutl was always a misnomer; perhaps a govt/anthropological attempt to simplify the linguistic and political map; to try and create a few administrative groups only; not in recognition of the longtime independence of each community.  This is common elsewhere; in the St'at'imc culture area there are three separate political entities, and the largest, the Lillooet Tribal Council, is really an amalgam of eight fairly large reserves that constitute themselves each as a "Nation" (-umicw; -ullh is "people" - umicw is the same particle/meaning as the 'imc on the end of St'at'imc or the -emc on Secwepemc; -mux on Nlaka'pamux etc).  The other two main groups are a single-reserve First Nation (N'quatqua) and a group of three tiny, remote villages, pop. 600 total max, with the brave name In-SHUCK-ch Nation; and each of their units is a First Nation as well.  Complicating things is that the outermost reserves of the culture-area of the St'at'imc have parallel affiliations with the neighbouring Tribal Councils of the Shuswap Nation and the Sto:lo; the offices of the In-SHUCK-ch Port Douglas Band are firmly in Sto:lo country, the town of Mission - rather than in Mount Currie, the nearest St'at'imc centre, but which is part of the Lillooet Tribal Council that the In-SHUCK-ch and N'quatqua broke away from (to get a better deal with the govt, ie. no Tribal Council middleman).  Similarly the Pavilion/Tskway'laxw Band, though part of the LTC, maintain equal relationships to the Secwepemc (Shuswap) whose communities neighbour to the east and up the Fraser River from there; and their dialect of St'at'imcets (the language, which is why there doesn't have to be a St'at'imc language page; although now that I think about it a St'at'imc language redirect page makes a lot of sense, given how people will look for it, if they know the spelling, that is; Lillooet language already redirects to St'at'imcets).


 * All of this by way of example why political units don't correspond to linguistic units (as such they are around here, with dialects changing every twenty miles even within languages; which is why Halkomelem has about six forms)


 * Sorry for the long digression; I know the stuff and would put it in an article if I knew where I read the stuff; I've read so much over the years it's hard to keep track of...and from your user/talk page it's obvious you're interested in native culture/history. Skookum1 03:29, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I think the place where you saw Comox with accents was on Salishan languages where it was spelled Q’ómox̣ʷs. It's nice to find someone who has similar interests as I. Presently, I've been reading about the Alsea people of Oregon. The problem is, I'm not a very good writer, so I can't really add that much text to that article. I found it interesting about how you said that the Comox were losing their culture and language, but it appears that there are about 400 speakers of Comox today. What do you think happened? --Hottentot 05:29, 1 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Those would be the Mainland Comox - Powell River area, maybe some on Lasqueti and Texada Islands, and up Jervis, Toba and Bute Inlets and the waters and islands in between (other than what's closer to Vancouver Island, which is Laich-kwil-tach/Southern Kwakiutl. Maybe there's some in the Comox-Courtenay area, but it's so metropolitanized around there I doubt you'd have holdout.  By contrast the communities at the heads of the inlets, or in rural areas around Powell River, have the isolation that helps preserve culture and tradition.  Don't know what the rate of juvenile tranmission is, but with that many native speakers I'd speculate that they've been fairly succesful there; again, educating children in a language is easier in isolation and they certainly have it up there.  I'd imagine the bulk of those 400 speakers are Sliammon, but that's contingent upon the source you're mentioning not citing Sliammon as a separate language.


 * But I really don't know exactly if there are any Comox speakers on Vancouver Island or not; I think I might find out by digging through Census Canada; ethnologue's no help because it doesn't distinguish which Comoxes it's talking about.


 * About the other spelling - no, it was a K-spelling I saw; on some list of something somewhere, but not a "List of ...(something)". Doesn't really matter; if it shows up it can always be made into a redirect.Skookum1 06:54, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject Electoral districts in Canada/Prototype
Thank you for participating in the WikiProject on Electoral districts in Canada. As you know there will be an election soon. So this may be the best time for the Canadian Wikipedia community to band together and write these articles on current federal electoral districts. Based on your comments, and the comments of others, I have put together a prototype layout at the above link. The prototype is not a final proposal. It is just a place to start from, where we can discuss and experiment. Please review it, comment but keep an open mind, and help form a concensus. --maclean25 01:05, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Sample Electoral Table changes

 * Independent
 * Herbert ANSCOMB 
 * align="right"|5,767 	
 * align="right"|8.83%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Unionist Party of BC
 * James Sutherland Brown
 * align="right"|1,312
 * align="right"|2.01%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * CCF
 * William Baxter Caird
 * align="right"|2,528
 * align="right"|3.87%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Independent Conservative
 * Robert Cassidy
 * align="right"|323
 * align="right"|0.49%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Liberal
 * Joseph Badenoch Clearihue
 * align="right"|5,551
 * align="right"|8.50%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * CCF
 * Robert CONNELL 
 * align="right"|5,607 		
 * align="right"|8.58%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown


 * Unionist Party of BC
 * Frederick James Crowhurst
 * align="right"|594
 * align="right"|0.91%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Independents
 * Clem Davies
 * align="right"|5,259
 * align="right"|8.05%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown


 * Unionist Party of BC
 * Herbert Tom Goodland
 * align="right"|910
 * align="right"|1.39%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Liberal
 * John HART 
 * align="right"|6,133 	
 * align="right"|9.39%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Conservative
 * Reginald Hayward
 * align="right"|3,812
 * align="right"|5.84%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Liberal
 * Byron Ingemar JOHNSON
 * align="right"|7,774 	
 * align="right"|11.85%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Liberal
 * William Hamilton Kinsman
 * align="right"|4,962
 * align="right"|7.60%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown

!align="right" colspan=3|Total valid votes !align="right"|65,316 !align="right"|100.00% !align="right"| !align="right" colspan=3|Total rejected ballots !align="right"|185 !align="right"| !align="right"| !align="right" colspan=3|Turnout !align="right"|% !align="right"| !align="right"| Numerically ordered, no caps/bold:
 * Independent
 * Andrew McGavin
 * align="right"|1,054
 * align="right"|1.61%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Independent
 * Agnes Helen Mason
 * align="right"|107
 * align="right"|0.16%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * CCF
 * Victor Rainsford Midgley
 * align="right"|2,892
 * align="right"|4.43%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * United Front (Workers and Farmers) Party
 * Thomas Moir
 * align="right"|95
 * align="right"|0.15%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Independent Conservative
 * William Charles Moresby
 * align="right"|2,796
 * align="right"|4.28%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Independent
 * Christopher Rowland North
 * align="right"|412
 * align="right"|0.63%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Labour Party
 * John Harry Owen
 * align="right"|503
 * align="right"|0.77%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * CCF
 * Thomas Guy Sheppard
 * align="right"|4,111
 * align="right"|6.29%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Independent
 * Patrick John Paterson Sinnott
 * align="right"|1,557
 * align="right"|2.38%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Independent
 * Robert Taylor Williams
 * align="right"|1,257
 * align="right"|1.92%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * - bgcolor="white"
 * - bgcolor="white"
 * - bgcolor="white"
 * }


 * Liberal
 * Byron Ingemar Johnson 
 * align="right"|7,774 	
 * align="right"|11.85%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Liberal
 * John Hart 
 * align="right"|6,133 	
 * align="right"|9.39%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Independent
 * Herbert Anscomb 
 * align="right"|5,767
 * align="right"|8.83%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * CCF
 * Robert Connell 
 * align="right"|5,607 		
 * align="right"|8.58%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Liberal
 * Joseph Badenoch Clearihue
 * align="right"|5,551
 * align="right"|8.50%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Independents
 * Clem Davies
 * align="right"|5,259
 * align="right"|8.05%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Liberal
 * William Hamilton Kinsman
 * align="right"|4,962
 * align="right"|7.60%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * CCF
 * Thomas Guy Sheppard
 * align="right"|4,111
 * align="right"|6.29%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Conservative
 * Reginald Hayward
 * align="right"|3,812
 * align="right"|5.84%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * CCF
 * Victor Rainsford Midgley
 * align="right"|2,892
 * align="right"|4.43%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Independent Conservative
 * William Charles Moresby
 * align="right"|2,796
 * align="right"|4.28%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * CCF
 * William Baxter Caird
 * align="right"|2,528
 * align="right"|3.87%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Independent
 * Patrick John Paterson Sinnott
 * align="right"|1,557
 * align="right"|2.38%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Unionist Party of BC
 * James Sutherland Brown
 * align="right"|1,312
 * align="right"|2.01%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Independent
 * Robert Taylor Williams
 * align="right"|1,257
 * align="right"|1.92%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown


 * Independent
 * Andrew McGavin
 * align="right"|1,054
 * align="right"|1.61%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown


 * Unionist Party of BC
 * Herbert Tom Goodland
 * align="right"|910
 * align="right"|1.39%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown

!align="right" colspan=3|Total valid votes !align="right"|65,316 !align="right"|100.00% !align="right"| !align="right" colspan=3|Total rejected ballots !align="right"|185 !align="right"| !align="right"| !align="right" colspan=3|Turnout !align="right"|% !align="right"| !align="right"|
 * Unionist Party of BC
 * Frederick James Crowhurst
 * align="right"|594
 * align="right"|0.91%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Labour Party
 * John Harry Owen
 * align="right"|503
 * align="right"|0.77%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Independent
 * Christopher Rowland North
 * align="right"|412
 * align="right"|0.63%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Independent Conservative
 * Robert Cassidy
 * align="right"|323
 * align="right"|0.49%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * Independent
 * Agnes Helen Mason
 * align="right"|107
 * align="right"|0.16%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * United Front (Workers and Farmers) Party
 * Thomas Moir
 * align="right"|95
 * align="right"|0.15%
 * align="right"|
 * align="right"|unknown
 * - bgcolor="white"
 * - bgcolor="white"
 * - bgcolor="white"
 * }

BC Source
What are the sources you are using for the BC electoral district pages? Specifically, I am looking for pre-1991 results for Peace River South, and its predecessor riding in northeast BC, whatever-that-is. --maclean25 02:41, 4 December 2005 (UTC)


 * http://www.elections.bc.ca/elections/electoral_history/toc.html Unfortunately they don't have maps or descriptions; those are all in the BC Archives and not on-line but hard copy can be ordered (for a small fee).  I emailed BC elections and the reply I got included the following links FYI (indented is her reply):


 * We do have the current graphical ED boundaries on our website in Adobe format at: http://www.elections.bc.ca/map/maps.htm.


 * The textual boundary descriptions are listed in the Boundary commission report at: http://www.elections.bc.ca/rpt/1999ebcommrpt.pdf


 * Any historical information is kept with BC Archives. The oldest maps that we have is kept on our website and is from the 1991 election - see  http://www.elections.bc.ca/map/map.html  These are available in a TIFF or Adobe format.


 * As for what came before, it was Peace River (provincial electoral district); that doesn't exist yet SFAIK as I type this, but I'm pretty sure there's a federal district so I put provincial in the title; if there's not it won't need it. Waitaminit just checked and there's a  Peace River (provincial electoral district) in Alberta, so it'll have to be Peace River (British Columbia electoral district).Mackenzie's in the same area - between the Peace and PG.Skookum1


 * PS by the way I looked back as far as 66 or 72 and there was a Peace River then; long ago it was part of Cariboo or Omineca (as if there were two eligible voters in that whole vast region) when there were only twelve ridings; there may have been a Fort St. John riding, I think, from what I remember by scanning the elections over and over again. I'm intending on writing some history/analysis on certain elections, like those big crazy post-Great War and Depression-era ones in Victoria City.  There's juicy scandals associated with many of them, also, but it'll take time to condense the dirt for public viewing, including the whole superfinagle over the withdrawal of the preferential ballot by Order-in-Council by WAC Bennett in 53-54 (he may have used the Legislature, actually; or did so after-the-fact of the Order - one of the two); it had been voted in by referendum and then done away by Act of Premier (OK, technically the Crown, but...).  Did you see my template for Preferential Ballots, BTW?  Have to do a custom one for that one poll analysis in '52.   02:49, 4 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Looks like Elections BC calls it Peace River South between 1991-2005, South Peace River 1956-1991, and Peace River 1xxx-1956. Makes sense, they built a highway and railroad through the Rockies to connect the area with the rest of BC in the 1950s. I guess the question is: are Peace River South and South Peace River really the same district? I think they are the same for geographic reasons; namely, I cannot think of how the borders would differ. Currently the Peace River South borders are Alberta, the Peace River, and the Rocky Mountains. How could South Peace River differ?
 * Depends on when it existed; conceivably it might have included towns on the north side of the Peace R, i.e. right on its banks; or to the SW it might have taken in Mackenzie at some point; I don't know. Typically when a riding name resurfaces-but-different there's a good reason for it; I've been careful to use the old riding names as such whenever possible; one exception is the groupings of "Kootenay West (south riding)", which someone else had put into Wikipedia as "West Kootenay South" (never a legal riding name) and a few other similar ones in that area.  What was the one I was doing the other day?  I think if you look at New Westminster (electoral districts), which is a semi-disambig page for e.d.'s only, there's one riding that disappears for a few decades; then when it's reconstituted it currently links to the same stub-page; conceivably they're very different ridings; similarly Lillooet was carved in Lillooet West and Lillooet East for three elections (1894-98-00 or 1898-00-03 and then Lillooet West was given 'back' the old Lillooet riding name; but it wasn't the same riding.  The original Comox riding went all the way to the Yukon border.  Voters, what voters?  At other times the riding's boundaries change only negligibly but the name is given an impressive new "look", e.g. Kelowna and the Lake Country.  The Lake Country?  What is this, Cumberland UK?  They're referring to Kalamalka Lake and the upper Shuswap River basin east of Enderby; used to be just 'Kelowna' or 'Okanagan North' maybe, can't remember.  Just because of Wiki's link-interface it's just easier to zero things back in on the same names, provided that there's an explanation/description (or one pending).  I think you might have seen my suggestions that we put subsection headers in advance of each election result-table; part of the reason for this is not just indexing but so that comments on individual elections/candidates, if needed, can be inserted just before or just after the appropriate table.Skookum1 22:36, 4 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Concerning the Preferential Ballots, I suggest ordering the candidates by votes received (opposed to alphabetical by surname), keeping all names with standard lower-case form, removing expeditures (they won't be available before 1980s - might have them for 1980s if we're lucky), re-consider the +- column since each party is running several candidates and other only one. As for indicating the winners...


 * Problem is that the order by votes received changes on each count; who's first on the first ain't necessarily going to finish first on the final count. Also in much of historical/defunct BC ridings the percentage-change thing isn't all that applicable unless it's the individual candidate, rather than the party; even well known Tories and Grits would occasionally run as Independent Liberal or Independent Conservative or something else altogether; I've even seen a CCFer go "Independent CCF".  And with parties shifting and changing and merging and splitting - the Coalition subject again - how do you decide which votes are a percentage change from which other votes?  Especially in multiple-seat ridings like Victoria City (provincial electoral district).  Sure it's clear cut where there's only four candidates and as many parties; but when there's multiple from each party the percentage thing cannot be calculated anyway.Skookum1 22:36, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

go with what you feel is best, try experimenting with the bolding and asterik notation. But don't be surprised if someone comes along and changes them. Check for international examples (I believe Germany uses a system similar to this). If you really want a definitive answer, create some alternatives, and start a survey of individual editors and post it on Canadian wikipedians' notice board and let them vote or reach a concensus. --maclean25 04:22, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I had a look around at Germany and Eire and Oz and NZ but couldn't find any election tables; so I improvised. The Election Templates page is entirely geared around the UK, - FPTP only.Skookum1 22:36, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Moved from article talk page
(We're not supposed to use article talk pages to discuss hings not directly related to the article, so I'm moving the discussion here.)

Party colours: the policy for the colour of Sir John A.'s party has been to use the same colour regardless of what name it used since it was the same legal entity from 1867 to 2003. It changed name often, and sometimes its candidates used different names in the same elections. This includes:
 * Conservative Party of Canada (historical)
 * Liberal-Conservative Party
 * Unionist Party of Canada (running as "Government" candidates in the 1917 election)
 * National Government candidates in the 1940 election, and
 * Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.

When the PC Party dissolved itself to form the Conservative Party of Canada, the legal entity ceased to exist, and so a different colour is used for the new party. Ground Zero | t 21:55, 15 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I was going by the markings as in the Elections Canada website; have never seen a Liberal-Conservative Party marking/template before, and also in BC "Government" is an existing norm in provincial elections, at least until 1903; what is "Opposition" in 1917, then? Unionist in BC provincial politics means something slightly different; and Liberal-Conservative even moreso; and I noticed that you've got Conservative Party of Canada (historical) and I hadn't seen that before; what's the difference? Other than to PC I mean.


 * Had to figure out where the data conflict was when I tried to add in 1952-1965. In general it might be a good idea to wait until I'm finished with a riding's data before updating, because I may be working on it while you're doing corrections.Skookum1 22:23, 15 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Oops. Now I've gone and done it again. I hope you didn't get an edit conflict. I'll hold off on further changes. Take a look at the Conservative Party of Canada (historical) article. It should explain it. Basically, Sir John A.'s party was the Liberal-Conservative Party, although many of its candidates/MPs called themselves "Conservatives" to avoid confusion with their opponents, the Liberals. So it was very different from the BC Liberal-Conservative Coalition, which was the two parties working together.


 * Just a clarification: it's a common misconception that the Coalition was "two parties working together". That really only extended to the hustings, not the caucus, which was rancorous and divided and as you may know only lasted two elections (1945 and 1949); and not all members of the respective parties joined the Coalition, and ran as Independent Liberals or Independent Conservatives or something else; this is why the Coalition needs its own article, which I haven't mustered the energy to write yet (need more details first); it marks a special period in BC history and is tantamount to a special party, not a mere electoral alliance.  They couldn't get along so much that they wound up parting company before the '52 election, thinking they were smart to bring in the preferential ballot as a safeguard against the CCF; this backfired, with second-choice votes from their parties and the CCF going to the until-then-nowhere Social Credit.....Skookum1 00:39, 16 December 2005 (UTC)


 * At some point, the federal party dropped the "Liberal-" tag, and became just the Conservative Party of Canada (to which we apend "historical" to differentiate it from Harper's party of the same name).
 * During World War I, Borden formed a government of national unity to fight the war. Many Liberals joined, and he renamed the party the "Unionist Party". They ran in the 1917 election as "Government" candidates, while the Liberals who remained loyal to Sir Wilfrid Laurier did not join the government and called themselves Laurier Liberals. They ran as "Opposition" candidates. I think the Government/Opposition labels were used to reduce partisanship during the war-time election, although I understand that it was a very bitter election. After the election, Borden tried to hold onto the Liberals who had joined him, and renamed the party the "National Liberal and Conservative Party", but this name was dropped later as well.


