User talk:Skookum1/Archive 9

Outline of Canadian Provinces
I have noticed that you contribute alot to Canada articles on Wikipedia. I am requesting your help to join the Outline of Knowledge WikiProject, that I'm sure you know about. We recently have planned to start new outlines for the provinces of Canada and our first province we have started an outline for is British Columbia, if you can help out in any way to these Canadian province outlines that would be great! Burningview (talk) 19:57, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Re:Harriet Nahanee's death and re Skwxwu7mesh/Squamish
The Squamish link I removed because that statement was already rather long and I didn't think that a specific example was needed there. As for Harriet Nahanee, her death isn't really worth mentioning in this article because it's a pretty loose connection. Also saying "some have attributed" is weasel words. -- Scorpion 0422  16:53, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I was the one who used "some" so as to avoid saying flat-out that her death was caused by her arrest; but that is certainly the implication of the slew of news coverage surrounding it, and it's very much part of the controversies surrounding the Games; I see User:Mwtoews sees it the same way. To me, not including it is "weasel logic", given that it received so much coverage and, frankly, medical causes of death are always open to debate; there was no coroner's inquest that I'm aware of although there were calls for one.  Removing it because of the use of "some" was not the way to deal with it; which was a different wording, whatever that might be.  It's noe of the more notable stories in the history of the controversy of the Olympics in BC, and she was also one of the more notable activists in BC, period.  Her death in apparent connection with her arrest is certainly notable in relation to the protests against hte Olympics and therefore it shoudl be in teh article.  I'm not sure what you meant by a Globe and Mail articel being "PPV" (pay-per-view?); maybe you meant POV, i.e. op-ed piece, and that's also the case with almost anything in The Tyee.....the way to solve that is to say "Nahanee's death has been associated with the circumstnaces in her arrest in op-ed columns" or some such wording, not to remove it out-of-hand.Skookum1 (talk) 17:19, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * She is, in fact, seen as a martyr, a categorization I know User:OldManRivers would support if he was around (not lately) - he's Skwxwu7mesh.Skookum1 (talk) 17:22, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Recognition

 * Wow, thank you; I think I've got some other barnstars hidden away in my archives, but this one's special, as Socrates was a pain in the ass too....LOLSkookum1 (talk) 18:58, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Ha good point, he certainly didn't shy away from speaking his mind. Continue on!  H1nkles (talk) 19:43, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * It's easier to 'get' him via Xenophon rather than through the thickets of Platonic prose, I find...aside from that I've looked at List of sportspeople cleared of doping charges and wondered how to retitle it - List of sportspeople cleared of the use of banned drugs? Doesn't have "charges" in there and sometimes it's the process that cleared them, not a test...I'm hesitating to wade through all teh "doping" articles and retitle them, though most of them are pretty straightfoward but some like this it's a question of tricky syntax...and not all drugs in question were "performacne enhancing", some were jsut banned (although I understane the cocaine is considered performance enhancing in some sports...Ross Rebagliati was cleared because marijuana isn't officially "performance enhancing" although in my experience it can be, dependong hwt you're doing :-) .....once that's done, then it's time for a "bulk CFD".  I had to laugh upon finding that there's no Category:Doping cases in bodybuilding, perhaps because the only notable ones are at the amateur level and most bodybuilder articles aren't written yet; somehow, "mysteriously", there have been no sacrificial cows at the pro level....(I'm a member of WikiProject Bodybuilding as you may have gathered somewhere along the way....Skookum1 (talk) 19:52, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the issue with titling the articles is one of syntax - finding a way to say it that isn't POV but also isn't too burdensome (Performance Enhancing Drugs is a mouthfull compared w/ simply Doping). Wordsmithing is the key to that effort.  The CFD will revolve around the stigma of performance enhancing drugs.  It is certainly in our society and it is obviously here in WP as well.  How to best balance the articles is going to be the crux of the discussion, where that discussion takes place will be important to determine.  Perhaps on the talk page of the main Performance Enhancing Drugs (currently titled Doping) article would be best.  Ironic that there isn't a list for weightlifters accused of using PEDs (sorry my own abbreviation, getting tired of writing it out).  You would know better than I but I would assume that PED use is still fairly common-place in the professional weight lifting arena.  If WP is going to high-light Marion Jones, or Barry Bonds and their use of PEDs then we must be consistent and point the finger at some of the "biggest" users of PEDs - weightlifters.  Again, I'm speaking out of ignorance and would be happily corrected if I am wrong.  On a completely separate topic, I note in your profile that you had some business with worker's comp up in Canada a while back.  I currently work as a claims adjuster for a worker's comp company here in the U.S. and can understand the frustration you must have endured. H1nkles (talk) 21:06, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

A contest you may be interested in
Hello, Skookum1. There is a new contest for U.S. and Canada roads that you may be interested in. To sign up or for more information, please visit User:Rschen7754/USRDCRWPCup. The contest begins Saturday at 00:00 UTC. Regards, Rschen7754 (T C) 04:01, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

1946 Vancouver Island earthquake
Just letting you know I'm finally starting to expand this article! Quite destructive ;-). Black Tusk (talk) 05:38, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Fort Simpson (Columbia Department)
Looking into it a bit I've come across something curious on BCGNIS that confused me at first. Apparently Port Simpson is both the name of a "community" (although both and  say the name was officially changed to Lax Kw'alaams in 1986) and a "port". The community, at or near the site of old Fort Simpson, is described as being on Port Simpson, the waterbody. I was confused at first when seeing the location of Port Simpson (the community) given as "S shore of Port Simpson". Anyway, I was began this talk a bit confused and intending to ask you for ideas, but I think I figured it out in typing this up. Two Port Simpsons, one a waterbody and one a community. ...might have a page for Fort Simpson later today. Did you know that Peter Skene Ogden was the first Chief Trader there? Pfly (talk) 00:03, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Vaguely; all the northern forts had an "all-star cast" of Chief Traders; I've been researching the sad tale of John McLoughlin, Jr. of Ft Stikine and I believe Douglas was the first Chief Trader of Taku. Anyway there were also two Fort Simpsons, the original location being at or near the mouth of the Nass, though I doubt that location is in BCGNIS.  There are bunches of "ports" along the BC Coast; another curiosity is that Port Renfrew is on Port San Juan, which is the name of its harbour (and the mouth, I think of the San Juan River (British Columbia))...btw did you see my recent notes on Talk:Fort Astoria??Skookum1 (talk) 00:52, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Port San Juan was named by Manuel Quimper I believe--probably for good old Juan Vicente de Güemes Padilla Horcasitas y Aguayo, 2nd Count of Revillagigedo. Pfly (talk) 08:09, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Hm; unusual I think to transfer a personal name to a saint's name....I'm just waking up but it wouldnt' by any chance be on June 21 that Quimper was in that harbour would it (feast day of St. John the Baptist).....you know that Capt. Walbran's BC Coast Names is online right? I should probably make that article; I'm trying to think of what other "ports" there are - Port Neville I think, up by Blunden Harbour/Belize Inlet somewhere...Skookum1 (talk) 12:48, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Does "San" always mean saint? The San Juan Islands were also named for Juan Vicente de etc. It does seem odd now that you mention it. Pfly (talk) 15:33, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Maybe it is a mistake. I got the San Juan Island info from a book on Washington placenames I have. But these kind of books are not always correct. Hmm... Pfly (talk) 15:51, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * On third thought, the Hayes atlas makes the same claim about San Juan Island(s) being for Don Juan etc. The other book I have is a little vague about it, saying that Quimper gave the name San Juan "with a view to his future patronage..." But if nothing else the claim is backed up by two sources, which is what matters on WP. Still something to keep an eye out for. I'm wondering if the name is actually for John the Baptist, whose feast days are in June and August--just when Quimper would have been in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Hmm.. Pfly (talk) 16:56, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

NAWAPA
Previous content of that article was a copyright violation hence the deletion. If you take a peek at the delete summary you'll see "copyvio" in there - that's shorthand for copyright violation.

Hope that helps -- Tawker (talk) 18:12, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Where I've Been
Hey Skookum1! I can tell you miss me, but you don't have to admit it. Haha. I've been somewhat busy through the winter season. Carving, doing art, work and cultural stuff. Working my way to "learning" more and also "teaching" more to my community. At some point I'll be back but haven't had inspiration for a while to contribute, but it will come back. I still check my watchlist every other day so I will see any messages that come my way. Hope your doing well. OldManRivers (talk) 01:02, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * It's what I figured - you've got a culture to live, to experience, to teach, I kind aknew that and that's why you weren't around, not visibly anyway...there's a few things that your opinion/input wouldn't have hurt on - lately 2010 Winter Olympics re Harriet Nahanee (see the Olympics article talkpage); I guess I should have post-messaged you, I didn't know you were lurking. Me, I've been too wiki-busy but kind of a necessity in the winter here, I'm not playing outside as much as i was; but a friend is moving back here in a few days and the various projects I've got on the boil, and/or the ant-nests I've poked a stick into, I'll have to leave fallow...I skirt around the big issues too much, and actually probably spend more time researching than actually writing, and talkpage-kibbitzing adn only article-tweaking and templating instad of actually contributing; like wading into a deep pool that's also a whirlpool I find....and between my training and my playing I've got to start setting real-world priorities.  I'm doing OK, poor but happy like always, but gotta get my shit together; writing will always be there, food might not be.... LOL.... I envy you your culture, you know; it's my own "people"'s that almost more threatened, because nobody believes we have one and/or those of us who do are considered nuts....well, not here in Scotia at least, being a musician/artist/writer here is actually socially acceptable....hey by the way, do you know Clarence Abrahams who works at the Capilano Suspension Bridge?  I worked with him on Pathfinder and we've stayed in touch (he's in my facebook - you're not in facebook are you?); as I recall he's Haida and Kwakwaka'wakw, not sure which of the latter....this morning btw NewsWorld had on that special about the dietary effort in Alert Bay, pretty interesting to see Dzawadzli (sp?) - and the CBC announced actually pronounced Klinaklini the Kwak'wala way...got me thinking that IPA for a lot of indigenous placename articles is needed...you've seen List of place names of aboriginal origin in Canada haven't you?  I've been expanding it greatly lately, sort of an idle hobby....well, Wikipedia is an idle hobby.....Keep on carving....maybe one day I can commission a mask huh?  (again, gotta send you some stuff on ancient Norse wood carving styles....).Skookum1 (talk) 01:20, 11 January 2009 (UTC)


 * P.S. I thought I would archive your talk page again. :) OldManRivers (talk) 01:02, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'd rather have a human do it than a 'bot...Skookum1 (talk) 01:20, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Re that, see Butlerian Jihad and The Book of the Machines - and recall the latter next time you're faced with a struggle with Windows....Skookum1 (talk) 03:01, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

John McLoughlin, Jr., Urbain Heroux and Fort Stikine (notes)
Plunking down some links I found while trying to figure out what happened to John McLoughlin Jr, for later reference; I may not get a chance to work these articles up right away but making notes of useful links:
 * Narrative of a Journey Around the World, in the Years 1841 and 1842 by George Simpson, Esq (googelbooks)
 * [hmmm....gotta crash Camino, then cloes Opera, then cmoe back....oh for infinite RAM....Skookum1 (talk)

Olive branch
I've been to your page and you seem like an interesting person, but your comments in these talk pages reveal a different person. I recommend you read through No personal attacks and try to take a bit more of a positive tone in Western Cordillera (North America). None of my comments have been personal attacks on you, they were expressions of frustration over the bloated text in the articles that contained no citations at all. My last message did get personal, because I am really curious to know why you have become so angry when it didn't seem provoked. In contradistinction, however, I have had to read comments such as "you are out of your league." It should be apparent that I'm in here trying to learn, to contribute, and to keep an open mind. I sense that you have a personal connection to this topic - which is great - but it seems to be making you overly sensitive to the building process where honest mistakes are bound to be made. There is a great deal of literature out there that I am aware of that refers to the Western Cordillera (North America) and to ignore it would be objectionable. You might find some of the literature an interesting merger between geography and ecology (see for example ) - here is a book chapter I wrote on the topic -. I'm not trying to create new definitions, rather I am researching the topic and finding a diversity of publications in different fields that refer to the Western Cordillera (North America). Moreover, I am working and collaborating with geographers on this topic - in fact I have a publication coming out soon that was done in collaboration with two geographers, one from UNBC and the other based at University of Calgary. You will notice that I provide references to all the contributions I make in the article - giving examples where the Western Cordillera (North America) is most often referred too. As a graduate student when I was researching the geography of this region it was difficult at times to pinpoint the geographic reference because of the ambiguity in terms of reference. Having a resource here that speaks to many groups in diverse research fields that all need to refer to the same area is an objective stance that should be encouraged. I'm spending a lot of time trying to resolve this silly dispute with you, because it seems like you care about this topic. You should try working with me rather than against me. As you can tell I have agreed (despite the tension) with lots of your suggestions and have been conservative with the changes I make to the article out of respect for your concerns. I am researching this topic carefully and trying to do my part. I recommend you read through Staying cool when the editing gets hot again - this quote in particular might help: "Assume the best about people whenever possible; assume good faith." Focus on good thoughts - and help this project along. I will apologize here if I have offended you in any way. Perhaps you can do the same and we can move along.Thompsma (talk) 08:02, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * when you use terms like "bloated" and "rants" and such, that's offensive; you should have equally considered "good faith" when considering the voluminous and rambling nature of my posts, which many other editors are quite used to; perhaps it's a disaiblity, I prefer to think of it as a talent. Exploring all angles, and when you're read as much as I have (I'm not bragging, I've speed-read since about the age of 12, and read voluminously even before that since about the age of .... 2?) and have something like (sloppy) eidetic memory) pausing to look for online refs or remembering page numbers is trivial when you're stringing together "accrued knowledge".  I was senior geographer at the Canadian Mountain Encyclopedia for a good three years or more, 12 hours a day sometimes (or more), both laying out the range hierarchy - by resourcing Holland and other official materials - in an effort to make it authoritative; when the site-owner began ditching various things because he wanted to name/arrange things to his own taste, I left (I wasn't getting paid anyway).  I came to Wikipedia finding the mountain-range hierarchies and descriptions in a mess and pretty well rebuilt Holland/s hierarchy on the one hand, and what I'd learned about US toponymy at bivouac on the other (and as I noted to hike395 or Black Tusk, I wish I could remember what other sources I was using, but it's been a number of years now - I remember the material, I don't remember book titles/volumes).  I don't make things up.  When you're trying to explain things on the fly, stopping to cite every other bit is a nuisance; and I'm only ever relaying information, not claiming to be authoritative; but I know what's right/correct and what's out of place/wrong.  Typically US articles make a mish-mash of Canadian geography, and articles by everybody from historians to ecologists make all kinds of scrambled mix-ups of formal Canadian geography.  Add into the mix that the Government of Canada has a different classification system in various fields than the Govt of BC (or the governments of other provinces), and that the provincial government in particular has at least a dozen different ways of classifying hte landscape (and that's not even starting with political geography, i.e. MoF regions, MoE regions, MoH regions, RDs, etc), and even American academics quite often don't even refer to USGS properly, and USGS ends at the border.....it's very frustrating to see someone come in from another field, wanting to mix in references/usages from other fields; you'd think geology and geography would have some kind of harmony in this area, but they're actually among the worst offenders, then next up are the ecologists, who write with a kind of fluffery and gee-whiz vagueness that reads like a tourism brochure, makes it all the worse.  I've made a point of not mish-mashing geographic articles by bringing in the historians (history's my "main field" - perhaps - it was historical toponymy/origins that got me started both at the CME as well as here in Wikipedia) or allowing journalistic styleguides to dictate what articles contain (e.g. Canadian Press often refers to places like Lillooet, Williams Lake or Prince George as being in "the Fraser Valley"); ditto with writings by sociologists, even by ethnographers (who know better); linguists have their own geographic classification system (which doesn't necessarily harmonize with the linguists, as you'd expect it to....).  So when it's a geographic name that's at question, any attempt to integrate a bunch of fields together is inherently OR/Synth.  See hike395's comments on Talk:Pacific Coast Ranges....this morning I've been trying to find a plaint I wrote, somewhere out there, about all the land-classification systems that are at conflict with each other but for now I cant' find it, I'm going to rebuild it I guess.  I know on Talk:Columbia Basin or Talk:Columbia River the group of us active there had a lengthy discussion about the variable meaning of "Columbia Basin" depending on which field was being referenced, and which area/context the usage was found in (at least seven different meanings, depending on the field or geographic area or semantic context).  Okanagan Basin includes the Chelan and Similkameen formally, but in usual parlance it refers only to the area flanking the Okanagan proper.  Cross-border complications abound in those case, but also in others, and very pointedly quite often Canadian geographic name systems make a point of being different from those in the US, i.e. they were created as POV names/spellings, i.e. to distinguish Canadian topography from that of the US, even though it's just one continent.  Hike395 is quite right in that trying to integrate information from different regimes, and/or different fields, is inherently NOR, but not to do so is NPOV.  There are similar problems in regional history in, say, the Pacific Northwest, which user:pfly and I and others have been jointly working on; many sources are limited in their scope; trying to combine them all to make a full comprehensive coverage of a subject is inherently OR/Synth in nature (so usually we confine a lot of it to talkpages), and quite often the sources are POV in nature - history by its very nature is political, if you know much about historiography; it's all analysis; as soon as you start combining differing accounts and trying to arrange them to make sense, they become original research - historia in Greek does mean "analysis" or more specifically "inquiry", it's not just objective facts and cant' be.  Much the same is true of toponymy.  Geology of the Western Cordillera of North America is a different subject than Ecozones of the Western Cordillera of North America; teh core article in order to be NOR can really only be about the toponymy and it has to be straightforward, not integrative of different sources; it's already POV enough to start with and also OR simply because cross-border content e.g. on Cascade Range or Cascade Volcanoes is written from different contexts/perspectives (again, BC made a point of stickign with the older Cascade Mountains usage  rather than drag Cascade Range across the border, even though it's thes ame range; and ditched the old application of that term to waht re now called the Coast Mountains and which Americans still think are the Cascades).  So t he more complicated you make it, the more complicated you make it, quite simply put.  That you are doing independent research in this field also indicates something like WP:COI - that's not meant to be confrontational, just a statement of fact. Wikipedia is not the place to lay out the work you're doing in collaboration with other authors; it can be a place to explore research issues with other Wikipedians, but not to apply them.  If anything, it's a question of keeping all the animals in their separate cages, which is what the separate categories for mountain ranges vs. ecozones-which-aer-named-as-mountain-ranges are about (and geologic provinces should have their own categories).  Trying to integrate them all is original research......adn taht there isn't a cohesive North American system of toponymy or a consistent orographic classification system across different fields is not somethign that should be solved in Wikipedia; maybe you'll accomplish that in your work/research/thesis, but Wikipedia is not hte place to integrate them, or claim to; because someone else will have a different set of ideas.  And someone from another continent may write it up in a totally different fashion, according to the resources they have there and the range of publicatons in other languages.  Myself, in fields like history and geography and ethnography, I think Wikipedia's NPOV and NOR guidelines are at conflict with each other, and it's a broader issue for what Wikipedia is and how it is "guidelined".  Simple is better, any complications are just complications.  The various subranges of the Western Cordillera all have articles, some are well-cited, others are not, or others are only basic descriptions based on their own subranges (see Stikine Ranges or Hazelton Mountains.........I need my breakfast, and my coffee is getting cold.  Just don't use terms like "bloat" or "rant" again and we might get along....Skookum1 (talk) 13:57, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Compare this federal govt map to the BC government's map of "Biogeoclimatic zones" (which I used to hve hard copy, because it's so pretty and made a great wall-map, but is on-line somewhere); and then fidn the MoF's own version, and the MoE's other similar maps....it's ilke the one hand doesn't know what hte other is doing, or is makign a point of growing another hand rather than trying to learn to play the piano with both hands; instead of eighty....Skookum1 (talk) 14:02, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * My story about the CME - what I was getting at is I've absorbed Holland, he's virtually engraved in me, adn I've close-up examined Basemap's range-designations and even know creek boundaries, partly because I've exlpored the "prominence" system of BC (and also WA/ID/MT/WY/CO) very thoroughly. I'm not a published source, but I do' have expertise; quite often anything I say about toponymy you can just assume I've gotten it straight off BCGNIS/Basemap/Holland or from USGS directly''.  if I was to stop and put or the BCCGNIS ref number or Holland page number, it woudl be horribly time consuming as well as visually cluttering...and I'm difficult enough to read as it is, no???Skookum1 (talk) 14:06, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Also to note that even withing BC Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, each wing of that ministry ahve their own classification systems.....Skookum1 (talk) 14:07, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi, Skookum. [[Image:WikiThanks.png|43px|left|WikiThanks]] I deeply appreciate all of the information that you add to Canadian geography articles: I learn a lot from your contributions, and the articles you write are quite high-quality. It's clear that you're quite passionate about your craft and that you are an expert.