 * From what I came across in the Elections BC site, the Unionists in BC were disgruntled Conservatives; no mention was made of Borden but I suppose that's part of the national formula that doesn't get into the language of the Elections BC context (provincial politics in BC being a very different beastie from federal politics). In an older era, although irrelevant on the hustings in 1917, "Unionist" meant annexationist, i.e. Union between BC and the US; this never was used as a party name but in small-u unionist mentions in editorials.  You'd think the term would refer to labour unions, but nope, nothing's that straightforward; same with "Progressives" who were often anything but; and "Reform" which sounds like a left-radical party but was a co-option of the term for the right-wing.Skookum1 00:42, 16 December 2005 (UTC)


 * At the beginning of World War II, the opposition Conservatives were urging the governing Liberals to form another government of national unity, which Mackenzie King refused to do. The Conservatives pursued this idea in the 1940 election by campaigning as candidates of the "National Government". Of course, the Conservative Party at the tiem was neither national nor the government.
 * In 1943, Robert Manion, Progressive Party premier of Manitoba, agreed to run for the leadership of the Conservative Party only if the party changed its name to the Progressive Conservative Party. The federal Progressive Party had pretty much disappeared into the Liberal Party of Canada at that point. So there you have. Happy editing. Ground Zero | t 22:52, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Edit summaries
You wrote "removed nonsense; posted on Talk page for public ridicule" in this edit summary.

It's best to avoid that kind of remark. Firstly it's not terribly professional, but more importantly it's not in keeping with Wikipedia's civility policy because it ends up creating an antagonistic editing environment&mdash;which does no-one any good. Perhaps it was nonsense, and perhaps it would warrant ridicule somewhere else, but just not here. Thanks! and if you have any questions just ask. &mdash; Saxifrage | &#9742; 23:30, 15 December 2005 (UTC)


 * OK; it's just lately there's been some odd stuff being plunked into the Vancouver article; this was one of a series, albeit not from the same source. "Fuzzy history" is one of my pet bugbears; but that error wasn't just fuzzy, it wasn't downright out of left field.  I'll watch the p's and q's on further edits; it would have been easier just to delete it instead of commenting about it on the Talk page, of course...Skookum1 00:44, 16 December 2005 (UTC)


 * No harm, no foul. Yeah, that kind of stuff can usually be deleted outright and regular editors will understand. Usually it's just a random internet passer-by who doesn't have their facts straight or just wants to see their prank "on a real webpage" and won't dispute the deletion. &mdash; Saxifrage | &#9742; 01:01, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

BC election images
Thank you for consulting me. So from what I gather you wish produce a graphic for the seating of the BC legislatures following the BC elections. From what I can see, there are two ways to do this. Using a picture or using a wiki graph like the ones you see in the legislature page. Using the wikigraphs for current parliaments work because parliaments change. It is easier to change the graph than to upload a new image all of the time. I would suggest using an image like the ones I have used for the Canadian election pages. If you need help with that, let me know.

MS123

Your chart
I have experimented with your chart to see if I could avoid the text-on-colour issue. Text on colour is hard to read for many people. See what you think. Ground Zero | t 22:26, 21 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Yeah, you're right; especially since the Tory/Grit and Gov/Opp colours are close to the link/nonlink colours. The colour column down the centre works for the "division", i.e. the floor of the House; and it's better than having it off to the sides.  What do you think about having more columns?  Cabinet designations, if available.  L-G and Speaker?


 * BTW just did British Columbia general election, 1907 for something to do; I'd heard of this but never seen it before - Richard McBride, then Premier, was simultaneously MLA for Dewdney as well as for Victoria City; went back and annotated the riding entries accordingly.


 * I kind of wish there was a way to semi-automate this; where the combination of the year and the riding would "summon" the entry, but I realize we haven't set this up in a database: I see the list-succession concept but haven't figured out how to apply it here. I'll be doing succession-boxes for ridings, BTW, so there's going to be lists of members of the House; tricky part is the multi-member ridings; have to jerry-rig that somehow.Skookum1 22:43, 21 December 2005 (UTC)


 * The chart is pretty wide already, so I don't think more columns would work well. How about putting the designation in brackets after the party name? See the first line below.
 * Multi-member risings can be dealt with using "rowspan=2" just as you've used "colspan=2" in the template. See Vancouver and Victoria below.
 * I know that it was not uncommon for someone to run in more than one riding, and then quit one if he won more than one seat. It seems extraordinarily weird to think of someone representing two ridings, except that we're talking about British Columbia, so maybe it's not surprising. ;-) Would he have cast two votes in the Legislature?
 * I can't help you with automation. The best I've been able to do is copy things into Notepad and use the "find and replace" function to speed things up a bit. Best of luck. Ground Zero | t 22:51, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

BC elections
Hey, nice to see that I have some work to do! I wasn't sure where to start, however I am not from the Okanagan - dunno where you saw that- but I would be willing to fill in the gaps regardless. I go to the Okanagan each summer and have a few friends up there. As well I could do a lot more research on the area if needs be. Cheers --Omnieiunium 03:08, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Kelowna-Lake Country
You're right -- Kelowna-Lake Country is a redirect to the federal riding article. I see your point about "electoral district" being sufficient, and "provincial electoral district" being unnecessary in this case. Ground Zero | t 21:01, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Gerrymandering
In a few comments you have shown that you know a thing or two about gerrymandering in Canada. So, I would like to draw this article to your attention. A request has been made to have the article peer reviewed at Peer review/Gerrymandering/archive1. There is even a (small) section on Canada: Gerrymandering. --maclean 25 08:30, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Oregon boundary dispute
Hi, just about your comment on requested maps, I have made a couple maps of Oregon Country. ,, and a blank one. Wasnt sure the best way to depict regions as I dont know much about this subject. If you had any suggestions the maps can be changed fairly easily -- Astrokey44 |talk 00:00, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi I saw your map request and the discussion on Oregon boundary dispute - I agree the current map is wrong, will try to tackle making a new one for you in the next week or so. Kmusser 15:52, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:NWCoast1a.png
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Vancouver Island Photo Gallery
What do you think of adding a non-commercial photo gallery to the external links section of Vancouver Island? It seems rather dry and colourless even for an encyclopedia. moosecharmer 00:31, 22 February 2006 (UTC)moosecharmer

Invitation
Hi Skookum, a new project on WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America has been formed. Given your interest in BC First Nations and the subject in general, I thought you might be interested in participating. Luigizanasi 04:50, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Tamano
The Hawaiian word for god is "akua". Personal protective spirits are "aumakua". "Tamano" would be a Kaua'i pronunciation of "kamano", which means "salmon".

It's plausible that a Hawaiian word for salmon might have diffused, but it wouldn't have ended up meaning something entirely different, IMHO. Zora 01:50, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Your posts under "People" in WikiProject Vancouver
I moved them to the discussion page since it was taking up a lot of room on the main WikiProject article. I'd like to keep the main project page as neat as possible, without clogging it up too much. It's long enough as it is. :) Thanks. -- Buchanan-Hermit™ .. CONTRIBS .. SPEAK! . 07:25, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Vancouver and the GVRD
To all WikiProject Vancouver participants: A question has been raised in the WikiProject discussion about whether the entire GVRD should be covered by WP Vancouver. I'd love to hear your input on this on the discussion page because I think it is a possibility despite the amount of workload involved.


 * In some aspects, it necessarily must be; e.g. census figures of any kind - the online ones anyway - are by metropolitan region, not municipality; maybe the CoV has a separate database, I'm not sure. Given that most of the world sees "Vancouver" as meaning the Lower Mainland/GVRD, I think we have to accommodate that rather than obsess over the City of Vancouver's specific boundaries; tricky because of separate articles on various suburbs, but as a whole it has to be taken into account.Skookum1 01:24, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Also, don't forget that there is a Yahoo Group for WP Vancouver if you want to be involved in a possible Vancouver meetup. Thanks. :) -- Buchanan-Hermit™ .. CONTRIBS .. SPEAK! . 21:56, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Signed up; might re-sign in under another ID as I'm wary of using Yahoogroups as they tend to generate spam for displayed addresses.....Skookum1 01:24, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

History of BC
Hi Skookum1! Thanks for your note, and for the dialogue that I'm enjoyed with you on various article talk pages. I've responded to your comments on the United Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia on the talk page there. I think that it may be productive for us, as BC history buffs, to divide our energies so we don't overlap - as well as to pool our energies in certain projects (again, I speak more concerning this on the United Colonies talk page). Right now, I've earmarked Frederick Seymour, Alexander Grant Dallas, Richard Blanshard, Robert Campbell (fur trader), and Anthony Musgrave as existing articles I'd like to improve. I'm also planning to contribute new articles on John McLoughlin, William Fraser Tolmie, and John Work,. I have two long-term projects. First, I'm hoping to revise and extend many of the articles on the premiers of British Columbia. Right now, I'm awaiting permission from the BC Archives to reproduce images of several of them. The only non-copyrighted one I have right now is of John Robson, and I'm hoping to do that article next week. The other project is to complete articles on some of the major rivers, primarily focussing on the north. I'm just waiting until I can find a reliable source on drainages and other statistics before proceeding. You? Fishhead64 21:58, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

History of BC
Hi Skookum1! Thanks for your note, and for the dialogue that I'm enjoyed with you on various article talk pages. I've responded to your comments on the United Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia on the talk page there. I think that it may be productive for us, as BC history buffs, to divide our energies so we don't overlap - as well as to pool our energies in certain projects (again, I speak more concerning this on the United Colonies talk page). Right now, I've earmarked Frederick Seymour, Alexander Grant Dallas, Richard Blanshard, Robert Campbell (fur trader), and [[Anthony Musgrave as existing articles I'd like to improve. I'm also planning to contribute new articles on John McLoughlin, William Fraser Tolmie, and John Work,.  I have two long-term projects.  First, I'm hoping to revise and extend many of the articles on the premiers of British Columbia.  Right now, I'm awaiting permission from the BC Archives to reproduce images of several of them.  The only non-copyrighted one I have right now is of John Robson, and I'm hoping to do that article next week.  The other project is to complete articles on some of the major rivers, primarily focussing on the north.  I'm just waiting until I can find a reliable source on drainages and other statistics before proceeding.  You? Fishhead64 21:58, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

I have a copy of "BC Water Powers", vintage 1950s, which lists all major rivers, their rates of flow, head, all that stuff (my Dad was an engineer with Hydro); might be in the public library where you are (Victoria?). Lengths of rivers you can get from their listings in http://bivouac.com, where they've been digitally "surveyed" with waypoints from their source to whatever confluence or estuary they get to. I plotted in all the names of the coastal inlets and major rivers on British Columbia Coast and got about trying to get all the various tribs of the Fraser, Stikine etc.

I see you like doing the bios; that's good because I find myself too wordy for them (see George Matheson Murray and Margaret Lally "Ma" Murray) and, frankly, there's too many to cope with. Even in the pre-Confederation days the list you've touched on is just a touch; I'll be interested in the W.F. Tolmie one. I've red-linked Ovid Allard (the HBC guy at Yale during the gold rush) and am interested in seeing a lot of the other early francophone characters bio'd; also in French for fr.wikipedia.org; the intriguing ones are guys like "La Malice", who're known mostly by their bad reputation....I'd also imagine you might find bios of Demers, Lejeune, Morice, Durieu, Hills, Lunden-Brown, Turner and other early clerics of interest. Not that I'm trying to off-load work but maybe we should establish a list of needed bios. When I was doing the historical elections returns recently I started a few bio-stubs on guys like John Andrew Mara and Forbes George Vernon, but there's a whole list that needs doing; I'll try and do Arthur Bunster, who's the most interesting MP from the period I think. Quite the cast of characters, that's for sure.

About the colony-name thing; I came across your new page because of your addition of that link to the McGowan's War page - McGowan's War happened in 1858; the United Colonies were not united until 1866 - and must re-state why I think there needs to be separate articles; one is the distinct character of Vancouver Island (even today) and the reality that all three colonies (1849-1866, 1858-1866, 1867-1871) had three entirely different forms of government and also different political cultures as well as raisons d'etre. And "United Colonies" is a term I associate more with the US, or perhaps with ..... hmmm, somewhere else, I think.

That's all for now; real life calls.Skookum1 23:22, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Completed Colony of British Columbia article today, hope you like. Also revised the United Colonies article accordingly.  I'll fix this links from other pages over the next few days as I have more time. Fishhead64 23:24, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

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BC Hydro
I completely agree with you, and I think it's a wonderful building. I think this is a misunderstanding. I only removed the text I did because I think calling something revolutionary without a reference constitutes POV in Wikipedia. That's all. Other wise you are right... it was indeed a very good example of a modernist open floor... though, it was certainly not the first, so I might question whether it was indeed "revolutionary". Sorry about that. --Arch26 23:38, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
 * With regard to the "style" (style is a bit of a bad word), it is (or was) definitely modernism. High modernism even. The open cantelevered floor plate is primarily what gives it this designation. Though it might have been called futurist at the time, futurism by today's definition, is a very very different thing. --Arch26 23:41, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

"Sea to Die" highway?
Hey, Skookum1! Did a Google search, got: Can you comment for me? Thanks. SigPig 02:25, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * 3 blogs:
 * Skiiing Magazine
 * Vancouver Power & Sail Squadron
 * Forum at "The Tyee" online newspaper also here
 * Whistler Question letter to editor
 * Forum at bcsportbikes.com
 * A French-language forum at CampingQuebec.com
 * A tourism workshop book issued by Tourism BC

OK; would have helped if IP-address boy had included even ONE of these cites; the most convincing is the note in The Question that says it's used by paramedic corps - which legitimizes it as slang instead of as neo-marketing slang (which "Sea To Sky" was in the first place - and which was also an outright theft from Whatcom County's Ski To Sea Race). I've heard all kinds of stupid personal slang, often coined by newbies to BC, and this sounded a LOT like one; I lived in Whistler 81-88, when the Province's favourite tag was "Highway of Death" (which we paraphrased as "Highway of F**KING idiots").

So fine, put 'er back in; but I should point out that media slang (repeated/circulating references, built on each other's usage in an article) is not legitimate "slang" per se unless it catches on in the general populace or at least a certain segment of it; what happens is one journalist uses a term, another picks it up; two uses generate a third and so on - all without common speech being involved; at some point some of these terms invade the vernacular because of their use in headlines and articles, but their origins are murky; of course today media language has overtaken popular culture entirely. In this case the paramedics - note that the letter in The Question says that it's them that use it, indicating the Whistler locals do NOT as a whole use it.Skookum1 16:14, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Juneau Icefield image
Hi Skookum, Sorry I didn't even see the annotation for the Juneau Icefield! I'm quite sorry...I added it back, although, yes it would be nice for it to have larger text.

Hi
Hi Skookum1, this is spireguy, and yes, it's David Metzler. I got into WP since I have some spire measure pages up now and wanted to have descriptive pages to go with the data; since a lot of peaks didn't have such pages anywhere I decided to add them to WP. And of course I've branched out a bit. Cheers, Spireguy 21:59, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Salishan languages
Thanks for the explanation about the stub tag. I was wondering about that. You do good work. Just watch that self automating! Sunray 20:47, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Another thing: We probably don't need more than one stub tag in most cases (e.g., Sto:lo. Sunray 20:51, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

You mean ethno-stub vs NorthAm-native-stub? Or do you mean the stub that's on the article page vs. the one on the talk page?Skookum1 20:54, 8 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I mean the ethno-stub which was already there vs. the NorthAm-native-stub you have added. In most cases, I think you should be replacing the stub that is already there.  Sunray 20:56, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Indigenous Peoples of North America
I merely wanted to thank you for the consistent effort you're putting into our Wikiproject. Thanks to you and the work of other dedicated users, it has become a great initiative and a thrieving community. Way to go! Kisses,  P h a e d r i e l ♥  tell me   - 22:16, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I wanted to say the same thing. TriNotch 07:41, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Indigenous peoples of Mexico
Last time I saw it, the evaluation table on the Project page still had all the Mexico articles in a separate table that contained both tribal and linguistic articles. Part of my desire to include the indigenous peoples of Mexico in the project is out of a concern that often the groups in the two nations are studied in very different ways, the reasons for which seem very arbitrary to me. So ideally, I would like to integrate the indigenous Mexican articles into the existing tables. I was hesitant at first because it seemed like I was the only one interested in including Mexican tribes, and I didn't want to force it on anyone. I was also concerned that there might not be much overlap between students of indigenous languages from opposite sides of the border. But if you think the Mexico articles ought to be integrated into the other tables, then I am with you.


 * Well, I've been putting in all the Canadian-side groups/languages/events right alongside the American ones so we might as well do the same with the Mexican context; the project's not just about students of languages but of indigenous culture, period; and there is some overlap of course with Uto-Aztecan languages anyway; and hard to distinguish the civilizations involved, e.g. Cahokia vs. anything in Central America; ditto with the civilizations of the Northwest Coast, which are of a different category; I just combine 'em all in now, and I think you shouldn't be wary of doing the same for Mexico; it's North America at least as far south as Tehuantepec, ain't it?

Secondly, the question of which articles to include in the Mexican section. Mexico's population is largely indigenous ethnically, so many aspects of the culture and society could easily be called "indigenous". However, Mexico is politically and culturally the product of the last 500 years of mixing, conflict, and the forging of a new identity. We don't want to include every aspect of Mexican society.


 * I understand that; but I do know there's a lot of even contemporary politics that's indigenous-related, and I wasn't about to go punching in mestizo figures without warrant (Emiliano Zapata, for instance).

Major indigenous figures such as Benito Juarez should definitely be included under leaders. Also tribes and cultural groups, both Pre-Columbian and modern, should be included. Cultural aspects specific to indigenous groups or religions (i.e. La Danza del Venado (Deer dance, which is on my "to-do" list) and Nagual would be included, but, for example, tortilla would not). Government programs such as the Yaqui War and agencies such as the INI (Instituto Nacional Indigena, I believe) should be included, but agencies/programs not directly pertaining to the indigenous should not (the land bureau, while having effects on indigenous populations, does so indirectly through national policies). And of course there is room for latitude.


 * Same with Canada; I'm sure whether the Dept of Indian and Northern Affairs is linked to the project, for instance; I think most of the organizations that should be included are native-generated organizations and affiliations and (if any) aboriginal governments; I wouldn't have a clue what those are in Mexico, though.

With events like the Tlatelolco massacre, I can see its symbolic significance vis-a-vis indigenous issues, but the events were not directly related to indigenous issues so much as issues of human rights, students' rights, and demands for democratic reform. On these grounds, I would include Tlatelolco and the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in the NAm Wikiproject, but not the massacre. If you want indigenous massacres for the project, however, Mexico has plenty.--Rockero 07:38, 9 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I know; that's why I was wondering. The 1521 massacre I guess is in the main Tlatelolco article; but in that case its mention/review in our group's tables should probably say something like "section on 1521 Massacre of indigenous poeple needs expansion".  BTW for an interesting perspective on the Indian Wars in the states and maybe some new perspectives on aspects of your own history, check out http://www.dickshovel.com/two.html and http://www.dickshovel.com/two2.html - it's the second half of the second page that really bent my head on the "larger scale of things", but you have to read the first part to "get it" right; it's about railway politics and the British Northwest (what's now Manitoba through BC) and is quite an eye-opener.Skookum1 18:18, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
 * A few more Wikipedia-related complications: There is not yet a category for Indigenous Mexican individuals. Nor is there yet an article on the Indigenous peoples of Central America, which is geographically and culturally part of North America. On Tlatelolco, the title should either be changed to Tlatelolco massacres, plural, or should be split into different articles (I prefer the latter suggestion). Just some afterthoughts.--Rockero 18:30, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Lieutenant-Governor (Canada) article move
Hello! I hope you're well. Since you weighed in on the discussion months ago regarding hyphenation of this term (i.e., in favour of Lieutenant-Governor), I'd appreciate if you can do so again in this request to move the article back to the hyphenated rendition. The article was recently forked by an editor to the unhyphenated version without consideration of our prior discussions, with little recent discussion, and missing or removing information (e.g., the usage note). Consequently, this article is now inconsistent with other related ones in Wp and remains in a bit of a mess. Let me know if you've any questions. Thanks! E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 02:33, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Jade/Jadeite/Nephrite/Greenstone
Hey Skookum, pleased to officially meet you on Wikipedia. I have good news and bad news about this subject- the good news is your comment prompted me to begin research. The bad news is that the situation is more complicated than I previously realized. Southeastern archaeology (and apparently Northeastern as well) colloquially refers to native steatite as greenstone. Steatite is also in prehistoric use in your area (the Northwest, I mean) according to "A Remarkable Pipe from Northwestern America" by Harlan I. Smith, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 8, No. 1. (Jan. - Mar., 1906), pp. 33-38. Furthermore, as you say, we really ought to have a section on NW coast/BC nephrite use, and that stuff on the China exchange sounds really interesting. So basically Actinolite (nephrite jade), greenstone, and steatite all might need more extensive Indigenous North American information. I'm in the process of looking for sources now and soon I'll start to write something; I hope you'll work with me on this. Incidentally, Jadeite is pretty slim on Indigenous information as well, not even covering Mesoamerican use. TriNotch 21:26, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Whoops, my mistake: Southeastern archaeology calls chlorite schist and other fine-grained metamorphics "greenstone." Still, steatite was important too. TriNotch 21:37, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Meech/Oka
I should clarify, I have no doubts that there were more underlying elements to the crisis, and that the golf course was the straw that broke the Camel's back (Hell, I'm surprised it hasn't happened in some other areas of the country where I've heard worse stories of mistreatment)


 * It has, and it did, and it does; it just doesn't happen on the doorstep of Montreal, with live-coverage CBC Newsworld cameras in attendance. There was a "shooting war" in the Fraser Canyon back in the '70s between DFOs and the native chieftaincies there; and in the '90s and more recently there've been shots fired on the lower Fraser; although "fisheries wars" are a three-way street here with the sport and commercial fishermen sometimes in on the game (like Burnt Church, I suppose).  Even after Oka there were a number of occasions of mass police raids on isolated reserves in places like northern Manitoba; but no cameras, no front page coverage, and lots of Mountie "spin"; don't even get me started on Gustafsen Lake or Seton Portage......

I'm just saying that Meech itself wasn't really as much of a factor, although it was brought into the limelight a few times by protestors and that. I would put, pretty much in order, the golf course, general mistreatment, racism, distrust of police (Especially the SPQ), poverty, and other factors ahead of Meech Lake.


 * But the issue for the Meech Lake Accord article is the AFTERMATH of the accord, which included the heightened franco-aboriginal tensions which touched off the crisis; it wasn't just somebody near a reporter spouting off about that; I remember when the crisis began people were clucking their tongues about it, even all the way out here in BC, because French hostility at the natives had been very pronounced since ol' Elijah waggled his feather in the Manitoba House. There might be other "aftermath" events that came out of Meech that don't require mention; this one does, and I submit that it's more important than the birth of the Reform and BQ were (as aftermaths of Charlottetown, and indirectly of Meech).

I'm not trying to put out a clear, "Media" cleaned up vision of Meech by my edits (And I edited a good deal on the article). I'm just trying to sumerize a subject that has had so much biased elements to it, so much emotion at the times, and limitless books atributed.Habsfan|t 19:22, 14 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm curious to see "Media"'s edits and will have to look at the history; largely I've stayed away from this stuff, other than dabbling in the Seton Portage article (I'm from there, so...). I'm extremely wary of Canadian soft-soaping and shilly-shallying over what should be hard-bitten historical self-examination/criticism; but at the same time not willing to light the torch and get the dragon sniffing in my direction.  Charlottetown Accord I'm going to have to go over, I know; and I'm always bitching that there's no Spicer Commission and Charest Commission articles either (I don't have access to resources to write them or would).  The Grant Bristow Affair has also been soft-soaped, and I imagine if I went by the Yellowknife mine strike page, if there is one, it'd make Peggy deWit or whatever her name is look the Virgin Mary and the Pinkerton's who forced the mine to introduce the scabs sound like sweet little angels; the shady circumstances of the bombing, the apparent frame-up of the union by the Mounties, and so on.....all in all, a VERY dirty era, and there's no great wealth of accurate accounts or examination of any of these events; except my media-monopoly-sanctioned pundits.  I know Wiki's no place for politics, but you'd hope it might be a place for truth.Skookum1 19:37, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Chinook Jargon
Thanks for leaving a note on my talk page about hyas hyas lamonti in my edit of the Chinook Jargon vocabulary. It's important, because I too think it belongs in there. But Trubba not mon — hyas hyas lamonti and all is all still there, just broken up into separate mini-paragraph. I checked and I didn't actually delete any of it. I just moved it around. Whew: scared me. Tom Lougheed 02:56, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

By the way: could you please check on my expantion of moos-moos? I remember my grandfather using Chinook as part of explaining the English words for "steer" and "heifer", but since we were all almost completely WASPs, and since I didn't understand Chinook as a language very well either (we mostly just used it in place names, and local plant names, like chitticum), I'm not confident that I've remembered it right. Plus they refused to explain to me what man stone moos-moos meant. I thought it was the neighbors' bull's name until I read your vocabulary list. Tom Lougheed 17:44, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Skokomish
I posted evidence against myself in Talk:Skokomish (tribe), but refused to recant yet. Tom Lougheed 02:01, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Indigenous People Wikiproject
Wondeful. Thanks for the help. -- TheMightyQuill 08:18, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Edit to Somena
Just wanted to let you know that I have revised your change to the Somena Page, and dispute your claim that "Somena is a Bogus Nation."

I have given more information about the history of the "Tribes or Nations" within the Cowichan Valley on the Somena page.


 * Then this should have been a Cowichan Valley page, if it's covering more than the Somena; the First Nations cat is meant to chartered bands, and I'm sorry I used the word "bogus" but there was some dispute on the talk page; and there are "fake bands" all over North America, along the lines of the fake Indian status/claim that pisses so many NativeAmericans off ("don't tell me you're Cherokee!").

 -- Who made the decision that Indian Nations, can only be creations of the Federal Government of Canada or the Federal Government of the United States? --I can not speak for other Nations within the Cowichan Valley, only for my relations within Somena who have made a formal demand for recognition from the Federal Government and HRH QEII for their independence from the Cowichan Tribes Indian Band to be considered a separate entity


 * Further point is that there's some vagueness in the cat system because peoples are a separate category from band governments/national entities, same idea as there's a difference between tribe and language, and also between "tribe" (ethnicity" and "people" (social-cultural unit), and still from native governments as separate entities.  This is may an issue for the Wikiproject discussion board/tables - what to do about the FN category; which as I understood it was for official First Nations; unlike the US Native American tribes category which is ethnic, as opposed to official-status based.

''Indian Bands are merely domestic legal creations or 'fictions' of the Canadian Government and it's Indian Act. Indian Bands have no legitimacy to act within the parameters of International Law whereas Indigenous "Tribes or Nations" (per Royal Proclamation 1763, and BNA, and Vienna Accord) do. Self-Declared "First Nations" per say, are nothing more than domestic minorities within Canada who also have no claim to take their cause to the UN or recieve relief under International law Covenenants. The Indian Act Governments of Canada, derive their sole power from the Canadian Government. The salaries of these Indian Act Band employees are derived from the Canadian Government, their only claim to "rule" the Tribes or Nations whom they claim to rule, comes from elections held by Indian Act, DIA Officials. They are in effect ipso facto "agents of the crown. Somena, and a few other Peoples of Tribes or Nations across Canada are doggedly asserting our rights under International Law, while the Indian Act Bands, prefer to exist as domestic ethnic minorities within Canada -- You must read Janice Switlo's articles about this. She is a leading expert on International Law as it pertains to Indigenous Peoples in North America and has worked with the Somena People for the past few years. ''

Somena actually did get so far as presenting our petition to the Sr.Advisor on Aboriginal Affairs to Paul Martin, the then Prime Minister of Canada. It is a long process to achieve recognition of independence. We also presented our Declaration of Independence to the David Didluck,(negotiatior for the Federal Government) and to the Governor General of Canada, and to the Lt Governor General of British Columbia, The BC Treaty Commission, as well as reading the text of our declaration, signed by 43 people, representing about 165 Somena Peoples, with about 600 acres of land that they own, outloud at a maintable Negotiation on October 10th 2002, in the presence of eyewitnesses and media who reported on the event.

Getting back to the Different Nations in the Cowichan Valley -- These Nations existed independently, and did govern themselves as separate entities. It was only when the Indian Act, and the Indian Agents demanded that the Cowichan Tribes amalgamate that these Nations began to become considered "Indian Bands" in the first place, and less than that, that these individual Nations within the Cowichan Valley each had their own leaders, and system of governance, were forced into the Indian Act governance for the mere convenience of the Indian Agent at the time.

Since none of these Nations, including Somena have signed a Treaty with Canada, and yet it was recognized by James Douglas, and King George, by the signing of Treaties with Indigenous Nations that 'Tribes or Nations" did exist on a nation-to-nation basis with the Crown, your claim that Somena is a "bogus" nation - is actually a bogus claim. History, Legal Realities, and International law would dictate otherwise. I direct you to http://www.switlo.com/index.php and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Royal_Proclamation_of_1763 for more information if you would care to read up on it.

In the absence of signed Treaty Somena and the other Nations on Vancouver Island that did not get involved in the Douglas Treaty business still exist as Sovereign entities. They have not been conquered, there was no war, they have not extinguished their rights, and they certainly have not given up on their claims to land or the right to rule themselves.

Thanks for your attention to this. Best Regards


 * You are welcome to start writing articles concerning these bands and issues, but please make note of the Wiki style guides and formatting concepts. I am only a reviewer and editor and do not presume to write articles on tribes I know nothing about, other than location and what population and general information and raw data I can find.  Other British Columbian contributors, particularly aboriginal contributors, to the Wikiproject Indigenous peoples of North America working group (if you're not already there), are needed, in a big way.  Esp. for Vancouver Island bands, history etc.  But be wary of politicking in the main articles; it'll eventually get edited; keep opinionated discussions for the talk page.Skookum1 04:54, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Hola Skookum, if you review the Canadian Government's archives, (which I think are still online), you will find that Somena and in fact each of the named nations in the Cowichan Valley were all recognized as indipendent Indian Bands, Tribes or Nations up until the point of the forced amalgamation.

By the way, there is no word for "chief" in Hul'qumi'num. There is a word for it in chinook, but not in the original language of our people. We had 4 different types of people in our community. Siem, Sielth, Stashum and Skeulth. Siem were high-honoured people. Status had to do with recognition of both wealth and their connection to the various cultural practices of the Coast Salish peoples... be it Seyouwun (Spirit Dance), Swuauwkway (Mask Dance), Shulmustus (Rattles). (I am spelling these out phonetically)

There were several factors that went into determining how or why somebody was regarded as Siem and there is no word in English which properly conveys all of this. The closest equivelent I have found has been "Dignitas" in Latin Roman language. Sielth, were those who were simply very wealthy. Stashum were those who had forgotten where they had come from, and didn't know their own background, and the Skeulth were Slaves, who were actually more like prisoners of war, taken in battle, who could eventually over time ingratiate themselves into the society.

Charlie Quitquarton was recognized by non-native Government Officials, (including Sir John A MacDonald) as a "Chief) and indeed there is even a famous picture of "Chief Charlie) meeting with Canada's First Prime Minister when they put the train station in at Somena after building the railway through Somena up the island. Charlie was sort of the hub of the community, and in the formal tradition had been given permission to speak on behalf of the Somena. His descendents are Leonard James Sr, and Jr, and Terri Joe -- Currently alive and well in Somena.

The archives show over the years until the Amalgamation that Somena (as well as each of the other nations in the Cowichan Valley) had it's own members, it's own lands, and even it's own budget in the ledgers of the then department of Indian Affairs (it's modern day equivelent). The census's taken recognized the existence of the "Somena Indian Band". And birth, marriage and death certificates clearly show that the government recognized the independence of this Tribe or Nation.

Newspaper clippings would also refer to "A Somena Indian did x,y, or z" commonly.

Again, I must refer you to the Royal Proclamation of 1763, as to why I insist on the use of the terms "Tribes or Nations". It is because the King/Crown recognized in that document that these two words were interchangeable, when the British were signing nation-to-nation Treaties with "Tribes or Nations in Canada.

I don't mean to be picky here... and this is not an attempt to politicize. I am simply laying out the facts as the people here understand, and as the official archives of the Canadian/British Government document.

So in short, there was no "Chieftanship" because there was no "Chief" per say, (at least from the perspective of the actual Indigenous people. Old Charlie was a Siem who was a speaker for our people. There are of course other famous "Chiefs" in the Cowichan Valley -- Like Tzouhalem, but this man was more of a General of the miltiary forces in the region than a "chief" like the Government of Britian and Canada keep trying to insist on calling people in these leadership roles.

I think that if the Indigenous Wiki Project is to have any validity it must take into account the perspective of the Indigenous Peoples themselves, and allow them to identify themselves according to their own perspective. Otherwise this looks to me like a further attempt at colonialization, which I don't believe is the purpose of this Wiki Project.

The UN recognizes the rights of individuals to protect, assert, and preserve their culture and identity. My edits for Somena are simply that.

Best

M (Somena)

A brief PS... My research has focused primarily upon Somena over the past 8 years, and it has not extended as much to other Nations on Vancouver Island, only insofaras they had relations with the Somena. In our culture it's considered somewhat rude to make proclamations about people whom you do not belong to, and are not officially speaking for, or have been asked to speak for. So I am not sure what I can do to assist with the other Wikipedians who are working on the other "Tribes or Nations" in this region. But I can back up all of my work on this with the documented efforts of a couple of books that have been written on the subject... "Coast Salish Essays" by Wayne Suttles, Terror of the Coast by Chris Arnett, and of course the Canadian Government's own historical website. I also rely upon the oral traditions and stories of the Somena People to assist. For example... one of the reasons the Somena don't consider the amalgamation to be legitimate was that when the Indian Agent forced it upon us, the only reason people did not fight back (and they could have very effectively) was because the Indian Agent promised that if the Cowichan Valley Tribes or Nations allowed him to do this, (amalgamate the Indian Bands) that the government would build houses for every single family on the reserve. This of course never materialized. So the Amalgamation was achieved under false promises and representations. There are of course some who prefer that "Cowichan Tribes" (which is an entity that was created by the Indian Act and that's where it derives any legitimacy at all) remain as "Cowichan Tribes" -- however, within the Snuewueth (traditional laws) of the people of this region, if any group of people or family was unhappy with their representation, they were always free to Hwneetzilum or (go their own way) -- and this did happen over the span of hundreds of years of pre-contact history, which is why there were indeed these separate Nations within the Cowichan Valley. Different Hw'nuchalewum (groups of big houses) struck out on their own.

Hope that explains some of this better.


 * All very useful information and you're welcome to integrate this kind of thing into Wiki; I'm nobody in particular, remember. I'm also scrupulous about not writing internal history/politics of aboriginal nations/groups, just emending what was already there or trying to provide structural organization to complex groupings and their associated language articles (e.g. Carrier or Secwepemc, which on the one hand are ethnic groupings and on the other have political context not inclusive of the whole ethnic/linguistic groupage).  I have written a bunch on the St'at'imc, but I'm from up there and again try and maintain my neutrality, and never speak out of turn; on my own website I've attempted an outline or Pre-Contact/mythic-era history at http://www.cayoosh.net/native.html and a St'at'imc visitor reviewed what I'd put and said it was fine with him, and he's looking to read more once I get more done.


 * One problem with Wiki, unfortunately, re your own sources, is that the oral record is not citable unless the oral record itself has been documented kopa pepah. I know this is a bugger, and it screws up writing about BC politics, BC English dialectology (never studied academically but highly audible despite denials from the pan-Canadian English crowd) and folklorical/pop culture things, like for example what went down over the meaning of the expression Lower Mainland (see Talk:Lower Mainland.  I might suggest that if there was a Halqemeylem MetaWiki then there the usual rigour of Wiki sourcehood might be relaxed, given the aboriginal space that would be created; but how many people can meaningfully read/write Halqemeylem in any of its subdialects?  Well, true, perhaps more might if there was an online encyclopedia in it.....right now there's a debate raging over a Classical Greek Metawiki, as to what metalanguage it should use, since no one can write Ancient Greek well, even most classical scholars; ditto with Latin.


 * Anyway, the main issue for me with this Somena thing is determining the category, not just in Wiki categories but in terms of is it a political grouping (yes), a specific language distinct from others (no), current political organizational structure (in those articles where this has been covered, the idea is not just current chief and council but historical listings, including pre-band if known (as is the case with Secwepemc because of the genealogical work of James Teit); in coastal BC this will necessarily get into the lineages of titled siem, although I know that's ultimately very complicated and as you note chieftaincy might not be appropriate a term for that; "chief" isn't quite the right word, apparently ,even though Quitquarton, for example, was probably referred to as Tyee of the Somena, even Hyas Tyee. What misled me here, and I admit I was hasty in scanning your article, was the absence of Somena on a listing of Vancouver Island bands/governments I was using to review the articles in the First Nations in BC category; as I implied on the comment/note on one of my other edits, it's true enough that the Sinixt and Stuwix/Nicola Athapaskans aren't chartered bands, and the Stuwix are in fact extinct, but they're included, so OK, I see the rationale now for why the Somena should be included, and I'll make amendments to other pages where they should be located (e.g. groups speaking Hulquminum, Vancouver Island peoples, etc) as I find them.Skookum1 17:22, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks so much & More
Ha Ca Qua Siem! For your help with the Somena page and tutorials on Wiki formating and such. I've been on Wiki for awhile but am still learning. ( BTW That means thank you, honoured person!)(in the singular) pronounced Hachaka Seeum - since you are a language buff. Be happy to swap words with you from time to time. Somena 20:36, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

--About the Edits vs Vandalism--...did you see the edit that said something about "The Great Pumpkin" and one that changed Doug Williams name to Hank Reardon (from Atlas Shrugged) -- and the ones that were simply insults about me and my family members -- weren't vandalism?