 * In the past few years of wiki-editing, I have found myself occasionally getting too passionate about some subject, where I feel compelled to go back to an article again and again to edit, because of a conflict over a topic. I've found that, in these cases, it's better to slow down my editing frequency and let the wiki-process take its course --- the process of inter-editor negotiation takes time. We only need to get to the best article eventually, not this very minute. (I got this tip from WP:COOL). I thought this might be useful for you: the passion level seems to be quite high around the North American cordillera articles.
 * Thanks again for all of your hard work, I really appreciate it! hike395 (talk) 09:32, 13 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I do hear what ou're saying and I appreciate it; but Thompsma's latest smart-ass comment after I AGAIN tried to explain to him Wiki guidelines he obvously has no intention of observing (re OR and Synth) is what has rankled me - smart-ass juvenalia masquerading as quasi-logical cool": Turning my own comment to him "You just don't get it. I'm done with this thread". Fine, then he should be done with the article too; it's not my passion that's the problem, it's juvenalia combined with obstinacy.  I find it hard to believe this person is a graduate student, but I also have a low opinion of modern academia.  I find a lot of people who think they have educations really don't, certainly not in respectful behaviour; time and again he's dismissed my prolixity as a reaons to not respect what I have to say; and insulted me with patronizing comments to boot, then asked me "are you normally an angry person".  I think you're familiar with my style and that it's rarely well-intended; what I DO get p'd at is dismissive boors who don't know the material and presume to tell me that I don't.  As I've reminded Black Tusk a few times, when he cites bivouac. that although I no longer work there, as far as the range classification system goes, I AM that citation; to be told by a botanist/biologist that my comments are unicted and therefore not worth respecting because he's a grad student and has colleagues in geology at UNBC etc etc - yes WP:COOL does apply, but I really don't think I'm the one who needs to be hearing this.  There should be an item like WP:RESPECT in cases like this; especially in regards to core articles of this nature.  Just because another field makes reference to something defined as a topographic system (not a geologic one; geology actually has a different term) as a reason to incorporate bad terms from that field, i.e. bad usages and "geographical malapropisms" is just asinine.  Yes, I had other things I intended on editing these last few days, but when I saw the erratic naming and profuse new material which didn't belong - and the article already had a lot of problems when all this atarted.....then to be insulted for trying to help and educate, and then to see this putative graduate student equivocate about his agenda, which is clearly synthesis, and say "I'm done with this thread.  Fine - THEN BE DONE WITH THE ARTICLE TOO and go back to botany or ecology or wherever it is you came from.  I don't go into biology core materials and start writing them based on material from other fields; askign questions and offering ideas/suggestions maybe (as at Talk:Anabolic steroids)....but to hear that "Wikipedia is the world's" as if this justified including comic books as literature (and "comic books" is my opinion of a lot of the material from the ecological "academics" out there....).  Fine, I'll get out of the way and let them turn this into a geology/ecology article and realize that topography/toponymy has no right to be its own discipline, adn taht official toponymies have to take second place to the blather of "experts" who aren't....the mixing of ecological and geological contnent in the course of topographic description is going to produce a disastser; I will ardently oppose this article's nomination for any GA until all such material and their bad terminologies and mixing/combining of concepts is either relegated to the OR dustbin or their own articles (as I've time and again suggested) and go back to working on history; which, oddly enough, is less fraught with OR than this exercise in frustration ahs proven to be.  But I repeat - it's not me that needs to hear WP:Cool it's Thompsma, who also needs to learn to keep his smart-ass arrogance in check and respect people who know a field in which he increasingly shows himself to be jejune in....apparently they don't teach logic in some branches of "science" anymore, more like "gee, if I combine this with this and that I can come up with such-and-so".  And, as I've often seen with sophomoric graduate students, they think stonewalling is a form of debate; what he shoudl be doing is realizing how much it is I actually know about the subject and pay attention''.  I've also had my fair share in Wikipedia of learning what OR and synthesis are; which he apparently hasn't, or isn't concerned by.  The article, under his WP:ONW}ership, is going to turn into argle-bargle and highly unreadable and irrelevant spew; if that's the upshot of me observing [[WP:COOL, then it's a case in point of tomfoolery trumping encyclopedism; the inane argument that because "Western Cordillera of North America" occurs as a phrase that it's a citable name, whereas "Western Cordillera (North America)" is ungrammatical and not citable - yet in line with Wikipedia naming guidelines - is another case in point of the inanity of this person's presumptive logics.  And what's with that IP address user deleting posts made by others anyway?  "Am I normally an angry person?" Thompsma asked me; NO, only when confronted by foolishness; and that I'm NOT normally "an angry person" is a reminder that it's only truly rank stupidity that DOES get me riled.  "Your posts on this talk page reveal another side of you" he writes above, as if he were accusing me of a split personality; NO, it's the same personality, rightfully upset at juvenile obstinacy and a refusal to actually work within wikipedia's guidelines, rather to rewrite them to suit himself.  the "good faith" credo is sometimes invoked against me; in his case he didn't have it in the first place, "olive branch" abgov e or not (even in thecourse of that "olive branch" he makes patronizing/insulting comments.....).  I HATE passive-aggressives, particularly ones who flaunt their suppoeed education as a reason to dismiss the knowledge of others.  I'm probably twice his age, and older (and better-read) than some of his professors, and in more than just one field.....but apparently him being a grad student is reason to get uppity......fine, fine, fine, I'm going back to the fairly important historical articles I'd meant to write in this last week, as a wikibreak is coming; I wish I hadn't paid attention to this fool or his wrecking-crew ethic....Skookum1 (talk) 13:29, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

In his "olive branch" above, he starts off by accusing ME of personal attacks, without getting it (or admitting it) that it was HIM who began them, by accusing me of rants and telling me my posts weren't worth reading. I'm not the problem, simply put. It takes two to tango; and it always takes somebody to throw the first punch and it wasn't me.........Skookum1 (talk) 13:36, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
 * And again, above he talks about his work "in collaboration with two geographers at UNBC and U.Calgary" as if this meant anything; a collaboration and an outside work is evidecne of (a) an agenda and (b) original research. If those geographers pay no heed to Holland's nomenclature, then THEY are evolving a new unofficial system...and why should their agenda take precedence over any other??  At bivouac we had to make a judgement call to go with official naming systems, since there are so many variations across fields and authors; you can't make a stew with 10000 ingredients, you have ot pick the few that work together well....."too many cooks spoil the broth", as do too many idiots (whether they're professors at UNBC or U.Calg or not - and I've met quite a few professors who ARE idiots even in their own fields for any reference to nameless staff is highly suspect to start with...Skookum1 (talk) 13:42, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
 * To me WP:COOL is unfair to those of us who ARE passioinate and favours those who can be "politely rude", it also favours well-spoken fools; much more important to Wikipedia, to me, are principles like WP:OR, WP:Synth and WP:NAME, and the abuse of concepts like WP:RS and WP:V in the course of defending OR and Synth and abuses of WP:NAME. As far as the interdisciplinary mishmash the article threatens to become, soem kidn of delineation between Geology and Geography - which despite their similar names and linkage of material are two very different fields with highly different angenda;s geogarphy includes a lot more than orogeny; if we detail that, then what about glaciation?  Human activities?  It's a slippery slope from biogeography/ecology (actually two different fields) to everything from travelogue to literary legacies; some kind of break-up of the different kinds of content conceivable has to be made; geology can't presume it's all that such an article should be about, i.e. the article can only be so long; to me the safest thing to do is to decribe the topographic system (the surface shape and toponymic elements) and refer all teh speicalizations to subarticles.  Geology is literally "earth science", geography means "writing about the earth".  Very different.Skookum1 (talk) 14:03, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

List of ships in British Columbia
I've just created the SS Savoia article, with SS Dryad as a redirect to that article. I notice that redirect is also linked from the List of ships in British Columbia. I've got a feeling that there are two different ships with the same name. If so, then the SS Dryad page needs to be converted to a shipindex page (preferably with an article for the other ship created too). Can you check this out and make the necessary adjustments please? Mjroots (talk) 19:06, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Indigenous culture category
This flurry of activity on my part sprang from the realization that there was no way to singly categorize a Native filmmaker like Alanis Obomsawin, who happens to be in Canada, or her films, with her Native American US counterparts (unless they happened to Abenaki). The Canada/US border cuts across so many of these tribes/Nations. So I figured the best way to work within the existing category tree was to create Category:Indigenous culture as a way of grouping all Aboriginal culture and artists. We'll see if it sticks. all the best, Shawn in Montreal (talk) 18:41, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Euripides
Hey Sookum -

I was wondering if you could tell me what your sources were for the long and impressive note you left concerning the Great Elison on the Bacchae talk page? I'm trying to give a presentation on the modification of sparagmos presented to a postmodern culture (see, for instance, the media coverage of the trial of Jeffrey Dahmer, the theoretical trajectory charted in Foucault's 'Discipline and Punish', the films of David Cronenberg, and the poetry of Paul Muldoon - of which Seamus Heaney is a fan). As such, Bacchae would seem to be an ideal starting point, and the stories of Euripides's death (almost certainly untrue, but never mind...) reinforce the sparagmotic nature of corporeal, political and social fragmentation. Any reference points for me? Cheers, G. BlackMarlin (talk) 18:18, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll scratch my head some and look into my old notes for some papers I wrote....but might I also suggest you consider the Herakles in the same light? (the one where most of the play is he and Theseus alone, after teh massacre of his children?  I have to go out right now and will need to dig out my old papers, it's a standard classicist I read that in, or got what I got from it; I didn't write anything directly on the Bacchae....well, not exactly; I'll dig out what I did write and it will ahev its bibliography.....I have to go out right now and have a guest for the next few days so this may take a while.  Tahnks for your interest.....and boy would I love it if some archaeological dig turned up a complete copy of the Bacchae huh?Skookum1 (talk) 18:56, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
 * BTW by referring to the Herakles I was refering to the god-induced madness and dismemberment of the children; I don't recall omophagy being part of teh story's details; it was more the "coping with hooror" themem I was referring to....had some thoughts about where my ideas came from, will ponder over the next few days as to who and where exaclty; some of that exegesis is purely my own, however; distillation....suitable in a dionysiac sense perhaps...Skookum1 (talk) 03:53, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Skookum1's Alaskan Barnstar -- congratulations!

 * But I can't even see Russia from my house!! Thanks mucho/hyas mashi, more on the way once I get a chance, been putting off a lot of intended content...Skookum1 (talk) 03:45, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Ribbentrop
Hi, can you tell me where the reference to Ribbentrop came from:

"Oh, one interesting tidbit from Volovsek when Columbia (sternwheeler) gets written - among its prominent passengers was Archduke Franz Ferdinand....who unlike von Ribbentrop (?) on Werner "Alvo" von Alvensleben probably did party at the Wigwam Inn with the aristocratic Alvenslebens....this has to do with a query someone left for me at my talkpage.Skookum1 (talk) 05:40, 10 April 2008 (UTC)" Thanks! RL —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.153.5.92 (talk) 14:16, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Fellow on WWI article
Blocked him indefinitely. Just looked at some odd comments and noted that he's only got a few edits, all of them talk pages and seems to know all the policies already. Seems like a great big leg-pulling account saying Mein Kampf is a RS and comparing 1914 Serbia to the Taliban and OBL. I think you should be more cynical with some folks.... There's this guy on the VN War page who never edits and only drones on and one saying that the US didn't lose and nobody answered him luckily, except a few hard-core anti-US guys who did the opposite... No need to reply to him.  YellowMonkey  ( click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model! ) 07:49, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Assessments
There was a discussion a while ago about merging WP Russian History into WP Russia. The participants of the former project did not object to the merge, yet no one started to do anything about it either. So, when doing assessments, I switch WP Russian history to WP Russia whenever I get an opportunity to do so. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:20, January 23, 2009 (UTC)
 * Since WP:Russia covers not only modern Russia, but all of its history as well (going all the way back to Kievan Rus'), this should not present a problem. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:33, January 23, 2009 (UTC)

Name of Prince George
Do you have any evidence to cite for the claim you make in Monarchy in British Columbia concerning the origin of the name of Prince George? The matter was discussed on the talk page in both articles, citing the inconclusive evidence for its derivation. Unless you have additional evidence to cite, I think it best that we simply note Fraser's appellation of the name of Fort George in honour of King George III of Great Britain, and note that for whom or what (i.e., a steamship) the name of the present city honours is a matter of speculation. Thoughts? fishhead64 (talk) 05:35, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
 * See and note also .  I'd always thought it was just to harmonize with the name of Prince Rupert, but it turns out the Duke of Kent killed in WWI was the official reason; Fort George and South Fort George were not renamed but amalgamated with Prince George, which was only laid out in 1915; that's sthe official version from the City of PG's website, as quoted by BCGNIS.Skookum1 (talk) 14:24, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for finding a route to clearing up this mystery! I'll correct the article on Prince George and monarchy in BC, accordingly, since I see you're supposed to be taking a wikibreak.  I've been on one for about a year now - God knows if I'll ever come back due to my own busyness.  fishhead64 (talk) 17:39, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I should be about my other busyness, but can't tear myself away; since getting back to this in the dead of winter last year when somebody gave me the MacG4 I'm using now....just never bothered to change the template, and still intending to pull up stakes and genuinely wikibreak....too obsessive to give it up, too many unfinished projects and new temptations/projects all the time....Skookum1 (talk) 17:50, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Removal of flags in Chilean ethnic group articles
Why are you objecting to the flags! It shows the pride of being both Chilean and the heritage of the ancestor's country!!!

If someone is Scottish Chilean or Irish Chilean, they came from Scotland or Ireland! When you celebrate St. Patricks day it is the irish flag, coz it symbolises Irelan

Plain boxes look boring, the flags makle them look nice!!!