Help me out here... I looked at the Vandalism page, and the "No Personal Attacks" page, and these kinds of "edits" seemed to qualify to me, and to some others who reverted what they viewed as Vandalism, to be in fact vandalism. I'm not talking about any of the discussions held about the substance of the actual entry. I'm talking about the silly little jabs and insults that have been added off and on for the past few months everytime a flamewar in the Blogworld heats up. I want to keep the vandal box up - because I think it's a good idea to let potential vandals know that wikipedians are watching this page, and are paying attention to the edits being made, and why they are being made. But if you don't want the box.. I guess we could keep it down. Maybe I could use the Vandal box in the Discussion portion? - What do you think? I'll ask an admin to look into this. Not only that, but an admin who is intimately familiar with the personalities involved in this whole thing. Paging [Bucketsofg], Paging [BucketsofG],Bucketsofg could you please come to the red courtesy phone Thank you kindly ;)Somena 00:28, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

--Update on Edits vs Vandalism-- Hey Skook, Admin [Bucketsofg] has suggested that you are most probably correct in that he has not seen these vandalism tracking boxes on Articles/Entries pages. Would you object to it being kept on the discussion page? See my user page for my explanation as to why I don't think most of these edits were especially good faith POV. There's a history here of a blog clash that has spilled over into Wiki. It ain't pretty. I could understand this all, if the entry in question (being vandalized/edited) was about myself. But it's not. It's about Somena. I don't think I actually rate a wiki entry about myself. But I do believe the Somena Nation needs one and that's why I built it. It's sad really, the whole thing. Anyways. Thanks for your help and guidance on this.


 * Vandalism occurs all the time on article and talk pages alike; usually it's somebody with an obscenity or gibberish, or a vanity boast of some stupid kind; occasionally it's political crossfire but those are considered POV (point-of-view) disputes rather than "vandalism". If every page on Wiki had one of those boxes, it would look darned ugly; but nearly all have been vandalized.  On the talk page, maybe, but that infers that the talk page was vandalized, not the article.  The whole point with vandalism is just to "revert" or otherwise make the change back to the way it should be, and beyond that to relax and realize that stupid, inane people come in all shapes and sizes - and a lot of them have IP addresses and are online.  Smile and revert, and let the zen of people's idiocy flow through you, marvelling at human vanity and iniquity.  Kinda Buddhistic; let the karma happen, in other words.  So long as you police the page you can reverse anything; and there will always be vandals and worse.  So relax, and don't let it get to you.

Your Hul'qumi'num word for the day is "nutsa's'qua'llawun" which having no direct translation in English means the achieving of "one mind (agreement), one heart(feeling, one spirit(belief) " Pronounced "nutza squall'a'won". As in "When our elders come together, they generally find nutsa's'qua'llawun". Somena 18:38, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Ikt kahkwa konaway tumtum ("one as all heart/thought") in Chinook (maybe; there are alternatives; konaway ikt tumtum would mean more like "to each his/her thoughts"). Simplest is probably ikt kahkwa konaway (one as if all, or like the Three Musketeers, "all for one"; possibly using the prepositoin kopa instead of the comparative kahkwa; but not necessarily. The nice thing about Chinook is it's relatively freeform and may also reflect the syntax of the speaker's mother tongue (since most Chinook speakers were and are second-language Chinook speakers).

One parting question: on the Cowichan disambiguation page I have a redlink unwritten article) that's Cowichan (people). Given what you've taught me, I gather that perhaps Cowichan peoples may be more appropriate, i.e. Cowichan-area peoples, so that Somena, Quamichan etc would be listed on that page as being the nations in the Cowichan area.  Or is there a collective name for this bunch of nations/groups?  Or is no more a distinct bunch within the other Island/Islands peoples around there; in which case the "cowichan" designator is meant to be just locational, rather than a tribal designation.Skookum1 01:39, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Citation on gold rush
Ref your comment in your edit summary: You don't need a web link, you can of course cite a book, thesis, .... Please use Template messages/Sources of articles/Generic citations. Please also find a non-nothern US ref that supports the assertion, preferably with refernce to gold production and comparisons with other rushes in the world. In ten years the european population of Victoria, Australia increased seven-fold from from 76,000 to 540,000 because of the Victorian Gold Rush. All sorts of gold records were produced - "richest shallow alluvial goldfield in the world", largest gold nugget, ... Victoria produced in the decade 1851-1860 20 million ounces, one third of the world's output. This is an international encyclopaedia - I think the Klondike rush is dealt adequately at the section Gold_rush and it is not justified to repeat the information in the lead section.--A Y Arktos\talk 20:36, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I have thought about it and reverted - as above the rush adequately dealt with in its own article and under the 1890s section.--A Y Arktos\talk 20:45, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Island size
You're absolutely right, it is a population ranking. That's why we can't add numbers 22, 38, 46 and 70, but call them 19, 20, 21 and 22. (Clearly, I made up the first four numbers) - my point is that, until we research more and confirm that the rank is correct, it's not okay to simply append them to the bottom. For instance, there are islands in the east (Anticosti in Quebec, Toronto Island, Bell Island in Newfoundland) that might come ahead of your four in the list. It might be okay to add a secondary table, something like "other Canadian Islands with populations", but to formally rank the island #19, we should know that it's actually the 19th most populous in Canada. That's why I removed them. AshleyMorton 01:11, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Might be good to have a "working version" of the table on the Talk page, then, for drafting additions and putting in ones that we don't have the data on yet.....Skookum1 01:13, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Re: BC Wikiproject tables
Yikes, that's a long list. Ummm... well, I think they can probably replace the entire tasks list (I like this table format), but it's just... long. Perhaps using a "hide" option for each section would be more effective? -→ Buchanan-Hermit ™ / ?!  02:56, 16 June 2006 (UTC)


 * What I was half-thinking while making them, and which gelled while I was on the bus downtown and back after/during my workout, is that each section/subsection title could link to one of the section-table on, say History of British Columbia or Geography of British Columbia, or on Discussion pages for, and so on; that way people who aren't familiar with out Wikiproject will still see those tables in the area that they're interested in; deciding which ones go where is the issue; the other way to do it, as suggested, is secondary sandboxes off the Wikiproject/sandbox page currently in use.  Also in many cases the "infobox" category is non-applicable, unless invented for certain categories where it doesn't currently exist; a "map/image" column, also in some cases like the communities there'd be "status" or category or something to that effect (ghost town, locality, locality/IR, village, village/IR, town, municipality, city).  It also should be noted that reviews can be seconded; there can be more than one input/usersig per item as things proceed; comments about work-in-progress.  I meant to come up with a "do not review things you wrote yourself; although you should add comments about what you think needs fixing/adding to your work, or things you're dubious about, etc".  That's all for tonight; could spend hours expanding this list but hopefully others in the project will see the use of it, as happened at Wikiproject Indigenous peoples of North America and add to it and utilize it/them as a resource.  And yeah, better to break them off with links to wherever they are put.Skookum1 07:18, 16 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Hmmmm. I seriously don't know what to do about this. Have you consulted with others who might be/are already interested in a BC WikiProject? They might have more constructive insight than me at this point. I like the tables; I'm just a little idealess (if that's a word) as to how to use them or how to present them in a non-intimidating way. I like the idea of linking the section titles though; that might be do-able, but I wonder how it would work in practice. -→ Buchanan-Hermit ™ / ?!  08:15, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

If they come across that way I didn't invent the format; it's from the Indigenous people's project; but consider this: trying to coordinate the sheer volume of articles will be impossible without them, or something like them. I've just moved the Rivers section to Talk:List of British Columbia rivers and could do the same for lakes, communities, history, geography etc; IRs and other native cultural stuff can be referred to the Indigenous project table for same, though those tables include stateside and Mexican content (best to have shared reviews/tasklists between different projects only in one place, though); if there's a "tasks" list, it's huge overall; there can be a smaller version for top-20 things needing doing/writing/editing that can flux all the time; but a central directory I think is necessary; I hvae these same tables on the Wikiproject Vancouver page but haven't fleshed them out yet, and will do the same relocation thing to appropriate subpages.

Hi Skookum1
RE: Talk:List_of_United_States_military_history_events

I took the unprecendent step of toning down your entry. I think this is the first time I ever toned down another users entry. I am sorry. I hope this does not offend you.

Please let me explain. You seem like a rational and very intellegent person.

We have the same POV, I think. I am an American, but I am deeply ashamed of America's imperial past. My views are vigorously suppressed and I often feel marginalized.

Some of my best work involves the Philippine-American War. I have gone toe to toe with the most sophisticated and intellegent conservatives on wikipedia. I have been indefinetly banned once for my views with copyright conservatives. I was banned for 24 hours for my comments to another conservative. I have been in arbitration, to many revert wars to count, and had my wikiuser vandalized dozens of times. Why do I mention this? Because through it all, I have learned that you get more bees with honey, not vinegar. Being a diplomat saves you time and emotional energy. It is crucial that we, the new commers to List_of_United_States_military_history_events are diplomats.

Just 5 hours ago I radically changed this article. I added a lot of anti-empire/anti-american external links to this wikipage. I probably stepped on some toes of some very conservative, patriotic, pro-military wikipedians by doing this. People don't like to see there work radically changed without their permission first. I was bold in my edits, as I encouraged you to do. About five months ago several of us, sought consensus, (including some of the most conservative wikipedians) agreed to merge articles. Nothing was actually done until tonight.

The worst thing that could happen right now is for another newcomer (yourself) to follow my radical edits and mock the page. This is bound to cause some really bad feelings right away. I do not want an edit war. I will avoid this at all costs. If that means cutting out some of your most inflammitory words, I will reluctantly do this. I hate to do it, but I will if I must.

I want to build a consensus. It is essential the first week of this major edit, that I avoid, we avoid stepping on too many toes. We can get all of the edits we want, much easier, by being diplomats. Trust me on this, please.

For the past 10 months, Philippine-American War has kept in the most brutal aspects of the US invasion because of comprimise. I have avoided major revert wars by comprimise, and ultimatly, we won. Whenever someone types in Philippine-American War, anywhere in the world, they will learn the facts: the US invaded a country and killed at least 200,000 people, putting them in consentration camps and torturing them. In a conservative and ultra patriotic country such as America, that to me is a major accomplishment.

I want to do the same with List_of_United_States_military_history_events as we have done with American Empire, and the entire Template:AmericanEmpire series. It was only 6 months ago that everyone of these articles was in jeoprody of being deleted from wikipedia. All of them were up for votes for deletion several times. We fought really, really hard to keep these articles on wikipedia, and almost lost. It was through some igenous suggestions and strategies, which i am proud to say that I had a small part in helping with, that we were able to assure that these articles will never again be seriously threatened with deletion.

I think you are a smart guy. I think you can see the merits in my argument. We have the same POV. All I ask is to tone down your words on the talk page, and use neutral words in your edits on the page. Be bold, but edit smart.

Welcome to American Empire, List_of_United_States_military_history_events. I am excited to have another smart, knowlegable wikipedian on our side.

There are 280 million Americans, but 6 billion people worldwide. As the list shows clearly, the US has invaded almost everyone of the coutries were the other 5.7 billion people lived. It is frustrating to be surrounded by the minority, but nice to be part of the majority. Welcome.

Signed:Travb (talk) 07:24, 24 June 2006 (UTC)


 * As per Talk_pages thank you for your comments, I am now archiving them. Good luck in your edits.  Please respond to me here, and not on my talk page.  I will watch this page.  I want to put this argument behind us.  Any future messages to my talk page will be moved to the archive immedialty, without response. Again, I want to put this argument behind us.  I will let you have the last word on this issue. Thank you for your work and contributions. Travb (talk) 22:49, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Alternate spelling
Do you have a source for a good online Canadian or British dictionary? I also looked at dictionary.com, which sometimes has alternate spellings (and even Webster sometimes does (and it'll say "chiefly Brit.)), but I could not find any there. Thanks for your help. Ufwuct 21:22, 24 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I just tried Brittannica Online but it gave me 56 choices for "lea"; maybe I'm wrong but I've always spelled it that way, despite "leeward". The spellchecker in Word doesn't help either because it recognizes "Lea" as a family name....hmmmm.....Skookum1 21:25, 24 June 2006 (UTC)


 * There's no rush. If any dictionary would have it, I would imagine Oxford English would.  It's not  free online though.  I'll see if I can get a hardcopy of the book some time or if I can use my brother's online OE account later.  Cheers. Ufwuct 21:32, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Premier of British Columbia
Hi Skookum1

Just so you know, the notes you made about the Premier's legal status are not correct. The Premier (or, federally, the Prime Minister) does advise the Lieutenant-Governor (federally, Governor-General). There is no conflict of interest -- in fact, the L-G relies quite heavily on the Premier and his ministers for many things. For example, appointments of the Crown are regularly made "on the advise of the Premier". In any event, much of the information in the article comes directly from the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia -- and they ought to know.

Regards, - Juxtatype 23:40, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

No personal attacks
With regards to your comments on User talk:HongQiGong: Please see Wikipedia's no personal attacks policy. "Do not make personal attacks anywhere in Wikipedia. Comment on content, not on the contributor. Personal attacks damage the community and deter users." Please keep this in mind while editing. Thanks. Hong Qi Gong 19:32, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Canadian slang: Good point...
...about gong show, I missed it, thanks. Very versatile phrase, btw, not unknown in the States, but (I believe) more frequent in Canada; just rewrite the entry the way you see fit, according to true current Canadian usage (gooned is not uniquely Canadian, anyways). A "vulgar" page would do good as a sandbox for the guys to cut loose in; the flipside is, it would probably be unencyclopedic... JackLumber. 21:55, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Chinaman/Gweilo
Hong Qi Gong would have you "compromise" by admitting that "China" "Man" is as offensive as "foreign devil" if you want his "help."

If you fall for that, he's probably got some swamp land you might be interested in buying...

The words "China" and "man" used separately or together are not inherently offensive. They have become offensive only through history, through their manner of use, and in the way they are taken. One could say "Chineeeeeeeeeese" in an offensive way too. Or, spoken in a completely neutral tone, the word "Chinese" could be taken as offensive by the hyper-sensitive who don't want their ethnicity talked about in any way. Still, the word "Chinese" is not in itself offensive (at least not till it's declared so).

The intent behind "foreign devil," on the other hand, speaks quite eloquently for itself. Hong Qi Gong cannot be so dense as to think the two terms are equally offensive, though apparently he's betting others are. Human Fetishist 22:52, 6 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Human Fetishist, your logic here basically even renders the word "nigger" harmless, as it is simply derived from "negro" which means the colour black in Spanish and Portuguese. Hong Qi Gong 23:30, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, Hong Qi Gong (since you're monitoring this page I'll reply here), another instance of knee-jerk "perceived racism" I encountered at a film festival in NYC; there was a Norwegian film about a lesbian detective in Oslo (based on a popular Norwegian TV show) and the Norwegian word negger, meaning darker-coloured person, was used; which outraged some non-Norwegians listening who took it to mean much the same as in English "nigger"; but in Norwegian there's no derisive overtone, and negger can simply be someone with dark hair or black eyes (as was the case with the lesbian lead); no amount of discussion in the lobby afterwards could resolve this, as the diehard p.c.-types, who only spoke English, couldn't wrap their head around a similar word in another language not being the same as the English word; the Norwegian word for the colour "black" is svart (like Ger. schwarz) and cannot be used to describe people, only objects; rather, excuse me, while it can be derisive (as in the film), it is not racial in context (since it can describe whites, even other Norwegians). So in other wrords, the p.c. types were wanting to impose American cultural standards on another language's cultural context; that's what I see going on with chinaman and other terms (see Native American name controversy, esp. the talk page); fetishist is quite right though; as I tried to explain to you, even using 'Chinese' in Vancouver can be interpreted to have a racist context. But that's not OUR doing.....as for collaborating/cooperating, yeah OK, but read all that stuff I linked you to first, and consider the loaded connotations of too loose a wording; I note your most recent change to Chinaman but->and, which in combination with my own efforts on the rest of that sentence now makes "acceptable sense". It's important that the non-derisive origins and usage of the word be mentioned; it's become derisive; it wasn't always. Also on the same direction, "Asian" (which used to include South Asians, but no longer) has been coopted as a surrogate; similarly "Eurasian" used to mean someone of mixed white-Asian race, usually of white/imperial cultural heritage, but it also used to include South Asian-European mixes as well as Chinese-European mixes; now it's only the latter; more cooptation.I have to go for now; have a look over HongCouver and that discussion from The Tyee I linked you to and consider my point of view on this; I'm looking for truth, not ideologySkookum1 23:40, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Huh? Use of the Norwegian word "negger" is not under discussion.  If "nigger" is offensive, despite its origin, then by extension, it negates the argument that "Chinaman" is not offensive by virtue of its origin.  Hong Qi Gong 00:07, 7 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Hong Qi Gong: "Englishman", "Frenchman", "Irishman", "Scotsman", "Manxman" and similar constructs are still accepted as non-derogatory terms, but the word "Chinaman" has acquired derogatory meaning in the United States through history and usage. You can't be claiming the term "gweilo/foreign devil" derived from a neutral term, but only acquired a derogatory meaning through usage. The intent behind a term like "foreign devil" is obvious. A closer English analogy would be something like "yellow dog"/"yellow devil." Human Fetishist 00:20, 7 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I've never claimed "gweilo" derived from a neutral term. And I'm claiming "Chinaman" also did not derive from a neutral term.  Your assertion was that I'm being dishonest somehow, by your first comment that Skookum1 shouldn't "fall for that".  I must ask, what makes you assume this?  Why are you accusing me of trying to trick Skookum1?
 * The term "Chinaman" was always used by people who are inherently racist. It did not become derogatory, just like the word "nigger" did not become derogatory.  What happened was that derogatory words became unacceptable vocabulary as our society grew to reject racism more and more.  Hong Qi Gong 01:07, 7 July 2006 (UTC)