Khiatka
Kyakhta, perhaps?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:44, January 24, 2009 (UTC)

WP Saskatchewan newsletter item
-Hand-delivered the WP SK newsletter as in it, you were awarded the Spotlight award. SriMesh | talk  04:06, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * ?!?!?!?! Whatever did I do to Saskatchewan? I think I might have edited, oh, maybe three articles in connection with the place (if that many)Skookum1 (talk) 04:24, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * You mean people actually approve of all my testy, nit-picky bitchiness?.....egad, I may just have to edit Interior Plains or something else suitably Saskatchewanian just to celebrate (might as well atart with the Saskatchewan parts of List of Indian Reserves in Canada....).Skookum1 (talk) 04:29, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

List of Indian Reserves in Canada
I think that the "prov/terr" column may need to be dropped. The sections are sorted by province and the page is getting large again. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 15:09, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
 * My intent, once all sections are tabled, is to do away with all the provincial/territorial subsectioning, such that the "sort" function can be used to sort them by province/territory and the section heads won't be needed; then all of them can easily be alphabetized, or sorted by ethnic/national group, or sorted by Tribal Council, or sorted by town etc....Skookum1 (talk) 15:12, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
 * BTW see Oji-Cree for a list of Ontario IRs and First Nations which I don't think are yet on the page.....and because of your length consideration, I think in the lede if not in the title, it should be stated only populated reserves are to be included; BC has hundreds, maybe a few thousand even, of unpopulated ones....Skookum1 (talk) 15:14, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
 * "Comments", which won't have anything in it most often, could also be dropped; likewise "Tribal Council" maybe, since those are extra-legal and somehat informal (and endlessly shifting, at least in BC)....Skookum1 (talk) 15:17, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
 * "Ethnic/national group" could be shortened to "ethnic group" or even "ethnicity", including in the hidden table-components.Skookum1 (talk) 15:25, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I just moved all the hidden comments from the page to Talk:List of Indian reserves in Canada/Holding and made them visible. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 22:30, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Re: Template:Harper Government
Hi there. I would just like to inform you that Template:Harper Government does not fall under the category of items that can be deleted under speedy deletion. Please see WP:tfd instead. Regards, nat.utoronto 18:07, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I figured as much; is there a "Templates for Deletion" area? See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Canada, bottom of the page.Skookum1 (talk) 18:11, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Shoot first, load gun later..."WP:tfd", OK I'll take it there.....Skookum1 (talk) 18:12, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Talkback
It's getting there Resident Mario (talk) 01:28, 3 February 2009 (UTC) You have a very cool userpage. You know it's in the Userpage Hall of Fame, right?
 * Whuh? You mean there is such a place?  Now you've made me self-conscious, i was thinking of revamping the page, hiding the bio, writing up my wiki-wish list and apologia and flogging my small collection of barnstars (and the wiki-beer).  Now you've set me a benchmark to live up to, or down from, sigh.....
 * Hmm, I found User Page Design Center/User Page Hall of Fame; don't see you though. Pfly (talk) 03:14, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Whew, that's a relief. I'd be much more comfortable on a Hall of Infamy...Skookum1 (talk) 04:13, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Mae West: "When I'm good, I'm really good. But when I'm bad, I'm better..."Skookum1 (talk) 04:14, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Interagency Volcanic Event Notification Plan
Thought you would be interested to know I just created this. Black Tusk (talk) 04:15, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

38th Parliament of British Columbia
Quick question: the seating plan at the bottom of this article is a bit inaccurate, because Spencer Herbert and Jenn McGinn were never added to it after the byelections last fall, so the chart still reflects five vacancies (the three real ones, plus Gregor Robertson and Lorne Mayencourt), but the reference that's been provided for it seems to link to a plain list of the MLAs, not a real seating chart. Do you know where to find a real reference so the chart can be properly updated? (Truth be told, I don't think Wikipedia really needs actual seating plans at all, because there's absolutely no reason why anybody who isn't actually going to be physically present on the floor of the legislature would ever need that information, but enough people insist on their importance that it's a bigger battle than I'm inclined to take on. But I digress.) Bearcat (talk) 18:17, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't see why they're needed anyway; are all the clerks and the seats for justices etc also shown, for instance? And in some cases like the two-seat NDP opposition-era it just seems silly; I've made something like seating plans on pages like British Columbia general election, 1903, but that's not seating so much as Government/Opposition alignment.  Deck chairs on the Titanic IMO, the way our political system is....I think on the elections pages I did updated tables, farther down, after byelection information, can't remember just now.  But like you, I don't see a reason for the seating plans...some people prefer pictures to text, needless to say....Skookum1 (talk) 21:46, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I also just name-changed and revised the section headings of 37th_Parliament_of_British_Columbia, which has the same icky set of seating tables....the theme colours of the BC Liberal Party are blue/green, much like the Socreds (intentionally) and aren't suitable to use for the BC Party, especially given the way the NDP orange is submerged inside the Liberal red; it's another reason I don't think the tables should be used, given the dominant colour-scheme....the members section IMO could borrow the table-layout from the elections pages I'd made so it's not just a raw list...I'm not in the mood right now, though....LOL I'm actually starting to pay attention to Nova Scotia and other Maritimes articles (I live in Halifax now)....I just can't let my claws/fangs off BC I guess.....Skookum1 (talk) 21:54, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

This and that...
Hey Skooks,

First of all, a bit of an apology for potentially coming off as a bit antisocial. I seem to find myself going through fits and starts of Wikicontribution, and my "must-get-around-to-writing-him-back" messages to you seem to perpetually fall through the cracks.

Anyway, a couple of things:
 * The addition of "electoral district" onto Vancouver East (electoral district) failed to meet the basic sniff test aboutabout disambiguators, namely that they point out what makes it different from the other Vancouver East. They're both electoral districts, but only one is a  provincial electoral district.
 * The convention in PPAP is to not use a disambiguation at all, and if one is not required for a federal district where a matching provincial district-name exists, then only "electoral district" is needed; it's only necessary to use "provincial" if the dab is Vancouver East (electoral district were for the federal district.Skookum1 (talk) 20:31, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I've been going through the compilation of old maps available for Google Earth on the BC-EBC website at, which has been informing some of my nipping-and-tucking of electoral district articles. Mackenzie (provincial electoral district) has nothing to do with Mackenzie, British Columbia, as I suspect you'd concluded.  It is in fact the old name for Powell River-Sunshine Coast.  Don't ask me where the etymology comes from... I've Googled a bit and come up with nothing by way of nomenclature attached to that part of the world that would suggest why someone branded it "Mackenzie" in 1924.  In any event, the Fisher Commission Report of 1988 major a minor revision to its northern border and renamed it.
 * Yeah, I'd forgotten the riding-area as it's been so long (1980s) since it was used; but a change in riding boundary means a change in riding name means a different article; the population centre of the riding "branded" in 1924 was at Ocean Falls, which was larger than Powell River is now, and also included a large nubmer of cannery towns and a much larger population of fishermen in various port-towns. Different era, different boundary, different name, different riding.  Same as Mission-Port Moody, Maple Ridge-Mission and Coquitlam-Moody being different and Dewdney Alouette being (briefly and AFAIK unused on the hustings) name for Maple Ridge-Mission (the federal riding in that area).  Yale riding once took in everything to the Kicking Horse and Crowsnest Passes, it's now part of Yale-Lillooet, or its namesake-core is, but just not the same riding....Skookum1 (talk) 20:31, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I know you've tried for a while to get a broader conversation going about under what circumstances electoral districts share articles versus get new ones. We have the precedent of mid-term legislative renames of electoral districts being done not all that uncommonly on the federal level (the first that pops into my head is Wentworth—Burlington becoming Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot) and there, wisely, I think, we stick with a single article for both iterations of the name (no differently, I guess, than Jacqueline Bouvier=Jacqueline Kennedy=Jacqueline Onassis.   I've stuck with that line of thinking for my home BC riding of Kootenay East/East Kootenay/Kootenay.  Even though it's been through three names, and in each case the act of inserting a new name did actually coincide with a provincial redistribution, 99.99% of all the terrain has been commonly grouped since 1966.  From the perspective of providing a running chart of political trends and thus providing a context as to the region's long-term political leanings (as I just put together for Peace River North), I think there's merit in principle of stretching the longevity of districts across renames provided there's been no major additions or subtractions of population.  With that in mind, after checking on the maps I had the following tentatively pegged as worth merging.
 * North Peace River and Peace River North
 * South Peace River and Peace River South
 * Columbia (electoral district) and Columbia River (electoral district)
 * Mackenzie (provincial electoral district) and Powell River-Sunshine Coast.
 * Note that this list doesn't include South Okanagan/Okanagan South and North Okanagan/Okanagan North at the moment. My hunch at the moment from looking at maps is that I think they were different enough to stay separate.


 * I have a bunch more headaches on my mind about how to deal with districts that die, sit out a few maps, and come back again with very different boundaries, but they can wait for now. The Tom (talk) 20:09, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I think you'll find that in all such cases, e.g. Okanagan South vs South Okanagan, or North Peace River vs. Peace River North, that there are boundary changes related to the name changes; especially in more relatively densely-populated areas like the Kooteoays and Okanagan, if not in the Peace River. And I think you should have a look at pages like Vancouver (electoral districts), Kootenay (electoral districts), Okanagan (electoral districts), all of which I made to try and wrastle with the hierarchy/lineage of the ongoing gerrymandering of British Columbia since the first half-dozen ridings long, long ago. �It would help in all this if the BC Elections website included historical riding maps; the riding descrptions at least exist on the Elections Canada website, though they can be hard to understand because of the land-title descrpitions used....rest assured somewhere out there tehre are detailed electoral figures for the "adjusted" boudnary-areas, it's all a shell game.  I'ts bizaarre to me btw that Lillooet and Chilliwack are in the same riding (federally anyway); but such also was the case with Ocean Falls and Bralorne being in the same riding (Coast Chilcotin).Skookum1 (talk) 20:49, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Re Columbia 1903-1928 vs Columbia River - there were huge population changes in that area between the '00s and the 1920s, i.e. where the population was etc; CNR construction etc. Again I'm pretty sure there were boundary changes, which would have been related to the depopulation of some places which had been more populous before the Great War than after; don't assume nothing, unless we have maps; my clincher with Mackenzie vs Powell River-Sunshine Coast is that the northern boundary was significantly changed; whereas Westminster-Dewdney and Dewdney (electoral district) were pretty much fundamentally the same riding; still PPAP policy was if there was a name chang, there's a different article.  See New Westminster (electoral districts).Skookum1 (talk) 20:58, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Vancouver
Nice to see you on the Vancouver article these days. How have you been? Mkdw talk 21:18, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Enjoying Halifax....why I still putter around on BC/Vancouver articles I don't know LOL force of habit I guess....Skookum1 (talk) 21:26, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I really should be putting some effort into Nova Scotia articles since I'm here now, I just don't know the place in-depth like I do with BC/Vancouver....Skookum1 (talk) 21:28, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Hemlock Valley Ski Area -> Hemlock Valley Resort
Sorry, I wasn't aware that you can 'move' a page to a page that already exists (I didn't create either page; "Resort" redirected to "Ski Area" and I just switched which page was content vs. redirect). Thanks for the heads-up, - Gump Stump (talk) 19:16, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
 * User:Bearcat has fixed the problem (he's an admin and can do certain things others of us can't). If there's not a redirect in the way, it's easy enough - use the "move" tab as noted; if there is post a request on Wikipeda talk:WikiProject Canada's Notice Board.Skookum1 (talk) 19:43, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. As for the name, their website says "© Copyright 2009 Hemlock Valley Resort", and it's not referred to in any other way in their promotional materials/website, or on their management company's website. - Gump Stump (talk) 23:07, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Dikes
Yo; I just created two maps for large dike swarms across Canada, one is large enough to cover British Columbia. The Mackenzie dike swarm was formed during a massive eruptive event some 1267 million years ago that built an extensive lava plateau and large igneous province with an area of 170000 km2 representing a volume of lavas of at least 500000 km3; that is way larger than the Chilcotin Plateau Basalts. The other is the Matachewan and Mistassini dike swarms which were formed in an older magmatic event 2500-2450 million years ago. Pretty suprising huh? No one would recognize these things to this day unless you went back in time some 1267 or 2500-2450 million years ago when these were vast seas of lava. I've also left a comment at Talk:Toozaza Peak. Black Tusk (talk) 08:53, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Category:Sub-surface mining
Hi, I started a discussion about changing Category:Sub-surface mining to Category:Underground mining, I wanted to see what the thoughts of other participents of WikiProject Mining were.--kelapstick (talk) 17:48, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

British Columbia question
Hey buddy. I saw on Reference_desk/Humanities that user:OlEnglish asked what the origin of the "Lotus Land" name is. I was a little embarrassed as a British Columbian that I didn't know for sure. But you seem to know everything BC so I thought you might have the answer.

By the way, I also saw your comment on the Gordon Campbell talk and I agree that we should include those things. I never did hear what happened to Bornmann but I guess it isn't important now. Cheers --JGGardiner (talk) 21:16, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

SS Cutch
I've replied on WT:SHIPS, you may just be able to find enough material to write an article on her! Mjroots (talk) 20:35, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Tagishsimon
No connection with the place whatsoever, although the name was in part derived from Tagish Charlie, the chappie who found the gold which started the goldrush, or somesuch story. --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:44, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Talkback
NJGW (talk) 18:20, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Edit count
There's no easy way to generate an instant count beyond waiting for somebody to update List of Wikipedians by number of edits. That page hasn't been updated since late November, but at that time you had an edit count of 40,218 and a ranking of #292 among all Wikipedians. Bearcat (talk) 18:52, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Wow.Skookum1 (talk) 19:13, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I had left a message on Bearcat's page about this:
 * For all your vainglorious needs, try the toolserver. For example, here are your current stats. You can also use the SUL edit counter (also at the toolserver).
 * Have fun. Mind matrix  17:26, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Curious
In relation to the recent case of the moved ghost town, you noted on another user's talk page that "I've often defended the comma-province convention and was at first assured it [CANSTYLE] would apply only to cities". I've heard you say this before, and you've even referred to the particular discussion in which it took place. I believe (if memory serves) that you've even said that it was Bearcat who gave the assurance. Could you please tell me when and where this assurance actually occurred? In the past, I have actually carefully reviewed the discussions to which you've referred, and have found no such assurance. I'm not trying to be obnoxious here, or to accuse you of anything (quite the opposite, I'm just trying to get my facts straight) -- I have to say, it's mostly just curiosity. I may have missed it. I'm not too fussed, because the "assurance" of one editor isn't the governing guideline. But, obviously, if something was said, I would like to know. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 21:04, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I remember it being in the discussion on Kamloops, though whether that was on what is now Talk:Kamloops or if it was on a page at WP:Canada, and exactly when that was, I don't at the moment....Skookum1 (talk) 12:43, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
 * No worries. If you ever think of it, let me know.  Thanks.  --Skeezix1000 (talk) 14:00, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Choquette DAB page
And viola! Choquette DAB page was created, I just have to go through and put in some brief descriptions, I like the map idea on Buck's page, good thought.--kelapstick (talk) 17:21, 19 February 2009 (UTC) And violin! Thanks for making that, I'm sure other Choquettes will turn up...in fact I'll search GNIS just to see what shows up...something probably will....I'm curious about the judge in the family; with large Quebec families it's conceivable he had an uncle born after he was, but maybe there's another lawyer in the woodpile...I'll try and let the author of the Choquette family page know about the article (only a mailing address is given).Skookum1 (talk) 17:26, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Harper Template
I am extremely saddened and disappointed by the language you used in that debate. Further, I found your arguments utterly unconvincing (and mostly besides the point) and will be seeking (within my limited time available) to overturn the decision. I figured I would give you the courtesy of informing you, despite the fact that the same courtesy was not extended to me, the creator of the template. See my comments at (WP:CANTALK).--Kevlar (talk • contribs) 05:49, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Myriad resources
Hi Skookum, I just updated a few project pages, to ensure that the GeoGratis resource you found was recorded in the wiki-memory, and to add some other useful stuff that I'd seen mentioned on Talk:Columbia River months ago.

Looking through that talk page though, it becomes apparent that you search out a great number of useful external links that lots of people would probably like to be aware of for article-building purposes. So my question here is: do you record all this stuff anywhere? I may or may not trawl back through your past contribs to find all the other excellent sites you keep turning up (probably not). My suggestion is that you create User:Skookum1/Resources for your ongoing finds. I could go through that every so often and make sure the various projects get the good links delivered. Regards! Franamax (talk) 23:40, 21 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Yeah, probably a simpler sandbox name like the one you've proposed would be better than User talk:Skookum1/BC&PacificNorthwestHistory which is where I'd once started such a page, and others had added to at various points....given the range of things I find/am interested in perhaps best also to dispense with the "BC & Pacific Northwest History" part of the title.....one thing to note in re that, though, is the idea of a Pacific Northwest Workgroup or some such which woudl bridge a lot of different WikiProjects, i.e. Geography, History, Biography, Environment, NorthAmnative, Companies, Mountains, etc etc as there are so many "cross-over stories" and cross-over content which cannot be limited by mere modern political boundaries, or arbitrary distinctions between intertwined types of content.....There;s also:


 * User talk:Skookum1/BC&PacificNorthwestHistory/Resources
 * User talk:Skookum1/BC&PacificNorthwestHistory/MapResources which has the collection of fairly clear NASA/JPL images I've found....
 * but as you've noted there's a lot more I find (and find, and find, and find). I honestly do spend more time researching materials for articles that don't get written because the research always makes me aware of how vast the topic really is (have a good long sober read at the new "Further reading" cite on Fort Stikine, for instance).  Too many damned ideas, too many historical skeletons, too many popular misconceptions/popular mythology that turns up as "cites" (I'd like to start a page on WP:Unreliable sources and also [WP:Wiki-isms.....the latter being artificial categorizations/definitions invented for Wikipedia which become current in the world outside of Wiki, i.e. lexical OR....).
 * I know for certain a lot of the "finds" are not just on my own page; they do get scattered on various talkpages and usertalkpages here and there, but certain of my wiki-colleagues wind up getting a lot of them, in some cases a lot of them. User:OldManRivers, User:Black Tusk, User:CindyBo, User:KenWalker, User:Pfly, User:Qyd, also User:Keefer 4 who I mentioned in the email, who btw undertook to file in a sandbox for safekeeping a lot of resources I'd compiled re a nasty AFD related to the Chinaman page (a POV fork page whose name I've forgotten for now), so as to prevent their deletion/censorship (still, some got lost when the one talkpage "went down" as not all I'd found were 'saved to sandbox"......anyway those half-dozen wiki=friends have seen a lot of "resource links" from me, probably more than in my own pages/archives.....Skookum1 (talk) 03:25, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Also the talkpages of some of the WPs I'm signed up to; WP:Canada, WP:Russia and WP:Russian history, WP:Mountains, WP:Alaska, WP:California for starters (in addition to my usual nuisances at WP:Wash and WP:OR....)....and certain article talkpages, Talk:History of the west coast of North America....Skookum1 (talk) 03:29, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Also note various bits of content/resource on User:Buchanan-Hermit/WikiProject-Sandbox.Skookum1 (talk) 04:11, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

[Undent]Forgot about these, on this page: Talk:Treaty of Saint Petersburg (1825). LOL at times I joke with writer friends from The Tyee's forums, where I also used the username Skookum1 (until I boycotted the place due to p.c.=ist censorship/lie-mongering), about publishing a "The Best of Skookum1", chronicling my more memorable/infamous rants.....it would just take me as much time to find/compile them all as it would to make/rant new ones....Skookum1 (talk) 04:21, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Ucluelet
Can you look at the travel section in that article. As far as I can figure its talking about Tofino Airport and not Ucluelet Water Aerodrome but what is the Long Beach Airport? Thanks. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 07:12, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd think Long Beach Airport is the same as Tofino Ucluelet Airport, which you may note is the official name of the airstrip in question and shoudl be the title of Tofino Airport. I haven't been out there in years, but reemmber the airport being in the area of the Wickanninish Inn, i.e. about halfway between the two communities.Skookum1 (talk) 17:20, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
 * So my memory's fuzzy, it's nearer Schooner Cove and the Esowitsa Indian Reserve (or on the reserve, quite likely). This was AFAIK an RCAF base originally btw; this wouls still be the Long Beach Airport; that's the north end of Long Beach, I was mistaken about it being back towards Wickanninish (which is at the southern end of the beach).Skookum1 (talk) 17:24, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what constitutes the official cite, i.e. the official site-name/article-name......I'd think the Aviation Safety Board or the DoT....maybe it's in CGNDB but I don't recall seeing airports listed there....Skookum1 (talk) 17:28, 22 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks. You are probably right about it being an RCAF base, I was checking up for possible links to various bases and found the Ucluelet article while looking for RCAF Ucluelet. According to the Canada Flight Supplement their "official" name is Tofino but Tofino Ucluelet seems fairly common as well. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 23:17, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

George Pitt, 1st Baron Rivers
You say that you have added a quotation from Horace Walpole to the article: I cannot see it in the text, but it would be noice to have it. I guess that we will always regard Lady Rivers as NN, so that it is appropriate to include comments about her in the article on her husband. Peterkingiron (talk) 17:13, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
 * No, I quoted the Walpole only in the edit comment, as it was mentioned in the text of the citation I added, which itself quotes another source, and did not name which works of Walpole; I'd have added it to the article but I'm infamously prolix and wasn't sure where or how tersely; if a quote of a quote from a cite is OK to use as a source, by all means add it (see that BCGNIS source; I used to have the Akriggs' book but no longer have it, otherwise might have been able to provide a page-ref.Skookum1 (talk) 17:18, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Talkback
— Ed 17  (Talk /  Contribs)  18:16, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

August Jack Khatsahlano's Sx̱wáýx̱way Mask
Hey Skookum, I'm doing an art project right now and I'm trying to find a good image of Sx̱wáýx̱way masks. I remember you finding the image of Major Mathew's wearing August Jack's mask. It might of come from the BC Archives. I was wondering if you remember, or know where I can find it? It's 2AM right now, but tomororw I'm going to go down the longhouse and have a look at the totem pole down there because there's a Sx̱wáýx̱way mask in the middle of one of them. The pole was carved by August Jack and his brother Dominic Charlie. In any case, thanks! OldManRivers (talk) 10:15, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Not the BC Archives, it would be Vancouver City Archives or Vancouver Museum. They're "plates" in vol. I of Early Vancouver....I think I sold my set to User:Bobanny before I left Vancouver, either that or I sold them to Don Stewart at MacLeod's Books (Richards & Pender).  Thing is the City Archives have on file all the original materials, which should include those photos (there were three, as I recall), as they have the manuscript version of Early Vancouver, including the unpublished Vols. III-VII; Vol I is the one with all the FN materials in it.Skookum1 (talk) 13:44, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure it would be in Vancouver Public Library, in the Reference section because it's such a rare book....eithe there or in UBC's Special Collections dept, can't remember if SFU had a copy or not....Skookum1 (talk) 13:47, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Coast salish defensive sites
I just discovered this by accident, looks like somebody's trying to promote their own personal thesis project, not sure what to do with it, or what to expand it with. Very presumptive of the article-creator in my view, but maybe it can be resuced by discussion of other fortifications/defensive sites throughout Coast Salish turf; I know of many in Interior Salish terms, particularly Okanagan because of Teit's writeups. More and moer I see peple trying to use Wikipedia for one-issue tub-tumps....it used to be limited to politics/environmental promotions, now it appears to be academic self-dishing-up too.....Skookum1 (talk) 13:44, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Fort Stikine
Yeah, I saw that note. That's a pretty decent article you wrote! While I was indeed interested in reading it, the whole subject of Russian America is not really my forté (as you may remember, I had trouble finding refs on its actual administrative status, and administrative divisions is something I specialize in around here!). I can't really see what I can help with there.

Regarding the ship, you might want to add a link to Oryol (disambiguation)&mdash;you'll see that dab already has two ships named "Oryol", so this one will be in good company :) Spelling-wise, I'd recommend "Oryol", although "Orel" is by no means incorrect (the difference has to do with how the Russian letter ё is treated, both in Russian and in romanization; in Wikipedia, we normally romanize it at its face value, i.e. ё&rarr;yo).  Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:06, February 23, 2009 (UTC)
 * I was wrong about it being the Orel anyway; the second ship-name is in thte link in Further Reading, I didn't get around to changing the main text. I'll make a redirect from Orel (ship) anyway, as Orel is how it turns up in English-language histories of the region; good to know that it's Oryol and I'll keep my eyes open for mentions of it and add to that article when/if I can.....Russian America's starting to interest me quite a bit, even though I've never been up to Alaska; there's so much more detail as I'm finding out than what's evident in most Canadian and US histories....similarly the Spanish era on the Northwest Coast probably has a lot more on it in Spanish thatn meets the eye in English; both Spanish and Russian naval archives are largely unexplored by Pacific Northwest historians...(they were under lock and key for al ong time)Skookum1 (talk) 16:15, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Hm after looking at that dab page. it may be that the second ship was the Oryol, as it might have been known in Russian; it was I think the War Eagle before its purchase by the Russians....I'll ahve to re-read the big article/ref again, as it was unclear to me there whether it was the Chichagof that was the American ship beforehand....btw what's the proper romanization for Chichagof? Maybe there's already an article on it, I'm thinking....Skookum1 (talk) 16:20, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
 * That'd be "Chichagov". "-of" and "-off" endings to convey "-ov" were typically used when names were romanized into French.  We have an article about Vasili Chichagov, but not about the ship.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:28, February 23, 2009 (UTC)
 * OK, maybe I'll start one. What guideline/policy btw is there on Russianization of non-Russian names, if those individauls were in the service of the Russian state/military.  I'm thinking various people in Category:Governors of Russian America and also Dionysius/Dionizy Zarembo/Zaremba see Talk:Zarembo Island.Skookum1 (talk) 17:15, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
 * If there is a certain variant under which such people are known in English, then that's the variant that should be used. If no such variant exists, it's pretty much a judgement call&mdash;if a person is best known for service to the Russian state, or otherwise has a strong connection to Russia, then the guideline you need is WP:RUS.  If a person was in Russian service, but has stronger ties to some other country, then the guideline governing the romanization of that country's language (if that language uses a non-Latin script and requires romanization, of course) would be used.  I have answered your Zarembo question at the WikiProject Russia's talk page, by the way.  Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:30, February 23, 2009 (UTC)
 * I saw the book, but have not read it yet (glancing through it, it does not have the answers to our questions, although it has a lot of other interesting stuff). I was hoping to locate other books, perhaps less interesting content-wise, but more "technical" as far as the actual status etc. are concerned.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:24, February 23, 2009 (UTC)

[undent]Well, legend has it that there's all kinds of stuff in the imperial archives, which were only opened to study in very recent times (during Yeltsin's term I think). How accessible they remain is up to discussion, I suppose; so much secrecy was attached to both Russian and Spanish imperial interests in the region it's somewhat hampered proper study, that's the historiographical excuse anyway...lately there's been lots of spurious/apocryphal stuff surfacing, like the claim the purchase was actually a lease (Igor Panarin, I think, is the proponent of that).....I think the best available resources are probably, in fact, in Sitka, but I don't know enough about the holdings there, just assuming a lot of RAC records are kept there, probably not very much studied because they're in Russian longhand.....Skookum1 (talk) 19:29, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Romanizations
Well, welcome to the club; you've just discovered how much of a pain in the butt romanization of Russian names can be :) I can most certainly list the variants of the names as the default WP:RUS would produce, but I'm afraid that's not going to solve your problems.  Truth is, Russian can be romanized in many different ways.  Sometimes the names get distorted in the process; sometimes they are "translated" (e.g., "Aleksandr" would become "Alexander"), sometimes they get to English via some other language, and sometimes a combination of changes occurs.  This is precisely why WP:RUS pretty much recommends to look at each and every case individually.  Sometimes even for people deeply knowledgeable about the topic (and in this case I am most certainly not one of those people) choosing the best variant to use as a title becomes an excersise in futility.  Luckily, WP:RUS still works for such cases&mdash;we use it as a default, which can be changed later when real experts (or at least people who have time and interest to research the issue properly) surface. So, with that in mind, here is a copy of the list romanized in accordance with default WP:RUS (I couldn't find any articles about the people who are presently redlinked):
 * Alexander Andreyevich Baranov
 * Leonty Andrianovich Gagemeyster
 * Semyon Ivanovich Yanovsky
 * Matvey Ivanovich Muravyov
 * Pyotr Igorevich Chistyakov
 * Ferdinand Petrovich Vrangel
 * Ivan Antonovich Kupreyanov
 * Adolf Karlovich Etolin
 * Mikhail Dmitriyevich Tebenkov
 * Nikolay Yakovlevich Rozenberg
 * Alexander Ilyich Rudakov
 * Stepan Vasilyevich Voyevodsky
 * Ivan Vasilyevich Furugelm
 * Dmitry Petrovich Maksutov

Note that "Alexander" we usually translate&mdash;it's not in WP:RUS, but is nevertheless pretty common and uncontroversial. A WP:RUS romanization would be "Alexandr".

Regarding the names used in the actual list, I think it would be safe to drop the pipes and simply use whatever title the article is listed under. I just don't see a compelling reason to pipe/redirect&mdash;if there is a better variant to be used for any given person in the list (and there is for most of them), the article can be renamed later and all its backlinks can be rectified at the same time. All in all, you'll notice that in the area of human names WP:RUS is violated more often than it's complied with (if only I had time to work on this!).

As for Russian America itself, I placed requests for books on the subject; hopefully something will surface. Like I said before, the only thing I can say with 100% certainty is that Russian America was never a guberniya. Hope this helps.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:34, February 23, 2009 (UTC)

Granby with a lot of verbs
Hey Skookum, I am working on Granby et al. in User:Kelapstick/Sandbox3, hoping to get enough content for it's release to the mainspace for a did you know submission (1500 characters of course more is better). Anyway any information you could provide would be helpful, I have never heard of them but the NYT archives seems to have quite a bit, most of it trivial stock stuff, but it would be nice to know when they operated etc.--kelapstick (talk) 22:36, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
 * OK, check it out, new articles on GMSM&PCL and Phoenix Mine, holy crap, very interesting (if you are into that sort of thing, and apparently I am). And you are right (not that I am thatsurprised) one of the founders of Alphabet soup mining company is from Granby, Quebec (likely name source), and I was right (even more shocking) the Granby car was developed there (another new project for me I guess).  Enjoy and edit as you wish!
 * Actually you'll find Granby Mines is somewhere else in Missouri, a big lead mine, not connected (Civli War era); Granby Mining & Smelting dates only from 1901, and it was a rubber manfuacturer in Granby, Quebec named Miner....I had to shut down my browser about an hour ago, that link might be in my history file I'll have to find it again. The page I found had a fairly detailed corporate history of the Canadian company; but again, there's an apparenetly different one in Missouri (google "Granby Mines" and you'll find lots on it).  Places in BC connected with it are Anyox, British Columbia (and Kitsault/Alice Arm, too I think; see Observatory Inlet), Granisle, British Columbia, Granduc, British Columbia (needs article), Phoenix and also nearby Grand Forks, and the Granby River.  Also Copper Mountain, British Columbia and Allenby, British Columbia (near Princeton, British Columbia).  Y'never know might be a tie-in between Granby, Quebec and Granby Mines, Missouri, we'll see....Skookum1 (talk) 01:28, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
 * There is also a Granby, Colorado I found when researching it. I got a kick out of the mine operator named Miner, I actually worked wit a miner once, who's name was Doug Miner, although I also worked with a miner named Roch (pronounced Rock).  Anyway it was an interesting project to work on (and I got two DYK nominations out of it), if you find anything else let me know and I will add it if you aren't up to it.--kelapstick (talk) 16:10, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm good at starting stubs LOL but not at writing/citing proper articles....do my best with some, mostly I know what needs an article; there's lots more on Copper Mountain and Anyox that could be used to expand those articles, also. But I wanted to let you know, having looked at hte sandbox, that Phoenix is NOT in the Crowsnest Pass region of BC, it's in teh Boundary Country, which is quite different; it's traversed by the Crowsnest Highway, but the Crowsnest Pass region is on the BC-Alberta boundary a couple of hundred miles east; and is a coal-mining region, rather than copper-mining....Skookum1 (talk) 16:25, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
 * HMMMM, I actually should have looked at the Google map, it actually has Phoenix on it. That is an easy fix, the articles are in the mainspace now.  Also there is a Phoenix, British Columbia article, a nice tie into the other two.--kelapstick (talk) 16:40, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The Boundary Country has a rich mining/smelting/company history, with some real interesting characters (see Volcanic Brown). Anaconda Mines was in there, too, and many others; google up Camp McKinney, also, which was the largest gold producer in Canada in its day (near the Little Baldy Ski Area northwest of Rock Creek).  Lots of rail/mine/company history in that region, if you were looking for material to "mine", the only richer example I can think of is the Slocan...(aka the Silvery Slocan), other than the Cariboo of course....Skookum1 (talk) 16:55, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Anaconda was here too, their legacy in this area is the large open pit next to the highway (my latest semi Wikipedia project) and the massive rock dumps and tailings piles I can see from my back yard, nobody wants to touch them because if they disturb them they're liable for them, and you can't plant grass on anything because it's the desert and nothing grows but sagebrush. Luckily where we are working we are out of visual range of the city (and I use city in its loosest possible context) and there are stricter bonding and reclamation laws so we can honestly say we are not going to leave our property like that, just a couple of really big holes in the ground, hey maybe they can be lakes in the future!  It was interesting that the low grade of Phoenix didn't get the attention until they realized they didn't have to add flux to smelt int, thus reducing operating costs dramatically.--kelapstick (talk) 17:02, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

About WikiProject Environment
Thanks for tagging articles that fall into our project's scope. Please note that we have superseded the old template WikiProject Environment with Environment due to incompatible parameter issues with the old one. OhanaUnitedTalk page 01:57, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

HistoryLink.org
All I can say is the link offered came up with a Firefox notification that it was a suspect/potentially malicious site as seen here:. Anyways, I deleted it to try and prevent any problems users may have. -- Veggy  (talk ) 03:22, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I think your Firefox is over-reacting; note the credits at hte bottom of the page:
 * ''"Major Support for HistoryLink.org Provided By: The State of Washington | Patsy Bullitt Collins | Paul G. Allen Family Foundation | Museum Of History & Industry | 4Culture (King County Lodging Tax Revenue) | City of Seattle | City of Bellevue | City of Tacoma | King County | The Peach Foundation | Microsoft Corporation, Other Public and Private Sponsors and Visitors Like You"

It may be that some coe within the page made it seem to be malware, but I wouldn't consider Firefox an arbiter of whether or not a site is malicious; maybe more appropriate would be to write historylink,org and ask why their site trips up a malware alarm ,given that it's a publicly funded site for public education, I'm sure they'd be intereztsd to know if people were being warned away from teh site.Skookum1 (talk) 03:29, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Well said. I didn't go past the warning page to see all that. As I had never heard of HistoryLink and the article in question seemed to be the kind (just bigger than a stub) that didn't get edited with much oversight, I thought someone had put a questionable link in. My mistake. I have reverted. -- Veggy  (talk ) 03:42, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I noticed this too. The information about HistoryLink.org being an "attack site" came from Google. I suppose it is possible some third party might have hijacked the site at some point, but it still seemed overkill to get so many warnings. I found you can turn that off in Firefox, under Options-Security. Pfly (talk) 04:43, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Yup. Ridiculous. The single best online source for Washington State history. - Jmabel | Talk 06:46, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

CGNDB
Check it out: CGNDB. These kinds of templates aren't really difficult, probably the documentation is the biggest feat. Edit as the template/doc necessary. + m t  07:48, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Indian Reserve
Hi Skookum,

My move of List of Indian Reserves in Canada to List of Indian reserves in Canada was not because I believe either "Indian Reserve" or "Indian reserve" to be the correct capitalization. I renamed the article for consistency; the current naming convention on Wikipedia, both in all article titles on the subject as well as throughout the majority of their texts, employs the lowercase r. I don't have a problem with it being capitalized if that is more consistent with documentation outside of Wikipedia, but if the change is made, it should be made everywhere. The capitalization should be consistent in all instances on Wikipedia; the List of Indian Reserves in Canada article should not be an anomaly.