 * You assert, by implication, that "gweilo" derives from a neutral term when you equate it with the English "Chinaman", which does derive from neutral terms, though, of course, it is offensive today in US English. Which word do you claim is inherently offensive? "China?" or "Man?" Translate this word literally: 中国人. Which of the three characters is the inherently offensive one? How is "China person," or (in older, pre-PC, English usage) "China man," inherently as derogatory as "foreign devil?" If "中国人" is inherently offensive, on a par with "foreign devil", shall we ban it from Chinese, and all its versions in other Asian languages? Or shall we just admit that it has acquired a negative connotation in U.S. English? Yes, it is offensive in the United States today, and no one who is sensitive to other cultures would use it without knowing that. And yes, even "nigger" was used in a non-derogatory way in the past by whites, though it is, of course, offensive when used by them today. It is not offensive when used between blacks today. The same goes with terms for the mentally ill: "idiot," "moron," "imbecile," and the like. They were all once acceptable, even scientific, terms. The connotations of words change. You should know this. Why do you keep bringing up the term "nigger?" Are you trying to borrow sympathy from the racism endured by African-Americans in the United States? If so, it really doesn't help your cause. To refer back to another article: White men marrying Asian women doesn't at all compare with 400 years of slavery, lynching and dragging behind pick-ups.
 * OK, we're getting nowhere here, there's not much point in continuing this. Sorry to take up space at your talk page for this exercise in nonsense, Skookum1. One thing good came out of this though: I find the article you are contributing to on Chinook Jargon to be fascinating, and will be following it with interest! Human Fetishist 03:48, 7 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Read my previous comment again. I never claimed that Chinaman came from a neutral term.  So how could I have implied that gweilo came from a neutral term by implication when I made a comparison to Chinaman?  I've always asserted that Chinaman did not come from a neutral term, so I can't have implied that gweilo came from a neutral term.  Plus, I've already directly said that it did not come from a neutral term.
 * And what??? White men marrying Asian women?  What the heck does that have to do with anything and why are you bringing that up?  Hong Qi Gong 04:27, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Chinese Canadian National Council
Hi Skookum1. I objected to your unencyclopedic commentary ("The history on this site is heavily distorted and contains many inaccuracies and outright untruths") in the History of Chinese immigration to Canada article. So thank you for leaving that comment out, even if it means losing the link. I'm not familiar with all of the CCNC's truths or lies. But that organization is decades old and appears to have reached a level of notability/significant/recognition in Canadian media that allows it visibility in an encyclopedia, even if they spread some lies. If you're equipped to supply critical, verifiable content about this organization, the Chinese Canadian National Council article might benefit from it. Cheers. --Ds13 00:54, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * What I'm going to do is find the correct counter-information to their material; which is RANK in its misportrayal of 19th Century British Columbia; and not a small bit of hyperbole, such as the one-dead-per-foot of the Fraser Canyon stretch of the CPR. But that's par for the course when someone wraps themselves in martyrdom and wants to paint as bad a picture of their victimization as possible.  That their own people were their employers is never discussed or admitted.Skookum1 07:15, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Is that "one-dead-per-foot" claim to be found on the web somewhere? I can't find it on their site or with Google. --Ds13 07:46, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * It's in this: http://www.ccnc.ca/toronto/history/pgallery.html which is as you can see via their Toronto branch; so in a way it's not surprising they've screwed up the history, as BC history in Central Canada is always badly written and badly conceived; T.O. has only the vaguest ideas about BC and a lot of mythologies that denigrate BC without just cause (see "comments forum" following article at http://thetyee.ca/Books/2006/06/20/EmilysMonkey/ and look for my username; quite a wade and a lot other subjects but I hope worth the read). Within that gallery (http://www.ccnc.ca/toronto/history/pgallery.html) it's the "railway construction" section, which isn't directly linkable; or, apparently google-searchable either.  Note that this isn't linked through the main pages at www.ccnc.ca so maybe somebody did take heed of what I sent and they might be rewriting it.  Kinda doubt it though; they'd be admitting they were wrong, and that involves a loss of face as well as revocation of some cherished shibboleths, such as the one-dead-per-foot of the "(hell gate) Fraser Valley" stretch (Hell's Gate in the Fraser Canyon; I'll see if I can find an illustration of that stretch of the canyon); but even two miles is over 10,000 dead, and nope, there's no way that many died.  Mythology is mythology and doesn't depend on facts, of course.  All my other quotes are from that page or others within the gallery.Skookum1 07:59, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * PS at some point I'm going to condense much of the biographies and political agendas of early BC vis a vis immigration, the politics of the railway and various other articles from my remaining BC history books - to "put a face" to the white-racist bogeyman that's so easily dismissed without empaty; I was quite struck by the content of In The Sea Of Sterile Mountains, subtitle The Chinese in British Columbia by James Morton (can't find it just now for publ. info but it should be listed on amazon.com); it's more about the politics and politicians/political personalities/agendas of the times than about the Chinese per se; but it does contain detailed facts such as the method of payment (rice "mats" imported from China) and working conditions, as well as the role of the wealthy Chinese in Victoria, the goldfields, and in the snakehead-contractor trade which brought in the railway workers, then abandoned them; Morton's portrait of the 2,500 who were abandoned in Spences Bridge, British Columbia (a hellish, very hot and stony place on the Thompson River) and sought refuge in caves in the hills until they could get out is gripping; as also is the account of the Camp 23 massacre, when the nastier sort of Chinese railway worker slaughtered a a foreman who tried to fire them (this was a precursor to the anti-Chinese riots in Vancouver of the winter of 1885-86). A friend is about to publish his research on placer mining on the Fraser, which he's studied claim by claim and should also be revealing once it's out.Skookum1 08:05, 10 July 2006 (UTC)  The other point of bringing up the Morton book is it fleshes out the reasons and rationales behind the BC political machine's opposition to Chinese labour on the railway, and also the ongoing machinations and compromises that led to the Head Tax (which the BC govt itself tried repeatedly to enact but was always turned down by the federal government); there's great portraits of some of these guys, too - Arthur Bunster, Noah Shakespeare and Joseph Martin I don't think you'll forget anytime soon, even if you know nothing else about Canadian history/politics.  Well worth the read.Skookum1 08:07, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the book suggestion. I dug int othe CCNC site where you suggested and left two quotes and direct URLs on the Talk:Chinese Canadian National Council page. --Ds13 17:01, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Calm
Please remain civil and refrain from using profanity in disputes. It's not really productive when you're trying to change some one's mind. =D See you around. --mboverload @ 06:05, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Did I use profanity? Oh - frigging, right?  That's not considered profanity by Canadian standards :-|; or "crap" maybe?  Yeah, well, it's hard when you are constantly subjected to one group/cultural insult after another, which too many of the articles on this issue are full of.  I know, I know, calm down; I'll back away from the content material because it's so offensive to me (and others) that it's hard to be calm.  Funny how they're so sensitive about THEIR feelings, but not about anyone else's; you hear "humiliation" as a byword in "their" histories.  Thing is my own family wasn't in BC until 1946, but simply on the basis of skin colour we are confronted with what I have learned to be distortions of the past on a regular basis; but lately our government has been pandering to the PRC because of tourism and oil and forestry exports/business, including ordering the Falun Gong away from the Chinese Consulate in Vancouver this last week.  I don't think it's possible to change a brainwashed mind except through shock value, and "absolute truth"; instead of "revised truth", which is stock-in-trade in current journalism and historiography.Skookum1 07:20, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia is not a soapbox, and here's where you used profanity - . Is "bullsh*t" considered profanity by Canadian standards?  --- Hong Qi Gong 17:19, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, in common speech, no. Even my 85-year-old Mom uses it.  Loosen up your knickers....oh, knickers used to be profanity, too.  But a cowturd is a cowturd; I'll find something much euphemistic net time, like "bovine offal".


 * Wikipedia is not a soapbox...


 * Somebody should tell that to the authors of . and similar pages. Skookum1 17:50, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Skookum1, you wrote: "subjected to one group/cultural insult after another"


 * I find it really funny that some people have this idea that they are oppressed, that the whole world is out to get them.  Their entire worldview is skewed to see only this one narrow idea.  Travb


 * Narrow? No, it's the narrow ideas about "my" culture that I'm responding to, as evinced by the usual slandering of BC history on the various Chinese-Canadian history pages; and I'm also speaking of ongoing media slanders and revisionist histories in the local press and academic curriculum and spew from ethnic politicial organizations (that get used as Wikicites presumably on the basis that they're correct, which too often they're not), as well as on-the-street cultural affronts, such as being expected to put up with HK/Seoul manners in a North American city (when I'm in Seoul, and have been, I'm expected to abide by Korean manners; the courtesy is NOT returned because "Canadians don't have a culture", as it's put by so many "new Canadians" and visitors; so there's no respect for our local etiquette or sense of "conduct"; in fact, we are treated with disdain in our own country by people who know nothing about it or us other than the cliches they've picked up in their own narrow-minded education).  I'm ANYTHING but narrow-minded.  ANYTHING.  A bit TOO broad-minded, in fact...


 * I just stumbled upon your postings over at: Talk:List_of_United_States_military_history_events. You told me to read my history, etc. Travb


 * And you should; surely you're not going to defend the US "taking possession" of the Oregon Country in 1818????? What a farce.... User:Skookum1


 * After many long messages on my talk page, I pretty much skimmed your long postings after a while, reading about one word in twenty. I was grateful when the long messages about your personal persecution stopped on my talk page. Travb


 * Short attention span, huh? See my response to Heqs on User talk:Heqs User:Skookum1


 * I was not surprised to find that you are having similar problems with other wikipedians on other wikipages. Travb


 * problems? Problems?  HongQiGong may be a pain in the ass, but he's not a problem.  And I don't have problems with other Wikipedians; only pointy-headed ones. User:Skookum1


 * (Deleted comment) Travb


 * Hmmmm. First you impute I'm having trouble with other Wikipedians, now you're alleging something about my behaviour "beyond Wikipedia".  Well, it's true I do snort and grunt and speak in the ancient language of the trollkind while I'm lifting weights, and I do hold forth in cafe conversations in this most cafe-ridden of cities, but your attempt here at Psych 101 analysis/allegation is really sophomoric in nature.  Polemic is polemic, and truth is truth; I engage both, unlike many people who want to compromise between the right point of view and the wrong one.  I have abilities with volume in writing and data compilation/structure (have a look at the Indigenous peoples wikiproject; which your US military events page should coordinate itself more, too, by the way) but most wikipedians I've corresponded with like my input, and until this HongQiGong nonsense I've been taken as a pretty friendly, if somewhat voluble, editor/contributor.  Conscientious even..... User:Skookum1


 * Re: Somebody should tell that to the authors of . and similar pages.


 * Please see red herring.


 * In otherwords, the other editors soapbox stance on History_of_Chinese_immigration_to_Canada and "other pages" is irrelevant to your violation of Wikipedia is not a soapbox. Travb


 * But I'm not soapboxing; I'm pointing out when others are, as in that case; and in the case of US military history events I'm dispelling the mythologies you guys get in your national curriculum, which is notoriously skewed (notoriously if you're not an American, that is). User:Skookum1


 * I await your long response, full of colorful adjectives with an impending sense of dread. Travb


 * Colourful adjectives, huh? Hm.  Colourful language, certainly, but that's my culture and my mode of speech; and I can't help it if I've read more books than you have. :-P User:Skookum1


 * Best wishes: Travb (talk) 10:29, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


 * "Have a nice day" (said as ironically as possible) Skookum1 15:53, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


 * "...a reflection of your behavior beyond wikipedia" if this is not a personal attack, it's very close. Please don't do that Travb. heqs 15:18, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for pointing that out User:Heqs, I struck the comments. Travb (talk) 16:40, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

User:Skookum1, thanks for proving some of my points.

I had a few comments to your response, but I pressed the wrong button and deleted it.

You are always entertaining.

I have met 2 other Koreans in my life, and both of them are really argumentive like you, maybe it is just an anomoly and I have just had bad luck in meeting Koreans. I should set you up with this Korean girl in Canada in BC that I met in Malta. Send me an e-mail and I will send you her e-mail address.Travb (talk) 16:40, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

No personal attacks - "HongQiGong may be a pain in the ass"
With regards to your comments on User_talk:Skookum1: Please see Wikipedia's no personal attacks policy. "Do not make personal attacks anywhere in Wikipedia. Comment on content, not on the contributor. Personal attacks damage the community and deter users." Please keep this in mind while editing. Thanks. --- Hong Qi Gong 17:07, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

License tagging for Image:Hdshot2xxx.jpg
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Nice to finally meet you!
Is that you in the pic, dear Skookum? Cause if that's the case, it's so great to finally meet you! :) But where are my manners? I've been wanting to talk to you for a very long time, dear, so this is just a great opportunity to finally introduce myself... although you and I already know each other, in a very real sense, after all the work you so greatly performed at WP:IPNA. I really want to tell you many things regarding this project, and all the major overhaul and revamping I'm trying to get finished before going on a short vacation, but if you forgive me, hun, I'll leave a lengthier reply for tomorrow, as I'm kinda busy, and not in a very bright mood right now. I promise, tho, that I'll look into the arrangement at your userpage right away. You deserve a prize yourself for your amazing work and dedication, dear Sk, so rest assured a gift will magically appear here *real* soon :) Big hugs, and talk to you tomorrow,  Phædriel   ♥   tell me  - 00:15, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Please remain civil
It seems to me that you have acted in an uncivil manner on User talk:HongQiGong. It is important to keep a cool head, despite any comments against you. Personal attacks and disruptive comments only escalate a situation; please keep calm and action can be taken against the other parties if necessary. Your involvement in attacking back can only satisfy trolls or anger contributors, and lead to general bad feeling. Please try to remain civil with your comments. Thanks! --- Hong Qi Gong 15:15, 12 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Funny thing, HongQiGong didn't want me to rebut his accusation on his webpage anymore, so I rebuttded them anyway and then unwatched him. Now, he's back, complaining of uncivility after a week or two of harrassing me.  To date, he has complained about my supposedy incivility while constantly attacking my character, even mis-taking/re-interpreting ordinary English to supposedly be a personal attack, and supposedly be a profanity; when in fact in neither style, convention or intent was that the case.  Accusation is 9/10 of the proof in p.c. self-righteousness of course, and self-justifying arguments don't leave room for objections, because any objection is ruled out of order because the person having to defend themselves has already been discredited by the p.c.-er's self-righteousness.  It's all very snaky, and Socrates would have a field day with people like this; so can I, especially on my own talk page when I'm accused of incivility by a person who's said some very uncivil things.  TO DATE I have seen no responses to the fact-correcting on the various articles I know Hong and the nameless 219.*.*.* IP user are upset about; instead they make character and conduct accusations, and avoid having to deal with their own inability to face the historical evidences and alternate points of view they are encountering; the politically-correct applecart is a crock of you-know-what, and using "civility" as a guise to silence truth is what's false and rude here; what's truly uncivil.  Anyway, Hong, I know you're reading this because you're a baiter; welcome to my webpage; but if you keep on with this endless citing of Wiki rules/guidelines you may find a few revoked on you.  I'm more than familiar with CCP/KMT propagandist techniques and know what you're trying to do is build a case to have me blocked so I can't correct all the false information that's being propagated; that's being slandered about my province's and peoples' histories and about my own character.  I tell the truth; you make accusations of incivility while having no manners at all yourself, and clearly a firmly closed mind on issues that are sacred cows to you, but a pack of horse-twaddle in the real scheme of things; and often lies to boot.  But no.....you have the high moral ground, or are claiming it.  Go head, but remember you have your own sandbox; this is mine...and here I'll say what I want, especially if I'm accused of incivilities by someone who can't let an argument they've lost go.....Grow up, Hong, and go find some more mud to play in, OK?Skookum1 09:28, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Parks in British Columbia
''Hi; saw your change to Victory Square's category; I'm surprised there's not a Vancouver parks cat; you'd think there would be; especially since GVRD-wide there's tons of them. My concern with the Parks in British Columbia category is that it's going to be huge once all prov, RD, fed and municipal parks are added in. Wouldn't a subcat hierarchy be more workable? Or are there not just enough park articles yet?Skookum1 02:34, 13 July 2006 (UTC) PS I know there's a provincial-parks cat, and there's only 10 or so federal parks (lots more fed-park proposals); but still between munis and RDs it's going to be a huge list...Skookum1 02:36, 13 July 2006 (UTC)''
 * I would think that most parks in the city would not be worthy of articles, considering there are dozens of parks. Even so, some sort of subcategories would make sense. --Usgnus 02:46, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Re: BC and Vancouver project formatting
Oooooh, very pretty. I'd love to adapt that kind of format. It's definitely workable. Who else have you consulted about this? (I want to see what everyone thinks.) Thanks. -→ Buchanan-Hermit ™ / ?!  03:12, 13 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Alright, let's see what they think, and if anyone else has ideas about improving it if we do use it. Thanks for the userpage comments; when I made it, it was simply because my main one was too long. I didn't expect people to like it this much! :) -→ Buchanan-Hermit ™ / ?!  17:04, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Cycle rickshaw
After I added the reference tag, I read your stories on the talk page and was getting sore thighs and saddle muscles as I was reading. It brought back memories of cycle touring (too long ago now) and early morning paper routes with heavy duti Schwinns. Very cool stuff. I have the article on my watchpage now and hope to add more to it. Will try to track down the Thai and Khmer script for the words samlor and cyclo. Both are still a big part of the scene in smaller Thai towns and in Phnom Penh, and a lot of the guys who ride are some very senior characters. It's really something to see. But for now, I will content myself with starting to watch Pedicab Driver as I knock off for the night, and will hopefully start an article about that movie in the near future. Wisekwai 22:13, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm in Bang Na, the suburbs on the southeast side of BKK, where the new airport is going to open soon. I occasionally get down to Silom, but seldom venture in near the Hindu temple. Pattaya/Jomtien probably have some nice gyms by now; for sure there are minimal gyms at hotels close to Pattaya beach. Samui is getting the heck developed out of it. They have a Tesco Lotus and a multiplex theater now. And there's probably gyms. California Fitness is making a big push into Thailand. Phuket is also booming, again. I've seen Pedicabs really happening in two places I've been: Buriram and Kanchanaburi cities. In Kanchanaburi, which is huge for tourism, I would think the pedicab guys make more than they would in the smaller provincial towns like Buriram, but probably not much a day - maybe 100 or 200 baht. That might be lowball, but even if they make more, they are working their butts off to do so. Wisekwai 07:46, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
 * It was and I guess is (in SD and Victoria and Laughlin, NV) so different in North America; party/bar shuttles, tourist tours by muscle jock, cool guys with loud stereos and huge legs and daredeviltry (depending on the milieu) and feats of impressive strength/endurance (hill-climbs in SF and Seattle, and previously in Vancouver; Victoria's not so bad; those cabs in SD are the lighter 175 lb kind; ours were 375, or with double 650 lbs, plus passengers). My "advice" to Thai pedicabbers, at least in the resorts, is to learn the razzle-dazzle and how to "pitch"; not like a tuk-tuk guy does; can't explain it; would have to "do" it to show you what I mean; making a party; of course we had the stereos and cool retro pedicab bodies, not like Asian cabs at all; ours even had seat belts and good enclosable rain canopies, though we rarely used the belts; nice storage thing under the trunk.  Another big sell - beefcake.  Tell those guys to hit the gym, talk to the muscle guys about how to get big (um...you get the idea...it ain't just about eating lots of fish, let's put it that way) and "go big world"; I worked my butt off, literally even (as you know from my story now) but if the pitch is there - the sell- most of the work is in the sale; the "pay me what you want" thing is great advice; that 100 baht a day most Americans/Canadians would assume was the value of a single ride, if you came across right about it; not in the villages or for Thai locals; just for the moneyed farang; and the bar crowd, depending on where you are and what the place is like for routes/locations for same....so Pattaya's only got a couple of hotel gyms, huh?  Hmmm.  That's what we're thinking of opening, or planning to one day, with a hotel off the side with proper bodybuilding cooking (a science as well as an art); should go hot with Russians, Yanks/Canucks, Europeans, Aussies...had the same idea for Greece but it would be more expensive to do there, maybe trickier to because of EU and various rules/laws, even though we might both have patraliaty/EU passports one day.  But ya gotta have gold to make gold, doncha?  someting between a life-business plan and an ace in the hole for retirement... I know where Bang Na is; seen it on the highway signs in BKK often enough, that's for sure.....Skookum1 07:57, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Point about the beefcake is all the guys with hot bods sold the most rides and earned the best fares; and everybody wanted to ride with them; grannies, young couples, kids, other jocks, girls, old toads on the prowl, you name it. It was such a hot sell that, even though we were supposed to keep our shirts on (partly city licensing preferences but also had to do with the fact that all our shirts were an advertising contract for Tiger Balm, which we didn't get any of other than some free balm of course), anybody with a big, strong build pretty much took his shirt off any time he want; and the meter would just start ticking, almost from the moment he took it off.  Five guys standing there, only three with bodies, one or two with shirts off; the "marks" would go to the shirtless guy first, the other handsome/built guys next; nerds had their own appeal though, and everyone got their own particular type of client; but the muscle thing was a sure sell; especially if you really could ride...smart like bull, strong like bull too..Skookum1 08:01, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Nice start
User talk:Skookum1/BC&PacificNorthwestHistory is a nice start. You seem to write in a stream of consious way, (i.e. everything that you are thinking goes onto the page), so sometimes it is difficult to follow what you are trying to say.