Happy editing,

Neelix (talk) 04:10, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * From my view, the naming guidelines of Wikipedia should not create anomalies, but using a different standard than those established in sources and in the law. Where, then, do I take this "naming convention" in order for it to be properly amended??  Wikipedia makes a lot of stink, rightly, about "no original research" and "no original claims" and so on, but in cases like this it's establishing new usages which are anomalous to reality.  What then happens is that reality, so-called, starts aping Wikipedia because of all the wiki-mirror cites.  There's other cases where I think lower-class capiatlization is bunk, like Regina riots and Wah Mee massacre or the non-capitalization of supposedly non-proper namnes like "BC interior" or "Fraser valley", but this is entirely different because the source documentation is so clearly at odds with what Wikipedia has decided.  Imposing standards where there were none is also OR/synthesis, and I guess that's a point for me to make at the relevant discussion area.  Such titles as we are dealing with here look wrong (I was raised around Indian Reserves and have seen that term in print my whole life).  yes, my intention is to turn the tide.  Wikipedia should only reflect reality, not dictate it....Skookum1 (talk) 14:26, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Simply put, it is Wikipedia's naming conventions that are the anomaly.Skookum1 (talk) 14:28, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi Skookum,


 * As I mentioned before, my move was not indicative of my position on whether or not capitalizing the r is appropriate. To answer your question on where you should "take this 'naming convention' in order for it to be properly amended", I would recommend the Indian reserve talk page, where you could cite the naming convention on capitalization which states that proper names should be capitalized. You should also include citations from reliable sources which employ the capitalized form. You might also want to draw attention to the discussion here and here. It's important that the discussion take place in one central location rather than in multiple places, because otherwise, a valid concensus cannot be reached. If the consensus is to move, just be sure that everything moves, not just List of Indian Reserves in Canada.


 * Neelix (talk) 14:57, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

LOL
showed up as flagged / filtered edits (vandalism) ... my thought? .. LMAO -and hey - it is hidden text! Probably not the most encyclopedic entry I've ever seen, but I ain't deleting it ... "duh" — Ched ~ (yes?) 20:38, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I just get tired of all the jejune posturing by ecoregion-oids, stating obvious facts and zxiomatic statements as if they were ponderous truths...."sometimes I just can't help myself".....Skookum1 (talk) 20:40, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Here's another example: from Pacific temperate rain forests ecoregion:
 * ''These rain forests occur in a number of ecoregions, which vary in their species composition, but are predominantly of conifers, sometimes with an understory of broadleaf trees and shrubs. Pacific Temperate rain forests can be found in the Northern Pacific coastal forests, Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia mainland coastal forests, Central Pacific coastal forests, Central and Southern Cascades forests, Klamath-Siskiyou forests, and Northern California coastal forests ecoregions.
 * "These forests occur in these other forests" is about all that says; actually the language should be that the Pacific temperate coastal ofrests includes these other ecoregions; it doesn't help that the Queen Charlotte Islands name is used as an ecoregion name, as if it were teh same thing as teh archipelago; and as if forests were not anything more than ecoregions as needful things....to me it's all half-bakec content, especially when presented as if it were absolute fact instead of being part of a particular organization's agenda (the EPA and Centre for Environemntal Cooperation use another system, and hte BC Govt Ministry of Forests has still another.....).....the quasi-science of ecology has a long way to go, I realize it's in its infancy.....but it's time to leave the cradle IMO.....Skookum1 (talk) 20:44, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * "Amateurish tone" is a chronic problem with ecoregion/ecology-oriented pages, and sadly it's also a problem in many of the sources associated with them. Garbage in, garbage out....Skookum1 (talk) 20:48, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh I loved it, and I agree - (although admittedly it's not a topic I'm particularly well informed about). I just loved the way you made a statement, and glad I picked up on the hidden tags. Great post in my opinion. — Ched ~  (yes?) 20:51, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * You'll find other traces of my rampage of hidden sarcasm in edit and inline comments elsewhere, wish I could remember where some of them are for you...."a wake of destruction and carnage".....very un-wiki, but much-needed given the non-quality of much content and even more presumption....Skookum1 (talk) 20:53, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Abbotsford
Ah, I would have presumed that a city the size of Abbotsford would at least a few towers. I was wrong I guess. Oh well. --  єmarsee •  Speak up!  01:15, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, you'd think so, but nope; think suburban sprawl, miles of it; one issue locally, also, would be blocking the views of the mountains; of the valley municipalities only Surrey really has any towers, and they're all very new....Skookum1 (talk) 01:17, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't the airport be an issue for the height of the buildings as well? I know that Richmond has a height restriction due to the closeness to the airport.  єmarsee •  Speak up!  01:36, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Richmond has a height restriction, but I'm not certain it has to do with the airport directly; certainly in Brighouse (i.e. underneath the approach to the east of Sea Island), but my understanding it has to do with the nature of the foundation soils on Lulu Island, i.e. the danger of subsidence and the cost of laying caissons for large towers; bad enough that even to build a house you have to put down a "pad" of heavy materials into the bog-guck that the island is made of, and it has to sit there for years; but for big, balance-needful towers, you need something more stable than sandy, wet/boggy ground that's up for liquefaction with the slightest wrong jiggle of the local tectonics or a certain pressure from the Fraser. I don't think it's what's above that's the issue with the height restriction, but rather what's (not) underneath.  In Abbotsford's case the town centre area is not in the path of its flight lanes; both are on an upland and with the airport being south of the freeway, it's pretty well clear over lower ground to the east and no reason for a north-south flight lane over the city-core area, and which also would involve transiting US airspace....Chilliwack has a few low towers, but again as with Richmond the nature of the soils prohibits anything higher (not that there's sufficient commerce to support one economically).Skookum1 (talk) 02:05, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Re: The two Beggs
Yeah, it's confusing, but definitely "our man" Alexander Begg (who died in 1905). He's the one with the BC government connections. I wrote his article mostly from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online which states: "During the period 1894–1903, motivated by economic developments in the British Columbia interior and the Klondike, Begg researched the history of the Alaska boundary issue and advanced a position defending Canadian interests that was based on an 1825 treaty between Russia and Britain. Despite lengthy submissions he made to Ottawa and Victoria, his efforts met with disappointment in 1903 with the international tribunal’s decision favouring American claims. " (here)

Also, our man signs his name "Alexander Begg, C.C.", (for "Crofter Commissioner") to distinguish himself from the other guy, which you can see at the end of the report you linked to. So, 100% sure it's him. (Actually, maybe I should rename the article "Alexander Begg, C.C.")

As for the other guy, "Manitoba" Begg, he moved to Victoria in 1892 and worked at The Daily News until his death in 1897, as noted in his article. Meanwhile, "our man" Alexander Begg, C.C., had already been writing at the Daily Colonist since '87. So during that five year period, they both working at rival papers, in the same city. This Other Guy, "Manitoba" Begg is the one who wrote extensively on the Metis and Manitoba (although Our Man spent some time in Red River during his early years, too), wrote the History of the North West and worked for the CPR. I'm pretty sure there isn't a third Alexander Begg to worry about, unless we live in a truly malicious universe.

Hope that helps, Stevecudmore (talk) 21:49, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Re: Rampart Dam
I don't go into it too much, but the Canadian government was against the project from its inception, for that very reason. I've got a sentence in the Ecological Objections subsection, but I didn't add more because none of the sources seemed to consider Canadian opposition as a big deal -- the focus was on Alaska and Outside resistance to the project. JKBrooks85 (talk) 09:45, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I think if you actually looked for some Canadian sources on it, given that the feds had a position, there shoudl be plenty; how much of that is online is debatable though. I'd also question the use of "ecological" in the context of that time-frame, there must be another term (the term "ecology" wasn't coined until after Silent Spring....).  Anyway I'll see what I can dig up on the Canadian side when I get a chance, and will field it by some who've worked on Columbia River, as that article has a lot of bilateral aspects to it.  Just because US sources focus only on US issues is no reason to focus on them alone, ie. "POV sources make a POV article", or to downplay the Canadian side; and I'd suggest that "Canadian objections" be its own section, even given overlap with aboriginal and ecological/environmental issues.   Anyway I'll field this by the bunch at hte Columbia article, and also maybe WikiProject Rivers...Skookum1 (talk) 16:50, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
 * PS American sources rarely regard Canadiain perspectives/concerns as a big deal. This doesn't mean it's not a big deal, it just means the Americans downplay Canadian concerns as a matter of course....this is what I meant by "POV sources make a POV article"....Skookum1 (talk) 16:53, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Wrong move = airports in Vancouver area
Well your point is that things are confusing. Apparently several terms are in use. Maybe what needs to be done is for some editors to settle on one of these, or multiples and then move the articles around. Vegaswikian1 (talk) 20:07, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Ethnobotany WikiProject
I recently drafted a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Proposals#Wikiproject_Ethnobotany. proposal for an Ethnobotany WikiProject] ... check out the project proposal for more details. I thought you might be interested due to your interest in indigineous cultures.

Cheers! Jrtayloriv (talk) 06:43, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Coquitlam Dam
Hey there. I'm not disputing the water supply issue, it's just that Coquitlam Dam isn't the water source, Coquitlam Lake is (and that info is reflected in Coquitlam Lake's article). The lake existed before the dam was built, although the dam was built to raise the water level for Hydro's tunnels to Buntzen Lake (which isn't a water supply). Greg Salter (talk) 16:51, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Drinking water supply you mean; a water supply is a water supply, in abstract terms e.g. for hydro powerhouses and in Buntzen's case also Burrard Thermal. I reverted a past-tense reference to the Coquitlam reservoir supplying New Westminster because when it was built it may have been only New West that was served by the viaduct/pipe, i.e. Port Moody probably had its own source, likewise PoCo probably drew directly from the river and the then-settled part of Coquitlam - Brunette-area - probably drew on something from the Como Lake plateau.  Contextual quibbles like we're sharing here are all important, despite the "casual language" of many sources/cites that's all the more reason for us to be precise in meaning/wording.Skookum1 (talk) 18:14, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

British Columbia location/regional district map
Your're getting tired/irritated from having to do this? You have no idea. I'm thinking EXACTLY the same about the treatment I also get from people on here. All you had to do it revert the Location map British Colombia. You;ve now spent an hour wasting your time when you could have restored the old map or coporect the coordinates in two second flat. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 17:05, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Don't get p'd, I'm not interested in how it came about; all I know is the map IS WRONG and I don't like RD-based maps to start with. Who made the decision to change the map?  Certainly wasn't me.....tired/irritated is due to WP:UNDUE weight placed on regional districts to start with, never mind having to pick up the pieces.  Aggravated?  Don't throw it back at me, I'm the one trying to fix the mistake; how was I to know it had to do with an (unneeded) change to the map template?Skookum1 (talk) 17:10, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

As far as I recall I only changed the graphic of the map not the settings so any errors were made by somebody before me. I did not change the actual map or coordinates so the error was pre-existent. PLease get your facts straight before you start brandishing me as the culprit. And yes it is frequently me who is having to do exactly the sort of edits you had to do on a regular basis on here. It is basic knowledge that pin maps are controlled by location map templates by any real editor on here. Template:Location map Canada British Columbia is the source not the individual articles.

Yes I've just looked at it and I did not change the coordinates or contours of the pre-existant map. I am not to blame for the incorrectness of the map. Basically you've just turned up and spouted your mouth off at me when the error was there before regardless of the graphic change. There is even a clear note at the top saying so. I;ve reverted it back to how it was before I edited it and yes believe it or not the error was there before, nothing to do with me. Therror is still there reagrdless of graphic change. We need to get a new map which works and then every place in British Colombia will have a proper correct locator map (which believe it or not I'd prefer than you having to waste your time). Dr. Blofeld      White cat 17:28, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
 * [post=tripe=edit-conflict]Don't be snotty - I'm hardly "any editor on here" and you're making a sweeping assumption about what other editors should know. Conscientious editors should check teh status/viability of a graphic before using it or continuing to use a template/graphic if the previous wan'st arleady working. A simple glance at the Vancouver Island or Fort St. John maps should have told you that there was something wrong; do you check teh results of your template edits?  Do you check if the template was even already working.  And did I blame YOU for the map itself?  Somehow changing the graphic of the map changed the projection of the map, whether that's your doing or not I haven't looked at the file history....I know that User:Qyd made another map that did have the right projection; what happendd in the meantime isn't my business; but why did you change the graphic?  i.e. in waht way was your graphic different from what was there before?  Because, before, the map did work....what, again, were your reasons for changing it?  Did you think to look at it at all, if as you claim it wasn't you who changed the map (if you didn't change the map, what does "changing the graphic" mean??Skookum1 (talk) 17:40, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Myself I think either terrain or highway-based maps are the only relevant/recognizable maps; RDs are only relevant to the census, or to RDs themselves; they're not even useful as town-locators (given that towns are member-units of the RDs, that is). Even river-maps make more sense than RD borders; not your issue, ultimately it's the core problem though.....Skookum1 (talk) 17:44, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Whatever. I've tweaked the location map. Try restoring one you edited earlier and see if there is an improvement. Believe it or not I want to help it is the guilt trip you exhibted thats all as if I was responsible for your time wasting. Changing the graphic, changing the colors from a diffcult to read dull greay map to a lighter tone one which is better compatible with the pin thats what. The map should be correct now try restoring something. You should now spend another hour or two restoring what you reverted earlier as these articles are now in a worse state for having no maps. Dr. Blofeld      White cat [post-double-edit-conflict]
 * The orthometric version or Transverse Mercator or whatever it is, which works, is out there somewhere on some articles, I'll try and find it. I asked Qyd a while back if there was a terrain map that would work, he says there's not (yet).  There is a formula conceivable that could be applied to the coordinates to make it work on a polar/conic projection (which I think is what we're dealing with here, and on the terrain maps like you'll see on Clear Range, Interior Plateau, Hazelton Mountains etc, and there may be a way to "stretch" such maps into mercator/orthometric, but he doesn't have the time to work it out....Skookum1 (talk) 17:55, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
 * This I think is the right projection; it's not done as a pushpin, Qyd placed Dease Lake's pin directly somehow; I'll look around, maybe I can find the highway map which is preferable though resembles the RD maps in graphic style but i think is also orthometric...or Mercator or whatever it is.Skookum1 (talk) 18:02, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Sacred Headwaters
Hi Skookum, I just took a look at Sacred Headwaters (even though you posted it at WP:CWNB in June), looks like the article is more about Klappan Coalbed Methane project than the actual headwaters it actually looks more like an environmental soapbox than a proper article) ), the only part about the headwaters is in the lead, and even that is a little "touchy-feely" for my tastes (I did tweak it a bit). And the significant events section only starts in 2004, if the headwaters were that sacred I would think significant events would have happened long before Shell showed interest in the area. I agree with the title issue you had too, there is some invitation for ambiguity, I don't know if other places in Canada/elsewhere have a place called Sacred Headwaters, in which case this would be moved to Sacred Headwaters (British Columbia) to make way for a DAB page (if that happens let me know I would be happy to make it), provided these are the only Sacred Headwaters in the province (are they?)...--kelapstick (talk) 04:51, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Red Gap, British Columbia
I understand there are some problems with map projections used in infoboxes. In this article I used one that was used in Wellington, British Columbia. The location looks right to me. Is the map used suitable for these infoboxes? -- KenWalker | Talk 20:02, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * It's not the projection in quesiton, or too small a chunk of it to matter much; ingerneral the mofre northerly something is in the otehr one the more out of place it will be; this map is realtively local-scale, the one in quesiton is hte provicne-wide one. You're the Islander -if it looks OK to you, use it; relative position to a coastline like Garbiola is t he comaprison to make; I looked at the Googelarth linked throug hte coords but coudln't make out the comparison.  It'll be abetter to ahve a non-RD map of course but wel'l g4et to that.  BTW see my just-now edit on North Secretary Island vs Gulf/Strait of Georgia; List of waterways in the Gulf of Georgia is sometihng I'm going to start, to hammer the point home thgat the STrait and the Gulf aren't the same thing.....nb List of waterways in the Gulf of Georgia region would/could includ the Fraser, Powell Lake etc; the distinction/notion is that Trincomali Chanel, Ganges Harbour, Active Pass, Sansum Narrows etc are all part fo the Gulf, but not of the STrait.  It's a distinction that's important but often glossed over....whether or not Howe Sound is part of it, or Johnstone STrait, Im' not sure - hard to cite......I'm gonna poke around for map orjections that work but I don't think it really applies with Red Gap, if it looks OK to use it (for now).Skookum1 (talk) 21:07, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * re the categories, thing, what's your gut instinct between Category:Gulf of Georgia region, Category:Gulf of Georgia Region, Category:Gulf of Georgia (region)? whatever the model, Category:Juan de Fuca region or Category:Strait of Juan de Fuca region and should it have a (U.S.)/{Canada) disambig; maybe not needed for the first wording; for the second it would seem to include Victoria whereas the other might only start at ....Sooke (i.e. outside the Western Communities?).Skookum1 (talk) 21:11, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

POV Commentary
Hi there. I want to call your attention to a revert I did to one of your edits. I felt that the text you added was unsourced and more akin to commentary than a description of the events in question. I've also made other edits to the article...

Oh, and you edited while I was composing this. Never mind. :) 70.91.178.185 (talk) 18:01, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I resent your implication that I have an agenda, and I've responded in kind. 70.91.178.185 (talk) 19:04, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I've posted this, FYI. I also made a snippy reply on the talk page of the article that I'm apparently trying to hijack with my agenda. 70.91.178.185 (talk) 23:08, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Thought you should know that I saw your response on WP:ANI. It was too long, so I didn't bother reading it. Putting this plainly, if you think I have an agenda, fine. It doesn't bother me that you're insane. The only sadness I feel is directly related to the quality of the articles you write. Have a good one. 70.91.178.185 (talk) 19:56, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

CWNB / Maps / hating .locator maps
OK, what exactly is your problem? Is it using regional/district maps, is it that the base coordinate for the map is wrong, or is it that the actual projection is not rectlinear? What use are you talking about? Is it in Infobox settlement or one of it's derivatives? If so, are you talking about dot placement using the image_map/dot_x/dot_y method, or the pushpin_map method that uses the coor..., lat..., and long... parameters to display the pin.

I'll tell you right now that displaying large maps in the north-south sense doesn't work when relying on lat/lon coordinates, the infobox template only handles rectilinear maps. There is another way to do it, I've modified maps, I've asked people (Bearcat actually, who doesn't respond to his talk page posts, and crap it was his post to CWNB that got me working on it for days), I've posted at the template page, whatever. Everyone says it's a problem, but no-one actually wants to even comment on actually fixing the problem.

Anyway, /rant. Can you just give me maybe four diff's and explain what the problem was? If it's map projections and pin misplacement, I may be able to address it - and it has been on my mind. Franamax (talk) 05:22, 19 March 2009 (UTC)


 * My opposition to the use of regional district maps, and regional district categories, for things unrelated to that jurisdiction is a separate issue from the problem with the map projections as such. As far as the projections go, sometime a while ago somebody changed the image on the location_map template for BC; the old one had a severe distortional quality to it, the "stretching" of the northern part of the province due to the need for have lines of longitude parallel and (presumably) at the same pixel-distance apart at the 60th Parallel as at the 49th.  The result was that the former pushpins/locator xdot/ydots, no longer were of the same "projection" as the map targeted.  The ones I edited out/deleted, mostly, seemed to be on the pushpin system, but I remember some had "locator" in the infobox script; one or two were stand-alone image templates outside Infobox settlement.  One tell-tale sign that the new map cannot work is the curve in the 49th and 60th Parallels shown on it, but for me as somebody who knows BC geography well the placement of the pushpin for Mount Waddington approximately where Riske Creek-Williams Lake is, or of Princess Royal Island as being on the mainland, or of Fort St. John being not only in Alberta, but too far north.....the locator-pushpin system has also been used on close-up maps of Vancouver Island/Mainland SW - e.g. on Red Gap, British Columbia, where because it's close to the 49th Parallel the distortion is minimized so, to KenWalker's eye (he lives on the Island), it's "close enough".  If you go to the file histories for Mount Waddington and Princess Royal Island you'll find the edits where I removed the image-template-name from infobox settlement so if you go to the previous revision you'll see what map was being used, and how the result turned out; I did about 30 of these, if you need me to I'll go back in my own contributions and dig out the rest.  I remember Hazelton, British Columbia as being way east, in the heart of the Ominecas (due north of Ft St James, roughly) and one of teh towns in the Charlottes, Skidegate maybe, as being placed on the mainland somewhere.  If "rectilinear" is the term (I thought "orthometric" was correct but I guess not; quasi-Mercator anyway).  There's a highway map out there, similar in style (lines and colour) to the RD map, that I recall as being similarly distorted, i.e. rectilinear; its graphic style makes it look like the highways are borders, but with graphic-correction, to me, it's far more suitable for showing town/settlement locations.  There IS no rectilinear terrain-based map, of teh style you'd see on Interior Plateau, Selkirk Mountains or Pacific Ranges etc., but with a little stretching/morphing the basemap used there could be made rectilinear....not sure if that can be done with satellite-images like the one I used on Monashee Mountains.  If I was skilled with map programs, I'd just build one from GeoDis data but don't know how; ditto one for the Land Districts, which as I expounded on the WPCCanNB are the only valid non-OR location system valid for all kinds of geo-objects, mountains, lakes etc in particular.  The Forests Districts/Regions discussion was tangential, by way of demonstrating there's more than one way to cut the cake, so to speak; it happens to mirror the "traditional regions" which Bearcat dismisses as "subjective" but which are in fact the tangible-on-the-ground historical/cultural realities.  The Nicola is not part of the Thompson, the Similkameen and Boundary are not part of the Okanagan, the Chilcotin is not part of the Cariboo, the Finlay Country is not part of the Peace Country, Atlin is not part of the Stikine, and Kitimat's not really anywhere near the Stikine, and so on; the RDs do not reflect historical or current political/cultural/social/economic realities/ they only reflect the outlines of the jurisdictions of the respective minor-decision-making bodies known as regional districts.  Forest regions, mining districts, LRMPs (Land-Use Resource Management Plans), parks regions, MoE regions are all more relevant subdivisions of BC....at some point I'm going to make up List of political geographic subdivisions of British Columbia to try and list all these in the same place; at the top of the list, and as the fundamental underlying all others, is the land district system; like the RDs it's somewhat arbitrary, very abstract, and sometimes/often irrespective of actual geography, but it's the legal system as is a good 100 years older (108 actually) than the regional district system, which was only concocted in 1966 as a way for WAC Bennett to disembowel the Lower Mainland Regional Planning Board (which he'd invented, and then which didn't do what he wanted them to do).  And as noted, in the historical censuses, it was teh mining districts which functioned as census areas; in later times it was simply the land district, sometimes the electoral districts, depending on the census-year.  This is getting into my discussion of why Census Canada's current divisions of BC do not have anythikng to do with the historical divisions of BC, and not about hte map directly; it's just a furtherance of my desier that other more topically-suitable maps also be made up in the correct proejctions, instead of only the RD ones....one of the dodges the defenders of the RD maps use is that it's the map avaiable, so it's the one being used....Skookum1 (talk) 14:35, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Here is the previous version of the Princess Royal Island] article, for reference; note the curved lines of latitude.....Skookum1 (talk) 14:37, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Baynes Sound
Not a great photo, might not be useful, but I am having fun when I am supposed to be house cleaning. -- KenWalker | Talk 05:00, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Quite the wide pan....interesting the "mirage effect" especially notable from the left part of the sandbluffs and on the houses to their left; if focus was a bit better those are a "notable landform" on Denman, not so? Crops of this photo, with a bit of a contrast-bump and a quick "sharpen", might serve to illustrate certain peaks of the Pacific Ranges.....something tells me that big square-knob-peak is Whitemantle Mountain but you'd have to give me the triangulation to figure it out; better to try for distant-mountain photos from higher elevations, and with a telephoto rather than a wide-pan (I realize most digital cameras don't have a telephoto setting; requires lenses....).  Anyway me, too, I putter/rant on Wikipedia instead of house-cleaning or (ahem) looking for work, while munching over and over in my head about getting culture-grants (for music, maybe for history/geography) or, failing that, how to get to Thailand for next winter and how to survive there....  As a result whole days fly by LOL....anyway re your picture if you can figure out which summits those are that would add to the caption for sure.....Skookum1 (talk) 12:48, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Inline comments
Hi again. My obvious agenda and I would like to point out that Wikipedia is not your personal soapbox, even if your additions to the article are invisible to the user. This is an edit of yours that I've reverted. Feel free to accuse me of whatever. 70.91.178.185 (talk) 20:03, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Looking for attention are we? I kinda figured out that I wouldn't be hearing from you again until the next business day, given your IP address traces to Advanced Control Systems, a "media consulting" firm in Minneapolis; I trust your activities aren't covered under your Defencx Dept contract, whatever that might be for ("undiscernible or classified") but perhaps you're only a minion bored out of his mind, taking an interest in a British Columbian political biography "just because it's there", without your bosses knowing that you're f-ing around on wikipedia on company time and from the company's IP address to....  Whatever, go make a nuisance of yourself somewhere else; or actually educate yourself on BC politics instead of just preventing others from doing so....Skookum1 (talk) 21:52, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
 * You're so funny it's actually cute. Would you like to talk to my boss? His name is Palmer. 70.91.178.185 (talk) 19:03, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Bore-ing. Do you have anything constructive to add to the Campbell article?  Or are you only interested in policing it - apparently with, as you imply, your boss' consent.  Would that be Frank Palmer, by the way, once of Palmer Jarvis?  Whatever; it's clear that you have tried to get my blocked because your views disagree with mine; you won't succeed, and right now you're verging on harassment.  If that's not your agenda and you are genuinely interested in the Campbell bio I suggest you take your time doing more research rather than running in stupid-personal-attack mode.Skookum1 (talk) 20:46, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with File:Cave1.jpg
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Re: Category:National Historic Sites in British Columbia
The national historic sites BC subcategory (and another one for Alberta) was created by User:Kappakapa last month so it was there when I did yesterday's round of cat sorting. In any case, no province name is disambiguated, therefore there seems to be no need to specify Canada in the category title. However, if you still have concerns over these cat namings, a discussion should be raised at WP:CANTALK. Dl2000 (talk) 21:47, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Sansum Narrows and Trincomali Channel
Heya, I just dug up my old files for maps of the region only to discover the base maps I'd already prepared don't quite cover the region needed for these two pages. I thought it might be quite easy to just reuse an already made map, but it will take a little more effort, so no promises. I'll see how much more effort. Pfly (talk) 07:18, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Science reference desk question removed
Hi Skookum1, I removed your question about Behcet disease because it was a request for medical advice. If you would like to discuss this removal, I have created a discussion area here. I would like to point out that our article on Behcet disease does indicate that this disease is not solely dermatological. I am sympathetic to your plight and wish I could be more helpful. With best wishes for you and your family, --Scray (talk) 19:48, 28 March 2009 (UTC)


 * After preliminary discussion, I have restored your question, because it is not clearly in violation of any guidelines. I apologize for any inconvenience or confusion I have caused you.  --Scray (talk) 20:39, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'd tried to not phrase it so as to ask for advice, only to find out if it was the same disease and where else I might look for info/explanation; not askign "what to do", but I see you understand that now.Skookum1 (talk) 20:47, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Railgate complexity etc.
I still need to go get food (and beer!), but I had to stop by and thank you for introducing yourself to me on my talk page and outlining just a few of the myriad concerns that will arise from my probably ill-conceived decision to wade into the railgate article.

Also, thanks for renaming my section title. It can be hard to figure out the best way of putting things at times. I'm a noob wikipedian, but I can't bear to see that article so broken. I am going to do my best to source the crap out of it. Although a lot of the information on the whole issue is in the blogosphere... it would be hard to argue that folks like Sean Holman (Public Eye Online), and Andrew MacLeod (The Tyee), who are members of the press gallery, are unreliable sources.

I'm a little cynical, so I am guessing that the people who do not want British Columbians to know about this trial in any depth will be ready to axe as much as they can at the slightest whiff of weakness. However, I intend to do everything in my power to make the article as fair and sourced as possible. British Columbians have a right to a fair article on this trial.

I was looking at your bio, you have an impressive editing history. I'm glad you've been looking out for the article, I feel a little less timid knowing someone with a little more experience will be watching and helping me keep it NPOV and according to the rules.

I'll be back! Nice to meet you again. Moonbug (talk) 02:21, 30 March 2009 (UTC)


 * There's a number of people who watch this article since what's known as the Bornmann Affair, most are NPOV/truth oriented...generally you'll see "SPAs" (single-purpose accounts( and IP users kibbitzing; when not IP users these will generally be redlinked usernames; there are also some "national level" Wikipedians and non-Canadian wikipedians who are monitoring it out of public interest, to prevent attempts to delete material and "whitewash" it ,as happened before (including an attempt to have it deleted outright). My (bad) habit is to add extra details from known facts in blogspace/main media without getting hte citation together, and I have a further bad habit of "spicy logic", which is otherwise known as "selective portrayal", this is what I was saying about my difficulties with being NPOV myself; the promise-not-to-sell and the trickery of saying "we didnt' sell it, we only leased it", plus the marching orders to caucus to deny any knowledge of tainted process in the same meeting they were told it was going to go to CN no matter what; or adding to the Oppal "can't comment" by tagging a sentence on there with the comments he has made (about it having no legs, and organized crime not being involved).  What we have to do, however, is straightforward reportage, with as little proof-logic as possible - "jes' the facts, ma'am".  Since you're a newbie you may not be aware of WP:OR and WP:Synth, you'd better read them if you haven't, just to make sure your additions/edits are "secure".  AS noted, I'm faced with real-life crises in the next week or two, but monitor this on a daily basis (I'm from BC but live in Nova Scotia now btw, Railgate's kind of a tarbaby issue for me, but then so is my fascination with early-BC history....).  Gotta sign off, gotta write a job-app cover letter; as before, I'll tweak and cite-request as needed, and while I'm POV myself I'm pretty good at NPOV wording so as to avoid needless deletions by teh seemingly righteous....IMO Wikipedia is the one public arena where the major media can't sway and direct issues, but it takes some work to do an "end run" on "the establishment", especially when there are so many close ties between CanWest and the party/parties in power.  More later, keep up the good work, I know others in the "Railgate editors club" appreciate it also....Skookum1 (talk) 02:45, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * BTW see Category_talk:Bloggers re the needed article on BC Mary. I can't write it due to COI - honestly recusing myself - but I'll get some main-media mentions of her and her role re Railgate for you, if you wouldn't mind making it; just a stub, but it also will establish the ability to use material from her blog, such as Robin Matthews' many excellent articles and opinion/analysis pieces, as citations...."not just any blogger".Skookum1 (talk) 02:49, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Salish colors
Fine, fine. You're right that I should have checked to see if it was discussed. "Garish" is a funny word to use, though, when considering that great chunks of black is simply hideous (hence my change to green, to look like a natural, earthy color — which struck me as more aboriginal and less industrial). Perhaps your monitor displays the colors more "garishly" than mine. — The Man in Question (gesprec)  ·  (forðung)  22:59, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Skookum is right about the Black and Red. They are synonymous for indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast, and cross languages with Kwakwaka'wakw, Coast Salish, Nuu-chah-nulth, Haida, etc.  There are probably other nations it connects to, but those are ones I know of 100%.  There are different understandings and teachings related to those colours from their respective colours.  As for the colour schemes to all those things (I forgot what they are called), I don't care too much.  I just chose it because it was simple and easy colours to come up with.  I would, as a wikipedian, not as an indigenous wikipedian, opt for a nicely coloured choices then "garish" (Runs to look up word in dictionary!).  Okay, peace out! OldManRivers (talk) 00:29, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I was going to suggest that some "design" be put into the structure of the template's graphics, as per what was done with "core" WP:Canada templates to minimize the dominant Big Red look; I'll find that discussion and post a link to it here later on.Skookum1 (talk) 01:36, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

All right, like I said, I'm not arguing. Although I take some offense at your suggestion that I was being "decorative" — I was trying to make it easy on the eyes (the green I picked for the background appears very pale on my monitor, and therefore doesn't really clash with the blue). Also, as for picking green because of environmentalism or because of superimposed opinions about First Nations and American Indians, this is entirely untrue. I chose green because it is earthy, not because it is Native American. I prefer earthy colors in all areas of life, and though I was not trying to impose my own taste on others, I simply assumed that most would feel the same. It had no connection to any agenda other than, as you put it, avoiding garishness. — The Man in Question (gesprec)  ·  (forðung)  08:57, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
 * You take offense easily; "decorative" is a no-no in Wikipedia, whether it's over-use of flags/flag icons, colour themes, graphic designs etc.Skookum1 (talk) 12:59, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

What I've Been Up To
I have been away from Wikipedia for a while now. I do miss it, somewhat. I have collected a lot of information over my time away. Articles like Skwxwu7mesh, Coast Salish art, and related articles, will definitely get a boost of content. I have been busy doing Coast Salish art. After I write this, I will email you some samples of what Coast Salish art looks like. (You've probably heard of Susan Point, although she was not the first and won't be the last Coast Salish artist). Hope all is well with you. OldManRivers (talk) 00:32, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
 * While I'm thinking of it OMR if you come across another volume of Hill-Tout's "The Squamish and the Lillooet" and it's cheap-cheap, can you mail me one snailmail or bus or whatever? Not easily available around Halifax....but I guess it's unlikely to turn up cheap-cheap anyway; I just wanted his notes on the pre-gold rush wars suffered by the Lillooets; maybe if you could just take the time to scan those pages and email 'em to me that would be great; I can send you Teit's "History of the Okanagan people" which I've got in zippzed bundles of TIFFs, in exchange.Skookum1 (talk) 01:39, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

BC electoral districts
I don't know about the origin of the North/South LM split... it's been on the template from before my edits, but it refers to "North" and "South" of the Fraser, at least within the GVRD/Metro Vancouver (which I realize is not one and the same as the LM). Onto those halves are grafted the Fraser Valley with the South and the Sea to Skyish bits with the North.
 * Hm, the template sections need revisiting maybe; Coquitlam, Maple Ridge are decidedly Fraser Valley, as also Richmond and Delta, in older-era usage anyway; the impression is "northern Lower Mainland" and "southern Lower Mainland"....and now with cross-river ridings like Abbotsford-Mission, north/south of the Fraser doesn't work well as a division. Maybe "urban<, "suburban" might work as divisions but then what to do with Sea to Sky and Chilliwack....hmmm..I'll give it some thought...Skookum1 (talk) 02:03, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I would disagree on Coquitlam pretty emphatically. Lumping in anything west of the Pitt River with Abbotsford seems egregiously wrong, but that's based on "feel" rather than a reliable source.  We are out of empirical waters here ;).
 * For what it's worth, I think the dividing line is fine--it hasn't been breached since at least the 1940s (if not further back), and there've only been enough districts to worry about multiple LM categories since 1979--it's just the terminology might be a bit nitpickable.