I suggest maybe using bullet points, and subsections with the == ==.

Anyway, if there is anything I can do to help, and when you add or change the page, let me know. Best wishes. Looking forward to your continued great work. Travb (talk) 04:06, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Nice job
Nice job, I will read your new entry later today. Travb (talk) 21:05, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Welcome to the Middle Earth WikiProject!
Hello, !

Thank you for joining WikiProject Middle-earth and contributing to improve Tolkien-related articles. We are glad to have you join in the effort!

Here're some good links and subpages related to our WikiProject.


 * Middle-earth WikiProject discussion
 * Middle-earth WikiProject things to do - A compilation of all the tasks that are needed to do
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 * Middle-earth WikiProject Portal

If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to ask on our talk page.

Thank you for your contributions and have fun editing! Bryan 13:51, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Seymour
Hello Skookum1, I know there are allegations of Seymour's alcoholism - but is there compelling evidence that alcoholism resulted in his dysentary and death? Fishhead64 15:16, 16 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, is it evidence or opinion, I wonder? I know it's in that Morton book, and I've seen it elsewhere also.  Lemme think; had to do with a bio of his second-in-command Arthur Nonus Birch, who apparently really ran the Colony as Seymour was usually either abroad; or soused.  Nice guy, even compassionate as a governor (towards the Indians, for example) but perpetually soused.  Other than that profile - which scratch, scratch, scratch I wish I knew where to find because Birch needs his own article - I think I saw it also in a journalistic piece, maybe even Stephen Hume.  My problem is I absorb all this stuff eidetically and don't necessarily remember where I read it.  But in this case I've seen at least three different takes on it; mind you, one could be the research/cite-point for the others.  Perhaps a phrasing, until a cite is found, died of dysentery (Can.sp.) "thought by/alleged in some accounts brought on by alcoholism".  There are different takes on the story of his death, that's for sure; but consider that an official record wouldn't admit to something impugning the govenor's dignity; and there wouldn't have been a coroner in Bella Coola, either.  On the other hand one of the "primary sources" (such as a Vic/New West newspaper) might have had its own agenda in slagging him by saying or indicating he'd died of the bottle.  His alcoholism is fairly well-documented; that it was a drinking binge (or witdhrawals) that brought on dysentery/dehydration is "alleged" anyway, somewhere; provable, well, no, not without a coroner or an outrigt declaration by an official; newspaper reporting in those days is notoriously sketchy as you probably know (cf the Hauka book's discussion of what the SF papers were saying during McGowan's War).  Anyway, if I can find at least one cite I know it would help; "probable" or "thought to be by some" might be better as qualifier phrases in the meantime.  Kind of the makings of a tragic story, in fact; the more I find out about him, after first not liking him because of Rothenburger's account in The Chilcotin War, the more I like him and feel sad for him; almost more of a figurehead governor than a hands-on one, too (that was Birch's doing, and a good thing given what was apparently Seymour's natural gentlemanly incompetentness) but made a grand show and "tried to do with the right thing".  One thing is for sure - his death, whatever its root cause, precipitated BC's joining Confederation, as it set the stage for Musgrave, who I've heard more than once described as a hatchetman for Confederation (if not in those words)Skookum1 18:33, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Fraser Canyon War, McGowan's War
Thanks for the heads up on those articles. Nice work and some interesting facts there. Most of it is far beyond my knowledge and reading so I can't say anything more objective! Cheers! --Ds13 16:53, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Terry Glavin
Did you perhaps not notice that he's also in Category:Canadian political writers? He can be in fifteen different non-overlapping subcategories of Category:Canadian writers at once if that's as many as apply; he just can't be in the parent category too, because that's the way the classification rules work. Bearcat 07:30, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I also added him to Category:Canadian historians based on your comment. Oh, and by the way, The Guess Who wrote and performed "American Woman", not Steppenwolf... Bearcat 07:35, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Duh.!!!!Must be my latent Alzheimer's...or post-future shock or something.....Skookum1 07:37, 18 July 2006 (UTC)Nonetheless, what about "cross-border" bands like S-wolf, anyway? Does someone have to have an either/or identity in music?  Which one is Neil Young listed under anyway?  And now that we know that Eric Clapton's Dad was Canadian....Skookum1 07:38, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Cross-border bands can certainly be filed in both Canadian and American categories; for a few examples, Heart, Rufus Wainwright, Steppenwolf, Neko Case and The Band are all already filed in both. Neil Young and Joni Mitchell are filed only in Canadian categories at present, but probably should be added to some American ones too. For musician categories, Buffy Sainte-Marie is only in Canadian ones, but for some other categories she's filed in both Canadian and American ones (i.e. both "First Nations" and "Native American" cats.) Bearcat 07:58, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Hmmmmm
For starters, what is you grandfather's name? I'm sure I can pull something off. I'll start by googling him and go from there. Mad Jack 04:19, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Oh sorry; didn't realize it wasn't there as I'd just been reading the bio and somehow assumed I'd put the name in the brief rundown I sent you; typing faster than I think, as is also the case. I uploaded the newspaper article to http://www.cayoosh.net/cleven/EndreJohannesCleven.doc - Decorah Posten, the newspaper it's from (don't have the date currently), has a Wiki entry already.  You'll also find him in the National Archives of Canada, but I've got a better picture of him than they do; a nice one of him and Grandma in fancy duds.  The article is my fix-up, still kind of awkward, from the direct translation from idiomatic Norwegian that my first-cousin-once-removed Kris, Odvar's grandson, has on his website: http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Housing/6389/endrejcleven.htm.  I think that's the same pic as in the National Archives; I have another one in uniform, but more in profile; but the one with Grandma is nicer (not sure if it's digitized yet; have to hunt for it in my PC's overly-full drives).  The English in the article is a bit maudlin, but those were different times and also some of the Norwegian idioms would not be put that way even in contemporary turn-of-the-century English.  That would appear to be his Canadian Royal Vikings Reg't uniform, but I can't really see the badge on the brim of the cap; he did not have the rank of captain in the US Army (he's listed on the regimental page I think), I think.  The village in Norway listed in the intro is normally known as Skudeneshavn, Norway and as it's quite scenic and historic it's also searchable; the "Skudesnes" version of the name is, I think, local dialect (a "nes" is like a "ness" in English, a headland; although it may simply be older pre-reforms Dano-Norwegian where the skude (means sharply jutting or prominent, etymology similar to scud in English - a type of cloud, not the missile) is in the genitive; point of all this is that the village should be linkable, certainly to the Norwegian Wikispace where iit probably has an article.  His brother-in-law Aadne was also prominent and carried on his work within the Norwegian community, but I don't have any bio on him.  Thanks for having a look at this, and strip 'er down to the necessary Wikissentials.Skookum1 07:15, 20 July 2006 (UTC)Found a couple of the other pix: http://www.cayoosh.net/cleven/endre5.jpg (as a young man), http://www.cayoosh.net/cleven/ecleven1.jpg (that military in-profile one I mentioned) and http://www.cayoosh.net/cleven/norclev1.jpg and http://www.cayoosh.net/cleven/norclevc.jpg (both the same, the latter in the original sepia; he's the one standing at right; looks a lot like my brother, eerily so; probably me, too, but as with anyone it's hard to see the resemblance to yourself).  If I find the other one with Grandma I'll re-add it here when I do; judgment call on which to use, as I know for bios one pic is Wiki-standard.  Somewhere I've got a photocopy of his discharge papers from the US Army, too (used to have the original but it got pilfered/abandoned in a garage sale held by a drunken roommate...sigh)Skookum1 07:15, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
 * OK, I will write you a draft later and post it on your page later tonight. At that point either you or me could create the article. Mad Jack 00:11, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

My dear Skookum
My sweet, dear Skookum, I've been thinking very much of you in the last days, and everything you said to me. I have much to tell you, and I would have preferred to email you instead, but since you don't have that option enabled, your talk page will do.

In the last days, and for reasons that don't matter here and now, I was feeling very down; it happens sometimes, none of us is above that. I never wanna paly victim in those circumstances; I'm just an ordinary person with ordinary problems, nothing more. I just wanted everyone who visited me to know why I wasn't in the talktative mood I usually am, and to explain why my replies were scanty. The least I expected was the incredible message you sent me, and all the wonderful effort you put in cheering me up... and most important, how you succeeded in your endeavour. the way your words and comfort seemed to stem from the very screen felt like an embrace, and I had re read it many times, and listened to the beautiful music you shared with me... I have no words to describe it. And you did all that for me, a complete stranger... I'll never forget this, my dear Skookum, ever.

I wish to give you my apology for taking so long to reply, but trust me, yours is not, in any imaginable way, one of those messages I can spontaneously and immediately reply without much thought. I've had to gather a lot of courage to actually sit down and express this, and struggled hard to find the words to say it, because rarely I am so heart-rendingly, deeply, extremely, completely and indescribably moved by someone the way you managed to touch to me. You are, to sum it up very quickly, amazing, incredible and breath taking.

There were many other things I wished to tell you about Wiki stuff, but that seems so unimportant right now, that I'd rather leave if for a later moment. Please forgive me for my very emotional response, hun, but you deserve nothing less than this. You've won a friend, no matter what, and one who wishes to keep your friendship way beyond our time at this project. Thank you, with all of me,  Phaedriel   ♥  The Wiki Soundtrack! ♪  - 08:19, 22 July 2006 (UTC) PS. You also have (doubtful) honor of being the recipient of my 5,000 edit to Wikipedia! :) So you are special in every imaginable sense. Hugs! Sharon -

Cleven
You're welcome! It looks good Mad Jack 17:01, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

You're invited :)

 * PS: I've started the Greg Kovacs article per your comment on Category talk:Canadian bodybuilders :) - Gl e n 23:10, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

test

PD rationale for Image:Ecleven1.jpg
After reading the note you left on my user talk page, I'm still not sure why Image:Ecleven1.png should be public domain. Are you saying that the image should be public domain, because the copyright on the photo was held by Endre Johannes Cleven himself, who passed away in 1916 (even though the photo was taken by someone else, of course)?


 * I am saying that I am the inheritor of the copyright, the image is in my possession, I release it into the public domain. I see from the first edition of the page that I had put "used with permission", by which I meant "by permission of other family members"; I should have just put PD-self-made; except I'm not its creator, other than scanning it from the hard copy in the family photo album.Skookum1 15:26, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

For reference, there is a list of image copyright tags available. Kimchi.sg 08:32, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I've studied those and they're really confusing in SIMPLE cases like this. Please advise.Skookum1 15:26, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Hmm... okay, I get it now, the copyright has been transferred to you over time, and you are stating that you hereby wish to release the photo into the public domain?


 * (Note that technically no one "releases their work into the public domain", according to the US copyright law that Wikipedia abides by. The phrase is practically just another way of saying that you wish to give up all the priviledges granted to you as the copyright holder of the work. In other words, anyone else is free to distribute the photo, change it, and distribute the changes.) Kimchi.sg 15:33, 24 July 2006 (UTC)


 * YES!! - so which tag do I use so that this image can go back on the main page.Skookum1 15:37, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Has the image been released to the public before? In other words, have they been given copies of the photo, or has the photo been inside the album untouched all these years? This may seem like a trivial technicality, but it's not. See Public domain and then Public domain for what I'm trying to get at. Kimchi.sg 15:49, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

P.S. There's no need to tip me off on my talk page anymore, when you reply. I watch my own contribs list to see whom I've spoken to. Kimchi.sg 15:50, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

To my knowledge it has never been published; it was his keepsake. A similar photo is in the Canadian National Archives online holdings but it, too, was donated by the family.Skookum1 16:10, 24 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Great! Your photo can be used under PD-self. Here's the rationale:
 * Since the image is likely never to have been published before, (unless someone else can prove otherwise) the photo counts as hitherto unpublished work.
 * You have said that the copyright ownership has been transferred to you.
 * From Public domain: Archives often do not hold the copyright to the items in their holdings. Only if the copyright had been assigned in writing to an archive, the archive itself is the copyright holder. Therefore, you were still the copyright holder before you put the photo on WP.
 * Hence if you desire to put the photo into Wikipedia, you will be publishing the photo, and you're free to give up the rights due to you as the owner of the photo, if you so desire. Kimchi.sg 16:52, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks; I was wondering about PD-self, since it says in its texting: "I created this work"; which I didn't exactly; I only scanned it; but if that's the best one to use, I'll use it. Thx again.Skookum1 17:22, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Re Image:BC-relief.png
Hi. I used the BC relief map you've uploaded to Wikipedia commons to create a series of locator maps on BC Mountain Ranges; e.g. Shulaps Range, Camelsfoot Range, Pacific Ranges and more. I see this is based on USGS data and I'm wondering if the same scale is available for WA/ID/MT as the Columbia Mountains, Selkirk Mountains, Purcell Range, Monashee Mountains, Cascade Range and Okanagan Highland "spill" across the border and it would be better to do locator maps showing this; might have to be resized differently I guess after creation of a BC-MT-WA-ID map, but on the other hand it wouldn't be necessary to have such a map going farther north than 54 or 55 degrees north, as the Columbias (as defined in Wiki) only go as far north as the northern end of the Cariboo Mountains (q.v.). There's also been calls on Talk:Pacific Northwest and also on Talk:Cascadia for a good regional map, terrain or otherwise. Any chance you could whip one up that spans the border (and I guess also shows it, too) that I could use as a basemap? Similarly one that covers northern BC, say from Terrace or Bella Coola northwards, and includes the Alaska Panhandle, as Boundary Ranges needs to be drawn across both sides of the border; and the Cassiar Mountains and Saint Elias Mountains also span the YT/AK borders. Thanks; if and when you ever get the time..... 17:32, 24 July 2006 (UTC)Skookum1
 * I'm not exactly certain what extent the maps should be, anyway, here are two maps: Image:Pacific northwest-relief.png, Image:South BC-NW USA-relief.png. And another one: Image:Vancouver Island-relief.png. Yet another one Image:Alaska Panhandle-relief.png --Qyd(talk)20:53, 24 July 2006 (UTC).

That's a good one! - it'll help illustrate all the northern Mountain Ranges (other than the Brooks Range) - the Chugach, the Alaska Range, the St. Elias, the Selwyns and obscure ones like the Chutine and Atsutla Ranges and others; plus the Alaska Highway and Stewart-Cassiar Highway and the old Collins Telegraph route and more; Stikine Plateau, Grand Canyon of the Stikine (currently only as the Stikine River article; waiting to find photos/details on the canyon), Spatsizi Plateau, Tagish Highland, Tahltan Highland etc maybe even "routes into the Klondike" which I think should be an article, by whatever title ("List of routes to the Klondike" maybe, or just a map, we'll see). The Vancouver Island one would be handier if it were extended east to include the Fraser Canyon in toto, maybe as far east as Merritt-Aspen Grove-Princeton, or even as far as beyond the Okanagan; and as far north as to include Clinton at least; but the scale is good. The one showing c.Prince George south to almost-the-Columbia would be useful if it also included the Columbia and the Palouse region; to illustrate Okanagan Trail, for example. Not meaning to make work for you - are these generated from GEMS/TRIM data by some mapping program? I've tried learning how to do that but never could work out the mapping softwares...gotta make lunch and get out of here; thanks for the new map, and I'll try and be more specific with the other parameters later; maybe by cropping the big ones to show you the useful areas needed for various articles/contexts....by the way do you know anything about Wiki-usage for USGS maps, and for things from BC Basemap (see http://maps.gov.bc.ca)? Want to use comparisons of respective maps from these two sources for the A-B Line (see Dixon Entrance, where someone has already posted the USGS map of that area, I don't know how legitimately)Skookum1 22:17, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I've uploaded Image:Northwest-relief.jpg (higher resolution image) that you can crop and still retain enough detail. Yes, I'm using a GIS program to export various overlays (DEM and SHP data) as geotiffs, then treat them as layers in photoshop (with some layer effects). USGS data would all be public domain (licenced under FOIA), as is all work done by any US government agency, thus suitable for use on wiki. Canadian government data (from all gc.ca websites) is trickier, as it's only free for non-comercial use; it leaves some room for interpretation:
 * Non-commercial Reproduction: "Information on this site has been posted with the intent that it be readily available for personal and public non-commercial use and may be reproduced, in part or in whole and by any means, without charge or further permission from Natural Resources Canada. We ask only that: Users exercise due diligence in ensuring the accuracy of the materials reproduced;  be identified as the source department; and, The reproduction is not represented as an official version of the materials reproduced, nor as having been made, in affiliation with or with the endorsement of ".
 * Commercial reproduction is restricted "in whole or in part", but nothing is said about re-working of data. That is probably the case with BC governmental data too.--Qyd 01:30, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Re: Mountain ranges for BC
I like the idea. I agree that some "close-up" maps would be great, maybe a close-up for each regional district. However, I don't think there are any good ones besides the GVRD one. And I suck at making maps... I wonder if any of the map makers would be willing to give it a shot? -→ Buchanan-Hermit ™ / ?!  21:48, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America Newsletter - July '06