And "Vancouver Island / South Coast" shouldn't be taken to mean all of Vancouver Island is automatically part of the South Coast, but rather that the category groups "Vancouver Island" with a chunk of some of the part of the mainland called the "South Coast," namely Powell River-Sunshine Coast. The BC Electoral Boundaries commission used this terminology in their report, FWIW, although such names for groups of electoral district aren't exactly official-official.

As for the years: I elected to treat the actual date of birth of all the districts as when the legislation comes into force, not when they were first committed to statute or when the report was released, and likewise the date of death when the MLA with that name on their letterhead went out on the hustings, not when the last election was held or the report came out that removed them or what have you. The templates for riding articles distinguish between the two sorts of dates already, so I was sort of sticking to that. The Tom (talk) 01:53, 5 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Again, the splitting of Mission does somewhat bother me from a geographer's perspective, but it's actually a net gain for the NDP. Where in 2005 they won Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows, narrowly lost Maple Ridge-Mission and then had a load of no-hopers in Abbotsford, the vote translation on the new map makes for a hold of MR-PM, an NDP win in the new, smaller MR-M, and still no-hopers in an expanded "Abbotsford" that now includes a chunk of Mission. This is a neat resource, as is this.
 * Hmm handy resources indeed. Thing with the chunk of Mission that's been cut off is it decidedly is the more conservative part of the town (I went to high school there), at least if wealth is taken as a measure of rightwing-ness; the western part of Mission district is mostly rural, other than West Heights, and that will all change when Silverdale morphs into Heritage Mountain East in the next few years (sigh...it's so beautiful up in there, very sad to see it go).  Deroche, Dewdney, Nicomen etc are pretty NDP flavoured for the most part (or were in my time - Grad '72 LOL) but their minor populations are graetly outweighed by Mission City's core and eastern slope and Hatzic and the newly-expanded Ferndale area.Skookum1 (talk) 03:50, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The situation in the southern Thompson-Okanagan is interesting because the boundaries revert back to almost exactly as they were in 1991-2001, albeit with different names: Okanagan-Boundary is, I belief, a literal carbon copy of the new Boundary-Similkameen (but not the pre-1991 two-seater Boundary-Similkameen) and the new Penticton is pretty much Okanagan-Penticton with the northern boundary moved a few fields over in a few spots. If you want to dig through the EBC website, you'll find that there were a lot of Keremeos-based submissions that wanted out of Yale-Lillooet, as they had been in an Okanagan-based seat running back decades, including IIRC a resolution of their City Council.
 * Well, that's certainly true about Kemereos esp. Boundary-Simikameen, a name so old it dates from a time when Osoyoos was primarily considered Boundary Country and the Okanagan hadn't become the dominant name for that region now and was more "out of the way" (long, long ago) ;was a time when Yale-Lillooet didn't need to have Ashcrot-Cache Creek in it because the populations of Bralorne-Gold Bridge and Seton-Lillooet were much larger, ditto the canyon towns; Merritt was a backwater....i've forgotten, though - was Princeton in Boundary-Similkameen in relatively recent times; it certainly was core to teh old Similkameen (electoral district) but that's when Blakeburn, Copper Mountain, Hedley and Granite Creek were still going concerns....ditto with Boundary (electoral district) although even that region had been populous enough for Greenwood to have been its own riding separate from Grand Forks....most people dn't realize how much the relative-population map in the Interior has changed huh?Skookum1 (talk) 03:50, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Per my maps Princeton was in Similkameen until 1966, and then for that election the Yale boundary moved from the Cascade divide eastwards until it stopped just to the east of the Princeton townsite (that was, coincidentally, also the redistribution that morphed Yale into Yale-Lillooet). The line shimmied a little farther over to the east to halfway between Princeton and Keremeos (corresponding to the RD electoral area boundary, I think) in a subsequent redistribution, and stayed there all the way until 2001.
 * The supposed-to-be-final electoral boundaries commission-recommended boundary set released in 2008 had Princeton in the new Boundary-Similkameen, and Fraser-Nicola extending further north to take in 100 Mile House. When the legislature indicated they would legislate to force keeping districts in the north, the EBC came up with the "not recommended but here you have it option" that they put in an Appendix where Princeton was tossed [back] into Fraser-Nicola to make up the population lost when the map went from one Cariboo-focussed seat back to two.  That ended up being what the new act referred to.
 * Interesting; 100 Mile was in the original Lillooet riding, also (by definition) in the Lillooet Land District (and still is); it's always weird to me to see images of rangeland and birch in the BC Archives being described as "countryside in the Lillooet District"; in fact I t hink for a long time the "Lillooet" government agent or some other govt function was in Clinton rather than Lillooet.....Skookum1 (talk) 20:23, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
 * And I'm well aware of how relative populations have fluxed in the Interior. After all, my hometown was the second-largest city between New Westminster and Winnipeg for a while.  Points for guessing. The Tom (talk) 20:03, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
 * First guess Greenwood, then Sandon. After that scratchin' my head some; early on there were a number of places that held similar boasts, but they were very transitory - other than Barkervile, which remained hte largest city in the BC Interior until the railway came...other guess is Rossland.....Skookum1 (talk) 20:23, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
 * BC has a far more egregious history of gerrymandering than most of the country... Gracie's finger being potentially article-worthy. But the process for the last three redistributions has been marked by very independent commissions; indeed, the way this past once came to loggerheads with the Gordo gang was unprecedented and there was assorted scuttlebutt from Vaughan Palmer in the press about the chair wanting to walk over the threats that the Liberals (with NDP complicity) would legislate to preserve northern rep, which is effectively what ended up happening (the legislating against the commission's recommendations, not the resigning).
 * Oh, and you mentioned Atlin---this possibly should go into its article at some point, because it was actually the test case found to be a Charter violation which set the whole thing off in the early 80s. The Tom (talk) 02:41, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The "ancient" Comox riding had in the range of 30-40 voters and covered the whole coast from Parksville on up and including Skeena-Stikine Countries (even though there were virtually no whites up there to vote...I'm meaning in say 1880 or so), Atlin's a bit of a legacy of that, or was. But coming from the "outcountry" like I do (Shalalth) I've always had sympathy for voters in rural regions who don't see it logical that voters in an urban concentration hundreds of miles away should have a greater say in their affairs than they do themselves; so I look askance at Williams Lake dominating two ridings, ditto Prince George, and at how in various combinations rural, often native areas, are really not represened by candidates chosen by the towns; you may be aware of my strong antipathy towards regional districts which is based on similar notions of "representation by area".  "Rep by pop", if you examine it historically, I think you'll find is something popular with urban populations because it makes sense to them, but rural populations have their reasons not to like it (whether aboriginal or not).  So while there are some urban ridings which have way more population than either of the Prince George or Peace Country pairs of ridings (or as was formerly the case maybe...) the reality is that the regions affected are not so many city blocks, but vast entities with particular geographic interests/issues.....and waht vote-concentration means is that with squeaky wheels getting the grease, the Lower Mainland/GV gets most of the "big infrastucture spending", in the same way that southern Ontario and Montreal-Quebec City get a lot of vote-buying largesse; it's only when the outer regions have had a disproportionate "share of power", relative to their smaller populations, that is, that they've gotten any kind of respect.  The Swiss system solves this somewhat by making urban cantons separate from the surrounding countryside ones; e.g. Bern vs. Jura or Basel-land vs Basel-stadt, Geneva vs Lausanne (though, granted, Lausanne's still a pretty large city)...and Grisons, the Romansh-flavoured southeastern canton, has nothing like the population of Zurich or even Interlaken; I think its largest "city" is St. Moritz.  Of course the Swiss system devolves power down to even smaller local-governance quotients, with individual villages effectively being self-governing on many matters which their neighbours can have nothing to say about unless it directly affects them.  but this is comparing apples and oranges anyway; our representatives do not really represent the interests of their constituents, more they're the excuse-makers, heat-takers and bagmen for the government (if they're government members) or moderators for disenfranchised constituencies (if non-government members).  Some do their best, to be sure, but really voters and riding boundaries are just ways to engineer popular sentiment into mandates for near-absolute authority by ruling parties.....I won't POVize further, like I said, I just hope STV passes by something so overwhelming that the bastardy of the plurality ridings are swept into the dustbin of history where they belong; they had a point in the old old days when you actually knew the candidates personally; but they're hardly valid when there's 40,000 people swayed only by advertising and lies and pork barrelling...I agree about Gracie's Finger (which was always capitalized in the press) needing an article; it's one of several Socred-era scandals in need of articles, but sources are relatively hard to find and "you had to be there" to know when and where to look, e.g. the Vander Zalm-era driver's licensing scandal, ditto Fantasy Gardens itself; but Gracie's Finger was so noxiously blatant as electoral scandal huh?  There were others, but none with as catchy a name....Skookum1 (talk) 03:50, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Parting comment for the night, one would hope that ststistical breakdowns of voter behaviour aren't as engineer-able as statisticians and pollsters would like, and that real issues actually have the ability to "defy all predictions", as happened in '91 for example. Old habits die hard, but they do die....one hopes.Skookum1 (talk) 03:50, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Just came across a note in Walbran (while finding some info for Mount Benson) about an early election when Dr Benson was returning officer. On June 23, 1859 Captain John Swanson of the HBC was the candidate for Nanaimo and the sole voter.  He was declared elected by a majority of one. -- KenWalker | Talk 23:12, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, I remember that; it was in the time when there were property qualifications for voting; there were other British subjects but none who passed the bar, so to speak....the further technicality being that the returning officer would cast the deciding vote in the event of a tie; which there wasn't, as one other qualified voter, as I recall (but can't remember who) was for some reason disqualified; but I think it still may have been Benson's vote, as in a show-of-hands voting system you can't vote for yourself. Will the wonders of parliamentary decmoracy never cease huh?Skookum1 (talk) 01:26, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
 * And wasn't Swanson drafted into the job? Didn't want to sit in the House, got shanghaied into it....was this colonial-era?Skookum1 (talk) 01:32, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Railways
I have no idea what you're talking about. The Canadian National Railway is one of only three Class I rail carriers, as designated by Transport Canada: --NE2 13:55, 18 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I still have no idea what you're talking about. These are the only class 1 rail carriers. --NE2 14:12, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Category:Class I railroads in North America. Canada only defined the classes in the 1990s, while in the U.S. they've existed since 1911. --NE2 14:17, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Re: Collective nausea on BC Ledge Raids
My point was that the template should only be used when the article in question is actually a current event, as defined by Template:Current. The Pirate Bay trial is a perfect example for a current event, since the article receives a lot of edits right now. BC Legislature Raids, on the other hand, hasn't been edited for over two weeks, and it doesn't look like there's going to be a massive amount of edits anytime soon. Template:Current court case is a specialized version of Template:Current, and should only be used when you could just as well use the latter. Template:Current court case should not be used in every article about a current court case, nor should it be used as some kind of legal advice or disclaimer (see No disclaimers in articles). Such templates exist to inform our readers of potentially unstable, unreliable and/or out of date articles due to new information coming in very quickly. They are not there to tell our readers that, for example, an article is about a current court case. That's the job of the actual article. :) --Conti|✉ 18:49, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Peak 2 Peak Gondola
Hello Skookum1 I would like to explain some things to you regarding my rewrite of the Peak 2 Peak Gondola article. Just because someone knows a lot about something doesn't mean they have a conflict of interest. As I explained on the talk page, I am just a college student who follows the lift industry as a hobby. I have no conflict of interest with Doppelmayr or Whistler-Blackcomb or anyone else related to them. I really thought I had done a good job reorganizing the existing information in that article, removing what wasn't true, and adding where I thought appropriate and adding some pictures that I took. There was some stuff, like the kind of trailer that was used to move the cables from the train up the mountain that I saw as unnecessary. As I said on the talk page, most of that article was copied from the W-B P2P blog that was up over the summer. Some of the marketing stuff on there is simply untrue, such as that it is the first gondola to connect two mountains. Unlike the existing article, I went through and wrote everything I added from scratch. Maybe you should also look at the articles I wrote on Doppelmayr CTEC and Leitner-Poma. I did add some citations to sources other that Whistler Blackcomb's website and I added a lot to the controversy section. I think you acted quickly without reading the entire article. The Peak 2 Peak Gondola is in many ways the largest gondola in the world and it has a horrible article about it. The second section about this engineering feat is about ticket prices! I saw an article that I thought needed to be rewritten and I carefully rewrote it. The heading even said it needed to bee rewritten. Peter Crystalmountainskier (talk) 04:58, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Water Powers of where?
Hiya, saw your comment at AndrewEnns talk page on the book Water Powers of British Columbia, "published by the Water Rights Branch in the 1950s or c.1960". Thinking I might find it useful I searched for it--local libraries, etc. Are you sure you have the name right? My (quick) search shows a book named Water Powers of British Columbia published in 1919 by White, Arthur V. (and apparently available online in full text, http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/library/documents/bib50652.pdf). There are several books called Water Powers of Canada, including one published by Water Resources Branch in 1958. But that one is only 78 pages long (http://books.google.com/books?id=EoJOAAAAMAAJ&pgis=1). The 1919 British Columbia one is 644 pages... could it be that one? (http://books.google.com/books?id=2d7FAAAAMAAJ&pgis=1) Pfly (talk) 00:51, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
 * See if there's later editions of the Arthur V. Wright one, could very well have been an earlier publication - "bulletin" they call them - of the BC Govt in a later edition that was my copy. I think I gave it to User:CindyBo who's now inactive, up in Prince George, or to user:Bobanny whom I gave a lot of docs/archival "junk" to when I moved out of Vancouver, so try asking them, CindyBo more likely as I think I recall, as to the exact title. I know I saw a mention of it online somewhere, either in a used bookshop holding or even in Water Rights Branch on-line materials, maybe it's available the same way Holland is (Landforms of British Columbia, Bulletin 50 of the Dept of ... Lands I think).Skookum1 (talk) 01:28, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll have a look at at the 1919 download, i guess that's the one not the later update, which has later power developments discussed and some gushy stuff about the coming of Peace River Power (as it was often capitalized in the heyday of its promotion and construction); one thing about it, it has things like heights of vanished waterfalls, sometimes size of basins, amount of head etc...if that's the right one it's relevant to discussions on Talk:Columbia River about discharge rate sources (especially noting older flow/discharge rates vs modern-era ones which is probably an interesting comparison).Skookum1 (talk) 01:31, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmmm... well I downloaded the 1919 book anyway. A bit dated, but looks fairly thorough and interesting in its attempts to estimate potential hydropower for various rivers. Tangentially, I like the way people in BC call the electric company "hydro" (don't they?), as in "I got my hydro bill today." Pfly (talk) 03:57, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
 * It's a Canada-wide thing, started either Ontario, Manitoba or Quebec; pretty much a Canada-wide term but spun off the company names rather than the concept; I'd guess that before BC Hydro was formed in the '50s t hat the term "electric bill" was probably current; this is a branding-becomes-generic term but it may have already been well-established in Canadian English elsewhere; Manitoba Hydro dates from the '20s and '30s I think, not sure about Ontario and Quebec.....sounds like the right book, and I downloaded it too; I'll look at it in the morning, I popped a codeine and it's time to crash (banged my knee and have a tooth coming out Tuesday, though not because I fell...); pretty sure what I had was simply a later edition, updated with pictures and which ones had bern built by then etc....they were into makign investories then; you'll find in BC Archives reams and reams of MoF (Ministry of Forests) aerials of varous regions; all taken to show the amount of timber available for cut, and now of course all cut since....Skookum1 (talk) 04:29, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, it's Canada-wide? Didn't know. It sounds nice, especially compared to the name for water and sewer type utilities around here (though not electric), PUD, for "public utility district". Somehow "I got my PUD bill" doesn't sound as nice as "hydro bill". Sorry to hear about knee and tooth, hope the codeine makes for nice dreams. Pfly (talk) 04:45, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
 * shoulda sked for percs...apparently the rotten tooth is what's been keeping me up at night, too; thought it was snoring/apnea....Skookum1 (talk) 13:53, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Alexander Falls vs Alexandra Falls
Lol I noticed mentioned that there is another Alexander Falls out there but it appears u made a slight mistake. You said there is an Alexander Falls on the Athabasca River in the NWT near Hay River. Well, actually there is no Alexander Falls on the Athabasca River however there is an Alexandra Falls on the Hay River itself. The falls are on the lower reaches of the river and are huge (107 feet tall & look to be at least 80 feet wide). I don't exactly know a lot about them. I'm extremely surprised actually that the falls are not even mentioned in Wikipedia. They for sure are significant enough to create an article about them and when I get enough info about them I think I will do an article on them.

Anyhow, just wanted to point that out.

Have a nice day!AndrewEnns (talk) 10:14, 02 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't recall ever editing the Athabasca River article...was it something I said in teh Alexander Falls article? But again I don't recall making that addition, if it is in that article; must have been someone else. Most waterfalls can have their own standalone article; there's usually not much to put in them....Skookum1 (talk) 13:59, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

This is what u wrote in the Alexander Falls Discussion Page: ''There's only this Alexander Falls in CGNDB but a google search shows refs to another on the Athabasca River somwhere near Hay River NWT and another on or near the Nipigon River in northwestern Ontario. Just noting these here pending further research or another editor from those areas who can provide info/write their stubs.Skookum1 (talk) 12:33, 20 August 2008 (UTC).'' Thats exactly what u wrote & btw I never said u edited the Athabasca River article.

Anyhow, its not this is a huge deal, just wanted to point it out.