Re:Barnston Island
Alrighty then. I wasn't sure how "coastal" an island needed to be to apply, so I decided to put it there and see what happens. -→ Buchanan-Hermit ™ / ?!  07:17, 29 July 2006 (UTC)


 * My head hurts. :D Well, I'm sure a list might be useful, if someone has the time for it. -→ Buchanan-Hermit ™ / ?!  07:31, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Walker Theatre
There will be an article eventually. Still trying to finish the many red links already on the main Winnipeg article. jdobbin 19:20, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Frank Gott
I'd say whichever name you'd prefer, and if someone wants to move it, there can be a discussion on the talk page. --Usgnus 03:30, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

License tagging for Image:BCRelief InteriorPlateau.png
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Fraser
Fraser's journals are not specific, but they clearly suggest that he went far enough to know that he had left a river channel, ie., past Iona Island. Whether it was as far as Point Grey is unclear - but that would be the maximum extent of his foray. Perhaps the addition of the word "approximately" would convey the lingering uncertainty. Fishhead64 21:06, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Hmm; then it must have been Matthews or Morley's conjecture based on a misreading of his journals; I thought he never saw the open water, and was driven back before he could by the Musqueams.Skookum1 21:07, 31 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd have to go back and read them to be absolutely certain (it's been a few years), but Fraser does make it clear that the attack was not initiated immediately, and when it was, they tried to continue on for a spell before being forced to retreat. In any event, I added the word "perhaps" in front of "as far as Point Grey." No one knows, nor ever will...it's all conjecture.  Fishhead64 21:11, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I'll dig out Morley's passage for your later; I sold my Matthews a few months ago (starving actor/musician/writer/b-builder, needed food....) but there's a few other things around here; my Akrigg I loaned to a friend who's under the weather; but they often editorialize a lot of stuff anyway.Skookum1 21:13, 31 July 2006 (UTC) PS are you going to join the BC Wikiproject, even just as a "supporter" (those who support the idea but are unprepared to dedicate more wikitime to it)?Skookum1 21:15, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

License tagging for Image:Northwest-relief HazeltonMountains.jpg
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Maple Ridge Neighbourhoods
Sorry about the missed neighbourhoods. I'm getting the information off of a paper map from 2000, so I guess those neighbourhoods weren't shown on it. They aren't in alphabetical order; I just type them out in the order I find them on the map. Carson 21:56, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Jackson, British Columbia
Regarding Jackson, BC...i meant the one near Dease Lake, British Columbia along the proposed/abandoned BC Rail line, near their "Chipmunk, British Columbia" stop. I meant the town of Jacksons, on the Stikine River.  User:Raccoon Fox • Talk • Stalk 18:13, 13 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I was planning on a short stub article, yes...along with other small towns along the abandoned BC Rail Line between Fort St. James and Dease Lake.

If that line were to have been completed...would it have eventually linked up with the Alaska Railroad? Are there any plans to finish the line and serve northern British Columbia, the Yukon, Northwest Territories/Yellowknife, and Alaska?  User:Raccoon Fox • Talk • Stalk 18:30, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Re:Chinatown
I agree, Gastown is worth mentioning. I'll try tweaking the sentence. Let's see what can be done here... -→ Buchanan-Hermit ™ / ?!  00:46, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

List of Chinook Jargon placenames - categories
I replied to you comments on my talk page. Cheers. older ≠ wiser 11:15, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Mox Peaks
Hi Mike--I replied on my talk page.


 * Another comment on my talk page--take a look. -- Spireguy 03:25, 23 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Yet more -- Spireguy 22:36, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up
Skookum, you've let me know about some good BC (Squamish, etc.) developments on my talk page. Appreciate it. I have less time online at the moment, so I don't think I can keep up for now. Maybe in the fall, though. Cheers. --Ds13 19:20, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Savona, BC and the "Big Bend" of the Columbia River
Hey, Skookum.

I was cleaning up some links to the article on the region in Texas called the Big Bend. As it turned out, I had to move this article to a new one called Big Bend, Texas. The original Big Bend article is now a disambiguation link.

In checking the "What links here", I found an article on the town of Savona, in which you added a reference to "the goldfields of the Big Bend of the Columbia river". It is not immediately clear to me which "big bend" you are referring to, or which article you intended to link to. Is this the Big Bend in central Washington state? If so, perhaps we can create a stub for Big Bend (Washington State) or somesuch (doesn't seem to be much consensus on naming conventions for regions).

Thanks

demonburrito 04:32, 2 September 2006 (UTC)


 * It would be Big Bend (British Columbia). The Big Bend, which also is something of a region-name here, is the northernmost bend of the Columbia as it curves around the Selkirk Mountains north from Golden and Revelstoke; essentially most of the Columbia's course/basin north of the Trans-Canada Highway, especially the area around the apex of the bend - now the main reach of Kinbasket Lake, the reservoir created by Mica Dam but which at one time was the route of the Trans-Canada (or rather its predecessor, before the TC was routed through the Rogers Pass.  Small towns in the area were obliterated as elsewhere in the Columbia River Treaty projects, but the name remains; south of Revelstoke is the Arrow Lakes, and the West Kootenay country south/east of it (a chain of interconnected valleys), and south of Golden the Columbia shares with the uppermost Kootenay River the valley-region known as the East Kootenay.  There was a gold rush in the Big Bend back in the 1860s, shortly after the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush and around the same time as the Colville Gold Rush (Idaho) and Wild Horse Creek (see Fort Steele, British Columbia; all were interconnected in terms of who was involved and the routes connecting them (which were the only and first non-native "roads" at the time.  To get to the Big Bend from the Fraser, a road (of sorts) led from what is still the junction town of Cache Creek to the foot of Kamloops Lake, where a guy named Savona ran a ferry up that lake and the South Thompson River and Shuswap Lake to the Shuswap's uppermost Seymour Arm (the eastern upper arm of the lake q.v.), from which a pass led over to the Columbia, north of which (upstream) there were various gold diggings.  I'm not familiar with the history of that rush or would have written an article by now; I should probably do a stub with dates.  Anyway, that's why the Big Bend link from Savona, and that's which Big Bend I was talking about.Skookum1 06:51, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

CanCon Award


In January 2006, I proposed that this CanCon Barnstar be awarded to those who make significant or "important contributions about Canada or Canadians." Since then, others have awarded it to those Wikipedians whose contributions fit the criteria I proposed. But I never did so myself. (Although it has since grown into a Barnstar of National Merit, the resolution of my initial proposal was to turn it into a  personal user award, which I then never awarded.)

Having reviewed Skookum's contributions, however, I am happy to recognize his work as being reflective of the spirit I had intended for the award: this Barnstar of National Merit is therefore given not only for creating new Canadian works, but also (and additionally in this case) for advocating (e.g., at the  journalist talk page) on behalf of the importance of CanCon on Wikipedia.

Cheers (and thank you), JTBurman 19:19, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Storyeum
I'm not personally familiar with it, so I couldn't really say; all I know is that it was already being categorized as a museum when I came along and created the Category:Museums in Vancouver subcategory. From the article, though, it sounds to me like it can be characterized as a museum in the same sense as Sainte-Marie among the Hurons, Upper Canada Village or other living museums. With the trend in museums over the past twenty or thirty years being toward much more interactivity, the boundary between museums and other types of visitor attractions has gotten blurry at times, yeah, but at least to my mind the difference between Storyeum and a theme park like Disneyland would be that Storyeum's primary purpose is educational, while the primary purpose of something like Disneyland, Six Flags or Canada's Wonderland is entertainment. The presence or absence of a roller coaster, for example, makes a pretty big difference as to which side of that dividing line something falls on. Bearcat 19:54, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Powell River
In that case, another entry should be added to the disambiguation page for the river. --NE2 18:08, 10 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Added by User:Usgnus, another British Columbian wikipedian, just today.Skookum1 20:57, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

convertIPA
To answer the question you posed in your edit summary, is convertIPA the template you were looking for? --TeaDrinker 21:33, 11 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, thank you.Skookum1 21:42, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Victory Square
Ahh, so you were the guy overcharging for that crappy beer at those late night parties! If you want to change back the neighbourhood designation to "West Hastings," feel free. I had never heard of it, but I'm not always paying attention. As a street, it extends well away from that 'hood so it struck me as confusing. I've also been thinking about starting a sub-category under neighbourhoods for dead, transformed, and/or redesignated areas, such as Hogan's Alley, Japantown, and Little Italy. I've only been here since '93, and I'm sure there's more that I've never heard of but would be interested to find out. It wasn't long after I moved here that I first heard of Crosstown. If I remember correctly, it was from an article about the name being used for that area, but it seemed to be an effort by developers chomping at the bit just when the live/work zoning laws were changing. Crosstown Traffic (cafe or whatever it was) was already there at that point, though, and the article wasn't claiming that developers were being original. Becasue of that, that area always reminded me of Jimi Hendrix. I haven't heard anyone use that name for a long time though. And then there's SoMa, the new Mt Pleasant... Bobanny 23:24, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

N'quat'qua
Aside from the main Category:First Nations in British Columbia, there are categories called Category:First Nations governments in British Columbia and Category:First Nations reserves in British Columbia. For those articles that deal specifically with either the government or the reserve, I've left them in those categories. However, most articles about "First Nations" deal with the land, the people, and the government all together. I was working primarily with Dakelh nations and found it's hard to narrow the definition of a "First Nation" to any of the three. It's a band (therefore both a people and its government) but there are signs saying "Now entering blah blah" first nation, meaning a territory. Really, it's the same as Canada, with its own category, with subgroups about politics, history, people, etc.

I figured the easiest way to divide them up was by cultural group, so I've done that with large cultural groups that contain many nations or reserves, Category:Dakelh, Category:Kaska Dena, Category:Nisga'a, Category:Nlaka'pamux, Category:Nuu-chah-nulth, Category:Stó:lō, Category:Sťáťimc, Category:Tlingit, Category:Tsimshian, etc.

Because these groups don't fit easily into modern provinces/states, it makes more sense to divide them up this way, so that two Tlingit Nations can be in the same group, even if one is within American boundaries, the other within Canadian.

I thought about dividing them up by language, but there are some obvious problems with linking people by language.

Tell me what you think. So far, the feedback has been positive. -- TheMightyQuill 19:18, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

It's all good, I was just trying to get things to conform to the structure of articles as laid out in the Indigenous Peoples Wikiproject (see template on Talk:N'quat'qua to get there) where there's an effort to distinguish between (ahem) people, land and governments; that is to say, ethno articles, territories, and actual governments; even when there's overlap (NB languages are a fourth category); the reason is because in many governments more than one tribe/ethnicity is included, likewise with particular reserves/reservations (common in the US, and occasionally here also). That's why the distinctions I was laying into in my message; quite often in BC there will be what appears to be duplication; but I think if you dig around even Dakelh you'll see that there are some organizations which bridge different culturegroups, e.g. the Carrier-Ulkatcho which combines Carrier and Chilcotin in one government, and also combines several different reserves; with the main Chilcotin a separate organization, sometimes including (I think) the Canyon Shuswap (e.g. Alkali Lake). Basically, it's a rat's nest of definitions; to bend your head even a little farther check out Somena and Talk:Somena, which is a bit of a one-off but gives you an idea of the difference between "our" perceptions of people/government and the way things were (or which the contributor at Somena maintains there were).....Skookum1 21:01, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Fraser Canyon War
Actually, that category was there already. I just added Category:First Nations in British Columbia and the NAm-Native stub. I understand your point, and it's definitely teleology, but the problem is a big one, and I'm not sure how to fix it. See Category:Years in Canada which goes all the way back to the 11th century, long before British North America or New Caledonia. =) --TheMightyQuill 02:09, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Seton Portage
Again, I understand your concern, but I don't think it's an issue in this case. I didn't add the cat to Seton Portage because there are Sťáťimc people there, but because of the road block. Ideally, the road block deserves its own article, but it doesn't have one at present. If it wasn't for that fact, I wouldn't have given it the cat (similarly, I haven't given every other city/village in BC a cat based on whose land they're on).

Just because it has a Sťáťimc category, doesn't suggest to the reader that it's only a Sťáťimc community. It should be clear from the article that it isn't soley a Sťáťimc community. Not that you can't have more than one category...

As for N'quatqua, a D'Arcy article should obviously be written, and I wouldn't expect a Sťáťimc cat on that page.

On the Squamish Nation vs Skwxwu7mesh Uxwumixw, I might be willing agree with you in this case, but not necessarily as a general rule. It doesn't really matter anyway, as long as there are sufficient redirects, and the issue is addressed in the article. In a lot of cases, the indigenous names/spellings are now the official names, listed in status cards etc. I'd prefer accuracy over common usage, especially when the redirects are there to catch any lost souls. In the case of Sťáťimc, I think it's actually much less confusing than Lilooet, because of the city, the people, the band and the tribal council that all claim that name. -- TheMightyQuill 10:11, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

reinventing the wheel
I don't feel I'm reinventing the wheel, so much as fixing it.

First of all, many indigenous cultural groups already have their own categories (eg. Category:Blackfoot tribe, Category:Iroquois, Category:Ojibwa tribe. BC hasn't done this, and it doesn't make sense not to. A lot of the articles I've added to categories were totally orphaned, or in overly broad categories. I don't think the current divisions along state/provincial lines makes sense, and I'm working here to find a better solution.

Second, I know tribal governments incorporate people from two different cultures. Most of the work I've done has been with the Dakelh people, whose tribal gov't is the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council. Again, an article can be part of two different categories, so this isn't a problem at all. As for languages, I'm not interested in grouping people by language. I think it's kind of stupid. One wouldn't categorise the united states and germany in one group, brazil and Rwanda in another, simply because their official languages happen to share the same origin. Why would we do the same with indigenous nations?

Third, have fun in Lilooet. I hope the weather stays nice for you. I just drove along the Fraser River Canyon last week and had a really nice time. -- TheMightyQuill 23:15, 4 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I was just trying to mean to stay within the existing structures, jumbled as they are, and be wary of sorting language cats in with tribal cats and such; not that there's been any systematization for the WikiProject, just that there's a bunch of existing hierarchies, knotted and otherwise. I do have issues with using native orthography instead of standard English orthography (e.g. Nuxalk or St'at'imc w/wo the accents) for cat titles as well as certain aspects of main article titles (see the talk page on the unre-typable destination of the Squamish Nation page for another editor's comment on this re wiki policy).  The linguistics group thing is an existing hierarchy and one of those classification systems which we may not like about social sciences, but it's there and has an established body of literature; my main problem about most aboriginal language articles is that they're largely technical and very dry, without much reader-friendly, layman-toned content; and yeah, people are not languages, nor is nationality entirely about language even within aboriginal history (I'm writing a bio of Chief Nicola right now; when it's done that won't be a redlink so check 'er out).  Among other things you'll note in his history, being Salishan didn't stop the Lillooets from being tromped on by the also Salishan Shuswap, Thompson and Okanagan, did it?).


 * And yeah, the weather's gonna be fine. Not even any snow on the high country, so we may be able to drive right to the top of Blustry (at the lip of the Clear Range overlooking Lillooet and Fountain Ridge from the east) and over China Head (from the head of the Yalakom River to Big Bar); got some obscure lookout points I've never been to but have someone with the mobility to go for the whole show, so could have some pretty cool images later.  That area's nearly always sunny, even when it's cold, but I'm betting it stays warm another few weeks (El Nino and all that).  Gonna have my battery-powered amp and mini-amp (belt-sized) and my ee-lectric guitar with me, too, so should be having lotsa fun under the stars and those big blue skies....anyway, back to Nicola.Skookum1 23:32, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

So far, I'm created Category:Secwepemc, Category:Gwich’in, Category:Haida, Category:Tsimshian, Category:Sťáťimc, Category:Nisga'a, and Category:Dakelh.

Category:Dene and Category:Kwakwaka'wakw already existed but I added a bunch to them.

Your Chief Nicola article is really interesting. I had no idea the name came from Nicholas... Where are you getting the info from? Keep up the good work. -- TheMightyQuill 06:02, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Nicola
Thanks for noticing. It was a pain to find. I think I might even report it as a mediawiki bug. That reminds me, I have to add the comment back in (I removed it while trying to debug). The original problem was that you had included an extra close quote somewhere further down in the article, so it assumed something, which messed the whole first paragraph up. Cheers! --Storkk 00:06, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that was it. I did not realize that the third apostrophe (which was the problem, yes) was intentional. I've fixed it now so that the apostrophe is included. Just used 's. Cheers, Storkk 00:29, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
 * By the way, what's up with the Date of Birth? could we use "c." for both D.O.B. and D.O.D., instead of XXXX/XXXY ?
 * Teit gives those year-spans; if there was a 1780-1785 what am I supposed to do, ballpark c.1783 to fit with c.1865? Because Teit is "more specific" with his "died about 1865" (I provided the c.).Skookum1 00:34, 5 October 2006 (UTC)


 * By the way, no, both ends have screwy results... see the previous edit I made, where I'd left one too many apostrophes in front. Anywhoo.... I think it's something that should at least be brought to the attention of some developer. It's definitely wierd and non-obvious behavior. --Storkk 00:38, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Yup... a smoke sounds very good..... :-). Seeya. Storkk 00:41, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Comments on Models of Migration ot the new World
Thanks, Skookum 1 for your interesting comments on my comments about migration to North America. I now live in Cooktown, Australia but was around Vancouver at periods in the 1960s and early 70s (was involved with the "underground City Governemt, the Georgia Straight, etc., etc.) and wonder from the photo on you "Talk" page whether we might have met at some time? In any case, best wishes from Down Under! Cheers, John Hill 23:10, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Still looking for that base map of the Pacific Northwest,
Are you still looking for that base map of the Pacific Northwest, as listed on the WikiProject Maps/Requested and orphan maps page? I might be able to come up with something. Let me know, MapMaster 03:05, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

re 1930s
Hey, Skookum; I haven't read it, but there's a book called Park Prisoners by Bill Waiser about relief camps and Japanese internment in federal parks (and maybe provincial ones as well). He also wrote a very engaging account of the On-to-Ottawa Trek, All Hell Can't Stop Us. One of the more interesting relief camps was the one in Point Grey that doubled as one of the two militia units ready to move in if the formal request was made to the feds (the other unit was in Victoria). Needless to say, that militia unit wasn't considered too reliable once the relief camp strike began, and sure enough, many of them joined the strike.


 * The issue of the camps interests me because I come from a place that had been a Japanese relocation centre, although I happen to know no relief camp types were assigned there; it and its neighbours in the Bridge River-Lillooet Country are anomalies versus the usual internment-camp scenario, although that's a longer story than I'll delve into here, except to add that a lot of that region's history defies the norms current elsewhere and also the prevailing paradigms of provincial historiography; which is one reason I think so little is known/studied about the area, because it doesn't serve as "useful examples" for the propositions/theories that people are advancing (as if those propositions/theories were facts rather than opinion, but again that's a longer story). The area is also an anomaly re the 1930s as, unlike the rest of the province, it was an economic "bright spot" (despite Emily Carr's mis-perceptions, as recounted in Barman's West Beyond The West) and was free of labour strife, more or less, until the end of the decade and the onset of the war.  I don't even recall any relief-camp workers being put on road-work in the region, probably because for many years local ranchers and other property-holders were able to ameliorate their tax burden with roadwork; i.e. there was none to be done.  But elsewhere I'm really curious:  New Denver and Greenwood of course were pre-extant towns, like the Bridge River townsite and Minto City, but the large Tashme camp near Hope, Taylor Lake?  Lemon Creek?   - were these already built in 1941?


 * Further to the comments already below on BC history vs Canadian history, the particular fate of the men arrested at Mission City I'm curious of, as for sure they weren't shipped back to the city. Schroeder's book doesn't say where they went; that they're missing from the current On To Ottawa page is another issue with that Granite Curtain thing; often accounts of the On To Ottawa trek make it sound like the guys from Vancouver made it as far as joining up with those from Regina....Skookum1 02:34, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

One thing that tends to get lost because these events are usually treated as a national phenomenon is that the concern over a general strike (as a prelude to revolution) was to do with the waterfront situation, not relief camp workers, at least in the eyes of local authorities. Of course, a joining of forces between the 2 groups was the biggest fear of the government (and the goal of the commies), but the relief camp strikers were treated as a crowd control/public nuissance problem by the police because it was clear that most of the men were not into communism and, despite the behind the scenes maneuvering by commie agitators, the strike was conducted with democratic decision-making at public meetings. Of course it wasn't the same thinking in Ottawa - RB Bennett, for example, claimed that the On-to-Ottawa delegation was sent to kidnap him, based partly on paranoia and partly on RCMP intelligence failures.


 * There are echoes of all the 1930s labour strife re the Solidarity Crisis of 1983, which as you can see still doesn't have an article (I've been holding off, not even wanting to draft a stub, because of the complexity of the story as it starts before the calling of the election that year, months before the aborted general strike, and there aspects which are not entirely labour issues, and many involved were not coming at it from labour: labour action was the only available action given the constitutional stalemate when a sitting party has lost public support but refuses to resign....cf. the story of Premier Joseph Martin (1900), whose bio I've yet to get to summarizing; his story is quite different from 1983 - or 1935 - as it was not a labour-related matter but mentioned here because of the extraordinary defiance of the electorate/House and the unusual and controversial role of the L-G; 1983 also involved the L-G but in a more or less more wholesome light.... But I digress, as always.


 * The reason I raise the comparison to 1983 is because of your comment these events are usually treated as a national phenomenon is that the concern over a general strike (as a prelude to revolution) was to do with the waterfront situation, not relief camp workers, at least in the eyes of local authorities. While I see what you mean, i.e. that the labour unrest in BC is considered in national histories to be part-and-parcel of what was happening elsewhere while "on the ground" here at home the perspective was much more clearly one of outright revolution, had things proceeded to their natural (unaborted) conclusion(s); "local authorities" were probably much more realistic about the potential for this than anyone east of the Granite Curtain and hence the reason for their various crackdowns on both docks and the masses of unemployed in the relief camps and hobo jungles.  I'm sure within the federal levels there was some concern over the security interests represented by the docks and the railhead - Vancouver's raison d'etre within Confederation historically - but the province was left to its own devices, what with Ottawa having its hands full with the Prairie and Ontarian elements and the usual central Canadian morasse by which everything beyond the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes is largely dismissed of importance, save how it relates to the well-being of central Canada.  But talk of revolution and the commie scare in Vancouver - a very tangible item in those days - was not table-fare in other parts of Canada the way it was here; ditto in 1983.  In the years since, the popular image of the Depression is one of a sentimental nature (think Barry Broadfoot), and the violent/volatile history of Vancouver in the 1930s is subsumed in popular history; always presented as purely a labour struggle instead of as a political one.  Ditto with 1983, although the violence engendered there began after the general strike was aborted, not before.  What was similar, though, was the degree to which the emergent political culture and debate in BC was completely subsumed in the rest of Canada as merely more BC labour trouble; all else was glossed over, much to my surprise even visiting Calgary, where then-fellow Green Party start-up types like myself were under the impression the Solidarity thing was entirely labour-related and had no idea of the popular upswell over what had happened; the Socreds running roughshod over both constitution and convention, plus the get-even agenda of the restraint budget, and Bennett even threatening the use of troops to put down the strike, or te flim-flam nature of the so-called (and non-existent) Kelowna Accord with Jack Munro.  Sigh.  There's so much.  Likewise, as you've discovered, in the political warfare of the 1930s.  It's part of my overall notion that BC has a separate history, a separate identity from the rest of the country, just as we have a separate origin and more than a bit of a separate social-ethnic composition (in all its variations historically) as well as of course our prized physical isolation; an isolation that, if revolution were ever to overtake the Lower Mainland, would be help make it very difficult to suppress (short of using US troops, which are immediately at hand of course).


 * So "what if" the strikers of 1935 had coalesced into a full-scale provisional government and seized control of the port? Ottawa already had its hands full, and a revolution in BC would have garnered steam on the Prairies where memories of Winnipeg and Regina were still fresh; sure there would have been rightist/government militias, but my estimation is they would have been outnumbered.  In retrospect arming the relief camp guys at Jericho doesn't seem very smart, although of course in tose days they probably didn't keep weapons in barracks.  I don't think the US could have been called on by dint of us still being part of the British Empire and because of the still-testy relationship between the Dominion and the Republic in pre-WWII times; control of the port of Vancouver and the railway would have been seen as a security concern of the empire and perhaps Royal Navy troops and ships would have been moved into place; a British military action the US might have protested against, come to think of it.  All very interesting, as was the whole era; and again, this is the kind of history that should be more in standard curriculum; it's not "positive" history that I want to see apposite to the negative menu of ethnic-strife histories of BC, which is all anyone seems to know these days (particularly new BCers, wherever they're from); but the complete picture; and from a BC perspective, not from the national-subsuming "Canadian" perspective which hasn't yet incorporated the distinctiveness of BC into its identity-stew (except as the eccentric cousin with the warmer weather).Skookum1 23:26, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

As for the specials, there wasn't really a clear line dividing bona fide public police from the private forces, although there was a big shift in 1935 compared with other labour conflicts in that the city police was firmly behind the employers (who pretty much comandeered city hall for that reason by getting Gerry McGeer elected - also turned out to be sort of a dry run for the NPA, which formed 2 years later by the same crowd). Also, police spies, not private detectives, were being used, unlike earlier strike situations. Many of the specials were ostensibly recruited as "probationers" through the VCPD's new training school. There were probably around 750 specials affiliated with the 3 levels of police, but it's not clear what private forces were mobilized beyond that or whether business focused their resources solely (besides propaganda) on supplying the public police forces (such as the fleet of cars that was donated to the city police). I believe the local Legion of Frontiersmen were also revived in preparation of a showdown with the commies (fairly obscure group, sort a boy scouts for grown ups, but quite active in BC, especially before WWI - let me know if you've come across them, as you seem to be more up on earlier and province-wide history than me). General Odlum was leading some contingent or other as well as part of Mayor McGeer's promise to mobilize 10,000 like-minded citizens if necessary. In any case, the Beatty Street Drill Hall was a very busy place in the mid-30s. Most of the published On-to-Ottawa Trek stuff has been done by historians from the prairies, (not too surprising given the Regina Riot). But it seems to me there's an untold and even more of a thrill-a-minute tale that's more a north/south, Pacific Coast thing than the obligatory east/west flow in Canadian history. I could go on and on about this stuff, and eventually I'll try and get something published, but I'll stop here.

Oh yeah, on another note, HongCouver has far more delete and/or merge comments on its AfD page, but its been more than the 5 days but no action's been taken by the Lords of Wiki - in case you want to get your 2 cents in there. cheers, Bobanny 21:32, 26 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I skimmed through some books I have for the Mission/Gatling Gun thing, but couldn't find it. I know I've seen a reference to that somewhere else, but it might have been a different context. The boys coming back after the Regina Riot mostly signed up to go back to relief camps after coming into Vancouver, and others went straight to the camps. I did find a photocopy I made from a police spy who was trying to infiltrate the returning group in Mission, where, he said "only one passenger alighted at that point, a young foreigner," but he doesn't say anything about the gatling gun. As an aside, he was unsuccessful in 3 attempts to board the train. The 1st attempt, he "was put off the train by two CPR officials who told me that as the train was a special they could not sell me a ticket. On my second attempt I was booted off by strikers standing picket at the coach door who said they had a bunch of new leaders. On my 3rd attempt I tried ot get on the caboose but was taken off by some Provincial Police Constables." It might have been a rumour, or it might have been in 1938 when the next relief camp strike happened, and the famous Post Office "sitdowners strike" took place. It's also been reported in a number of accounts that there was a machine gun present at the Battle of Ballantyne Pier, but I couldn't find any evidence for that. Mind you, it's only trivia and curiosity on my part, because there were certainly machine guns nearby if the need arose. That was notably the first time the city police used tear gas, and it might have been tear gas guns that people saw/heard instead of machine guns.
 * The Ballantyne Pier thing I remember seeing, somewhere, a picture of two military types - BCPP maybe, or RCMP or regular military I'm not sure - standing guard at the port, and I remember there being a tripod in the shot, presumably a gatling or machine gun; might have been in a BC Archives publication on historical photographs, or I just saw it while researching the VPL photo database while working for Gastown years ago. The Mission/Gatling Gun thing I've only ever seen in Andreas Schroeder's Carved From Wood, and nowhere else; I doubt very much the city newspapers would have covered it (or cared to report truthfully, as they rarely do during political crises, even now) and it must be from a local account that Andreas (who lives in Mission) got the story; maybe in the Fraser Valley Record archives (Mission's newspaper).  It's tidbits like this that get shuffled aside in the broad-rewrites of BC history that tend to be urban-centric, and which are also heavily flavoured by the newspaper editors/columnists of the day.  It's one reason why I don't consider newspapers to be "primary sources" as they can't be trusted, and publishers do not publish to report the news, but to direct it; so whether it's the 1935 prostitution case you brought up elsewhere, the labour/political strife of the 1930s (or the 1900s or 1983), or the early colonial/provincial politics - none of the articles and editorials should be considered to reflect public opinion, rather they are trying to dictate it, or pretend that their views are those of the majority.  Whether it's Chinese/railway politics (there really is no difference if you read J. Morton's book), labour/political turmoil, native rights/claims or anything else: the newspapers are not reliable, and more-than-tend to fabricate and distort events than honestly report them.  And latter-day historians are all too willing to use them as "sources" and representative of the "European" community as a whole (I hate that word), when the opposite is the case.  Rothenburger's book on the Chilcotin War comments that in public meetings throughout both colonies, there was sympathy for the native side of the equation at all public meetings; similarly the wide and complex divisions in the "white" community over Chinese labour are subsumed, by use of editorial quotations, to be all one monolithic "racist" entity, which was and is far from the case; during 1983 there's an interesting exception to this, as the Sun and Province were on strike for most of the summer and reporters published unfettered in the new BC edition of the Globe & Mail; and the contrast to Sun and Province distortionism with the clarity and honesty of the Solidarity-era Globe; then there's 1990, when the Sun and Province at first tried to ignore the RCMP attack on the Seton Lake First Nation (see Seton Portage, British Columbia) but were forced to when a homemade tape showing the dog/baton/chopper attack on women and children reached BCTV; even then they said either "a handful" or "a dozen" RCMP officers were there to arrest the elders and children who had blockaded BC Rail; it took The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to report the truth of the numbers and logistics - there were 63 RCMP, and orders were given in French to keep the First Nation in the dark about what was said, and the RCMP claim that they were forming a foot-escort for the squad cars holding the arrestees that would march them to Lillooet was poppycock - there's a 3500' pass and 35 miles of desert canyon road en route, so marching the arrestees into the heart of the reserve (which you have to go through to get to the pass from the blockade/arrest site) could only have been a deliberate provocation, since both rail line and lake were available to take the detainees the 20 miles to Lillooet via those much easier routes.  The Sun and Province barely covered this at all; what they did cover contained false information and disinformation; I'm sure you're familiar with similar obfuscation concerning Gustafsen Lake.
 * I've become convinced that War Plan Red was revised in 1935, not because the US military had nothing better to do at the time, or some other cutesy reason a la "Canadian Bacon" or "Wag the Dog," as is the usual take on it, most recently in a Washington Post article that was reprinted in the National Post. American sources would be harder to come by to prove any such claim. The commies down there had the whole coast tied up on that side of the line in 1934 and (I think) 1936, and a general strike was pulled off in San Fran's Great Strike. Another interesting tidbit is that J. Edgar Hoover was building the FBI into a super-police force at the time in his "war on crime" (which was more of media campaign than anything - the FBI only had 500+ members in 1935 compared to a couple thousand mounties). The FBI wasn't allowed to do any political spying, officially, until the end of 1936 when Hoover briefed Roosevelt on subversive activities, particularly their influence on the Pacific Coast. I also found a transcript of a radio speech by Mayor McGeer where he referred to "X Plan," the American contingency plan to pull out all the troops in case of a Bolshevik uprising. Most likely big mouth Gerry was given a peek at US intelligence that he was supposed keep secret, not announce over the radio. One thing I believe that makes this period interesting is that the sun is beginning to set on the British Empire at the same time that American mass media takes off (radio, Hollywood, newspaper syndication, etc.) It seems to me that this was, for certain segments in Vancouver, a very abrupt and unnerving shift, especially given BC's history of trying to keep out the yanks, but even still, a connection was made across the border for the purpose of dealing with the radicals.
 * I don't think it was really a revolutionary situation in the thirties, not in terms of "consciousness" or however you wanna measure such a thing. The depression crisis meant that there was no longer a "business as usual" that could serve as a status quo, or moderate position in anyone's thinking, making pretty much everyone extreme even if they weren't revolutionary in their orientation. For conservatives this meant there was nothing to conserve - even they didn't think it was possible to return to what came before the depression. Conservatives were effectively controlling the country (the state during times when they didn't technically form the government), and they were pretty far to the right of the spectrum, and the protests were proportionate to that extremism. In other words, I think that anticommunism was more significant than communism in the interwar period. From what I can tell, there was about a six month period at the end of 1934 and early 1935 when it seemed that a general strike/revolution was in the works and at least possible even if remote, so far as the state/government/business elites were concerned, and that perceived threat unified the anticommunists like never before or since, including liberals and conservatives, and even social democrats in some cases. If there would have been a major upheaval, it would have been a complete bloodbath, and who knows what would have come after that. It was also a struggle between the west and central Canada, as well as Vancouver versus the provincial government complicating the situation, but giving it that local political flavour you intimated. Personally, I don't think Canada makes much sense as a political entity for a lot of reasons, but I'm sceptical that there's a coherent BC identity/experience either. My impression is that it's always been cosmopolitan here, not so much in the modern sense of being worldly, but in the original sense that the character here is shaped by innumerable influences from all over the place.
 * I started the Solidarity Crisis article with only a couple sentences and a photo of a poster I found in a free box a few years ago, but I'll leave the rest up to you:) It was before my time and I don't really know much about it, except that lefties still get very excited when the subject comes up. My over-all impression though is that it was significant not just for its size and the threat of a general strike, but because it was a labour/community alliance, and that the left here still hasn't recovered. Bobanny 06:11, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Newspapers
Thought i'd use a new heading since the above section is getting pretty unwieldy. Pretty much every source has a bias or POV (despite Wikipedia's pretensions). People who experience the same event will give conflicting interpretations even if they have no obvious agenda to push. The best anyone can do is to be aware of what that POV is, and try and draw on as many sources as possible and weigh them. Usually when I pick up a history book these days I'll scan through the bibliography to see what sources the author draws from. (I did peruse Morton's book on the Chinese last time I was at the library, and noticed he used exclusively newspapers!)Often newspapers - love 'em or hate 'em - are the only documented source available (less and less so, however), and as the cliche goes, are the first draft of history. I generally agree with you though about newspapers being unreliable at best, but all too often are dispicable liars (I was in Montreal during Oka, and have sat through Splitting the Sky's blow-by-blow accounts of Gustafson Lake). After going through a lot of interwar newspapers, I've come to think that newspapers were a lot better back then. Everyone knew who the owner was, what party he supported, and what slant to expect in the editorials. It was very partisan, which IMO is a good thing. If I want dirt on Gerry McGeer, it'll be in the Conservative News-Herald; that thing about RB Bennett's anti-communist paranoia I mentioned is from the Liberal Vancouver Sun and was implicitly mocking him when an election was on the horizon. There's little of that these days in Canadian media, at least not in an upfront way. They all pretend to be some sort of neutral fourth estate acting as a watchdog, or claim to be reflecting public opinion, as you mentioned. Personally, I preferred the National Post when Conrad Black owned it for this very reason, even though I think he's an idiot like every other non-blueblooded Canadian. Another thing that made the newspapers superior back in the day is that often they would transcribe a lot of stuff verbatim, rather than the stick-words-in-someone's-mouth style today. Your Globe and Mail anecdote during Solidarity reminds me of something I've also noticed doing primary research recently, which is that newspapers from other cities will often have a slightly different take or different information than the local press. Although I haven't found definite confirmation of a machine gun at ballantyne pier for example, I did find a little clip from the Montreal Star about a big shipment of machine gun ammo coming to the VPD around the same time. Another example is the biggest police corruption scandal in Vancouver in 1955. The story was broken by a trashy tabloid produced in Toronto called "Flash," even though the journalist was a regular contributor to the Province at the time.Bobanny 03:21, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Joseph Martin
Thanks for that, the notes will be useful and/or interesting I am sure. By the way, the red link on your user page to Joseph Martin (politician) will light up better if you change it to Joseph Martin (Canadian politician) and when you do that one on the Wild McLean Boys, there is something at John Andrew Mara about it. Cheers and thanks! KenWalker | Talk 03:58, 30 October 2006 (UTC) Not sure what to call the Wild McLean/MacLean (whichever) Boys, other than by that title; it's either that or by their first names, starting with Allan; it's also got significance as being in the aftermath of an aborted Shuswap-Thompson-Okanagan revolt against outsiders early in the 1870s, which was called off by the abstention of the Adams Lake Band, then under the control of a religious zealot, and Chief Chilliheetza (Nicola's son; I think also by the good offices of Dufferin, who made a good impression with native peoples. Not sure what to call that episode either, as BC history hasn't given it a name, nor barely acknowledged that it ever (almost) happened.  I have a friend over right now so will get back to Joseph Martin tomorrow or next.Skookum1 05:29, 30 October 2006 (UTC)