Cheers

AndrewEnns (talk) 824:14, 03 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Hmmm - I guess that's because the google search said Alexander Falls, i.e. some other site mis-attributed the name and it showed up in the google listing...I think somewhere shortly after that I may have noted that it wasn't in CGNDB and did in fact find out about Alexandra Falls, but never came back to re-edit that; I dimly do recall that now......btw just made Deserted River.....Skookum1 (talk) 15:49, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Deserted River
Hey Skooks

U made an article on the Deserted River I see. The first half of it is great & has info on it that I never thought one could find considering how little info you can find on rivers as remote as this one.

I'm assuming u do not have a map of the area because some of the stuff in the second paragraph is completely off. ''Approximately 13km in length, the river and its east fork, Tsuahdi Creek, drain the western flank of the mountain spine between the Jervis Inlet drainage and that of the Elaho River to the east, and its length includes the 2km length of Rugged Lake. A side creek from the unofficially-named Deserted Lake plunges 670 meters (2,198 ft) to join the upper course of the river above Rugged Lake, with additional cascades in addition to the main falls totalling 830 meters (2,723 ft). The cascade, which is not officially named and is formally unmeasured, is known as Deserted River Falls.''

There are 2 major mistakes here. I will list each one & gave an explanation.

Rugged Lake: I have a map of the area & if u look at my map it very clearly shows that Rugged Lake doesn’t even have anything to do with the Deserted River. Rugged Lake is located 10.84 km south of the lake commonly known as Deserted Lake & is drained by an unnamed tributary of Shortcut Creek, which is a tributary of upper Ashlu Creek which is drained into the Howe Sound, an entirely different location, via the Squamish River, so the Deserted River & Rugged lake are separated by quite some distance. I am totally puzzled as to how you came up with the whole Rugged Lake thing, but I suspect u did not have a proper map or u just mixed up Deserted and Rugged Lakes.

Deserted River Falls: Because of the whole Rugged Lake thing that caused u to also get the falls in the wrong spot. First of all, assuming u simply confused Deserted Lake with Rugged Lake, there are not falls that drop into the river above the lake. There aren’t any streams above the lake, never mind river. All the falls are are a big drop down a headwall at the lake’s outlet. The falls also are on the actual river, not an unnamed tributary.

Just pointing out some errors. Other than that I really like sme of the articles you have written. Some of them are a lot better than mine and this one is no different aside from those errors.

Later

AndrewEnns —Preceding unsigned comment added by AndrewEnns (talk • contribs) 02:56, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * LOL well, that's what I get for imprrovising from Basemap; the misdirection on Rugged Lake came from BCGNIS, which said "east of Deserted Bay" so I made the mistake of assuming it was the large lake in the middle of the river's course; I couldn't get the contours to work on Basemap so eyeballed from the hillshade, and to me it looked like the only 2000' drop was from the side creek; there is no Deserted Lake in BCGNIS - so is that the big 2km lake above the confluence with Tsuahdi Creek (the south fork)? Sounds like you know where the falls is so if you could pick out the location on Basemap (google "Basemap Online Store" and following the link to the first page that comes up, and push "start").  As with Alfred Creek Falls the waterfall information came from the two waterfalls databases; one of those is misleading, about Alfred Creek, as it says "Eldred River area" and this is the same sort of misdirection as re with Rugged Lake; it gives t he impression the falls are in the Powell Lake drainage, but they're in the Skwawka River drainage, i.e. Jervis Inlet drainage.  You'll note that I included teh Pacific Ranges/or/Coast Mountains category as I do with many rivers and creeks; ultimately "Category:Rivers of the Pacific Ranges but I just haven't bothered with that yet, as the implication is the same should be done for the Cascades, Rockies, Monashees etc and it's just a lot of very mechanical work to make them all and sort all the related articles.  As for pics, I know of a flying-photos site (google "Randall & Kat's Flying Photos" and enjoy...) and am going to write them to see if on one of their excursions this summer they can fly up Jervis Inlet and try and get some pics; tricky flying, I think they'd have to go via the Skwawka-Little Toba pass for safe flying; not sure if the side-trip up the Deserted River, i.e. to get a view of the falls, is all that safe even in good weather (lots of shear winds in U-valleys).  Both BCGNIS and Basemap are handy tools, you should bookmark them....when I get a chance I'll also notify teh folks who run BCGNIS about these two falls, as they could use formal entries given their size and importance.  I suspect there are other falls farther up the Coast Mountains that may be comparable in size, just never really seen or documented; e.g. in the Talchako-Monarch area, or up around Chatsquot/Tsaytis/Kitlope area(s) in the Kitimat Ranges; much of the inner Coast Mountains remains "unseen" ddespite extensive mapping....Anyway if you haven't already fixed Deserted River I'll do so now.....also, if you'd care to use ~ (four tildes) your posts will be auto-signed....Skookum1 (talk) 12:42, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hope that fixed it, I gathered from the waterfalls databases and your comments that the falls are at the outlet of Deserted Lake; if that's not quite right please tweak the text as needed.Skookum1 (talk) 12:47, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Deserted River Falls
Yo man, watup?

Based on the way u re-wrote the second half of the Deserted River article, it seems to me u know where the falls exactly are however i'm not 100% sure exactly which lake is Deserted Lake. The falls are, as u now know, at its outlet. To make sure u know, the outlet of Deserted Lake is at (im sorry, I'm terrible with coordinates so plz exude my poor use of them) 50 09 49 N & 123 36 00 W (btw, I used google earth to get those coordinates so use google earth plz to find the lake). If u already figured out that that is the correct lake, that’s great, but your question about whether its the lake above the confluence of that Tsuahdi Creek confused me. It confused me because wat do u mean by above because u could mean north of it or simply upriver of the confluence. Also, the 2 km lake thing confused me as well although I suspect u think the actual lake is that 1.8 km long unnamed lake (its not quite 2 km long, but 1.8 is closer to 2 km, so I suspect u just rounded it) along an unnamed stream that is about 3.34 km due east of the summit of Mount Pearkes. That is not Deserted Lake but its kinda funny cuz its actually bigger than Deserted Lake so u would think it would at least have an unofficial name lol. Well if there is anyone here that would know that sort of thing, that would b u haha. Anyway, to ensure u get the right lake, I will give u some of its characteristics: Its outlet is located, again, at 50 09 49 N & 123 36 00 W, it is 1.23 km long from its south end (outlet) 2 its north end and it is at an elevation of 5023 feet.

Hope u get the right lake!

Peace out bud.

Later

AndrewEnns (talk) 8:26, 04 May 2009 (UTC)


 * LOL the name-display wasn't working on Basemap when I wrote that original bit; I'd made the mistake of assuming the wider, longer valley was the main course of the river (another comparison - Elaho and Squamish; even the Cheakamus is long than the Squamish....odd huh?) . I'll rewrite it tomorrow, I have to hit the hay now, I've been out all night and have to be up early. My description, in other words, was of the Tsuahdie and its lakes; and that region there are hundreds of lakes that size in the Coast Mountains, most unnamed; that tarn immediately above the big lake on Tsuahdi looks like it has quite a cataract coming out of it too; the hillshade display on Basemap, though, gives a hint at the chasm that Deserted River Falls plunge into; into shadow, cool.....somewhere in this area there's a rockwall that it was proposed an LNG pipeline would snake down; like the Chief only 5000' in scale (I'm from Lillooet, used to 7000' like Cayoosh Wall etc...); talk also somewhere up there of drilling a hole in the side of the range between the Squamish/Elaho and the other valleys so as to create highway access to the Sunshine Coast; a mad plan, but maybe some damn fool government might yet do it....later g'nite.Skookum1 (talk) 05:23, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Good evenin Skooks

The display name wasn't workin eh? That sucks, cuz it seems to have thrown u off a fair bit as far as this article is concerned. Speakin of the Elaho-Squamish thing yeah I agree. First, y isn't the Elaho the Squamish and why isn't the upper Squamish the Elaho? Here is another one, y is Clendinning Creek not just the upper Elaho (the Elaho is much smaller than the creek above the confluence) and Clendinning Creek the Elaho and Clendinning Lake called Elaho Lake. If only i was in charge of that!!! HAHA, oh well! Btw, Tsuldi Creek is actually not that creek with like 5 lakes along it. It’s actually the one that enters the river about 2 km downriver from the unnamed creek with the 5 lakes. It also comes from the south, not the north, like the one u were referring to.

As for the falls that come from the outlet of the 2nd lake of the 5 on that unnamed stream, I kinda knew u would notice that at some point lol. Trust me, I knew about it too. I just didn't wanna bring it up cuz u were already confused enough even without knowin about this one so I thought it would b smart not to bring up other waterfalls on other streams to make this thing more complicated. But ya, it looks like there is a pretty good sized falls between those 2 lakes. Mind you, not nearly as high as Deserted River Falls, I found the elevation between the 2 lakes and it is 1601 feet so that is the highest those falls could be. And yes, they do drop into a shadow I guess…  just like Deserted River Falls.

Anyhow, looks based on what u said, u have figured out which lake is the right one. As well, the article looks a lot better now that its fixed (I’m gonna put a geobox on it tho). Anyhow, I just got some maps of the Rockies and I’ve been wanting to edit some of the rivers & falls out there 4 a while so I guess I will talk to u later.

AndrewEnns (talk) 06:22, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Highway 99 map
Highway 7A has been decommissioned since about 2006 by the BCMOT and around the same time, the section of Highway 7 missing was also decomissioned. Highway 99A was removed around the same time as well.

Knight Street is included because it is a full fledged freeway. The Golden Ears Bridge and Grant McConachie are included because they have actual interchanges with other roads and are expressways, unlike Marine Way or the Barnet Highway which are expressways, but lack interchanges.  єmarsee •  Speak up!  00:34, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The Number 10 has only one interchange, with 91, and much of it's still two-lane. The Lougheed is every bit as much of a corridor, just as Barnet-Hastings is a main part of the regional road network; the King George remains more imporant than 176th.  I think should you should revisit your criteria for the map.Skookum1 (talk) 00:40, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
 * All provincial highways are mapped, and it doesn't matter whether it is lightly used like Highway 13. Even then, Highway 10 would still be there as all of it is now 4-lanes as is Highway 15. The map is fine as it is now.  єmarsee •  Speak up!  23:46, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanx
Thanks for that tip on how to sign ur posts. Its alot easier than writing my whole user name & what-not down.

Thanx

AndrewEnns (talk) 06:22, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Arctic Cordillera
The removal had to do with Torngat Mountains National Park Reserve not being in Quebec. According to what I read at the Parks Canada site the reserve is in Labrador only. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 16:04, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

FAR of BC Rail
nominated BC Rail for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Arsenikk (talk)  12:25, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Wood Mountain
See my note at Talk:Wood Mountain Regional Park. No ideas about the leader of the opposition question. My guess is that it is a matter of constitutional convention (roughly we always did it that way) rather than law as such. -- KenWalker | Talk 21:26, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Canim & Mahood Falls
Hi Skookum

I see that you were the one who created the Canim Falls article. I figured since you were the one who created it you would probably be the right person to ask this/these question(s).

After reading Bryan Swans page on his site about Mahood Falls I am really confused. In his page he says that Canim Lake has 2 outlets & that on one outlet is Canim Falls & on the other is Mahood Falls. As well, he says the watercourse that Mahood Falls is on is the Canim River, and last time I checked, Mahood Falls is on its namesake river, not the Canim. Did he just get his rivers mixed up or do we have a peculier case here?

I've never heard of anything about Canim Lake having 2 outlets other than on his site. I have no clue where he came up with this info. None of the wikipedia articles on Mahood Falls & River, Canim Falls & River, And Mahood & Canim Lake mention anything about this and clearly indicate that Mahood Falls is on its namesake river & the same thing with Canim Falls. I am, to be honest, completly puzzled about this. Read his page on Mahood Falls and if u don't mind, plz explain all this to me.

Happy Editing & Gnite!

AndrewEnns (talk) 05:27, 16 May 2009 (UTC)


 * According to BC Basemap's location search "Mahood Falls (locality)" is on Canimred Creek, which flows into Canim Lake just to the south of its outlet into the Canim River. The name is well-known, so I guess either myself or User:Black Tusk who's also been around it (he's into volcanics), located it on the Mahood River, where there are large waterfalls so, um, maybe we just picked one ;-) (without thinking to consult Basemap....).  Of that series of cataracts, two have names - Sylvia Falls and Goodwin Falls.  Note that there is no officially-named waterfall named Mahood Falls; there is a locality/former community known as Mahood Falls see this, which was originally Canimahood Falls.  Though I know I've seen pics titled "Mahood Falls" in tourism copy on the Wells Gray-Clearwater region.  Anyway there's some links for you, and I've never heard anything about Canim Lake having two outlets; only one SFAIK, that being the Canim River; that waterfalls database should have an email written explaining all this; once it's worked out; feel free to edit the article, and to create the other two waterfall articles; I'll revise Mahood Falls to a locality article, which given its one (and sole) ref is what it's supposed to be (if I or BT had been paying attention...).  Thanks for the heads-up.Skookum1 (talk) 14:26, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
 * You might also find worth taking note of.Skookum1 (talk) 14:28, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

So are you basically saying there never was an actual waterfall called Mahood Falls however everyone just assumed there was cuz there is a Canim Falls and a locality called Mahood Falls. Lol no wonder people like me are confused. I wouldn't be surprised though if there is a falls on Canimred Creek near the locality of Mahood Falls. As for Goodwin & Sylvia Falls, I don't know a hell of a lot about them however I believe I have seen a picture of Sylia Falls and it looks very impressive. Don't know nothin about Goodwin Falls though. So you say that you have seen pictures in tourisn copies for Wells Gray Park eh? Thats kind of ironic, the reason I say that is cuz I've seen photos labelled as Mahood Falls, however, I'd say they just look like photos of Canim Falls taken from a ways away & through the trees. Finally I have figured that out! As for contacting Bryan Swan & explaining all this I will soon, I don't know if you are aware of this but Bryan also works on Wikipedia, however I suspect he very seldomly does since his talk page is very short (unlike yours which is pretty long) & because I posted a new section on his talk page asking him a question & he hasn't responded. Thats simply because he has a lot of work outside of Wikipedia. I'll e-mail him, don't worry. Hopefully that mistake will be fixed up.

BTW, thanx for that link to the Basemap. Looks like a program I will like. Still learning how to use it though but I'll figure it out.

Later

AndrewEnns (talk) 15:57, 16 May 2009 (UTC)


 * There is a falls at the very outlet of Mahood Lake, and it's my understanding, from somewhere, that that's where Mahood Falls is; it may simply be not-officially-named; why the cmomunity of Mahood Falls would be nowhere near it I don't know; it would resemble Canim Falls in nature, i.e. at a lake outlet, into a deep lava canyon, but I've never been up in there nor seen many photos of the area.Skookum1 (talk) 17:17, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I get it now. So the real Mahood Falls is at the outlet of Mahood Lake however it has no official name. I wonder how big it is? Its then followed by Sylvia Falls & then Goodwin Falls. I get it now. Thanx for helping me figure this out.

AndrewEnns (talk) 18:36, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

BC Map
Hi. CBC and Wikipedia both use red for the BC Liberals. They seem to be the best sources for this kind of thing. Also, I have no problem differentiating between orange and red on the map. Perhaps a colourblind version should be made like last time, although I have no interest making one personally. -- Earl Andrew - talk 21:39, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
 * CBC is lost in the woods as far as BC politics goes, and embracing that same "Liberal red" national-thing I referenced; blue is pretty much the standard, it's CBC (and Wikipedia) who are out of whack; I haven't looked at Global's or CTV's maps (haven't noticed the Tyee's) but BC newspapers have traditionally used blue for the right-wing party (whatever name it wears at the time), and that's certainly what that blog-link I sent you uses; the guy who runs it is in a federal Conservative while being a provincial Liberal. The BC Liberals' choice of blue and green is very pointed (though they've previously used blue and red, notably on crown corp/agency logos); not only Socred colours (and BC Hydro's), but Tory blue adn Reform green; they make no effort to ape national-Liberal colour themes, because for one thing in BC the colour red has decided socialist connotations....and also associations with the federal Liberals, who are anathema to many BC Liberal party members....Skookum1 (talk) 23:10, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
 * And in general in map theory, the use of contrasting/complementary colours is highly preferable to using similar colours; the NDP chose ochre because it wasn't-quite-red (see above about commie connotations), the Liberals (national) because of the flag; it just doesn't look good IMO, and given the similarities in hue remember not everybody shares your colour perceptions....Skookum1 (talk) 23:17, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, if Wikipedia uses red for the BC Liberals, then that's the way the map will be. When Wikipedia decides blue for the Liberals, than I won't mind it changed. For now, the only tinkering with the map I will allow is slight alteration of the colouring to make the orange and red more different for those with different "colour perceptions". However, I see no problems with my perceptions, and I'm the one that made the map. -- Earl Andrew - talk 02:35, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I intend on raising it (again) at PPAP; partly because of the map colour thing, not just because of the actual politics/symbology involved; it's always been unsuitable, but when the the graphics resulting are clearly murky (to me) it's a "style" one. The rejoinder there before was that it was the national Liberal colour ,and the colour in all other provinces; yes, but it's not their (chosen) colour in BC, and that's part of teh very point; not actually the same party in realpolitik terms....nor in choice of symbols....had just raised it with you by way of observation/comment as to why I don't think teh colours work...in BC....Skookum1 (talk) 02:52, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Gordon Campbell (Canadian politician)
Obviously you didn't step away from the dispute like you said you would yesterday. I am really left with three options here... block the both of you for edit warring/WP:3RR violations, fully protect the article to stop both of you from editing it entirely, or ask that the two of you step back and discuss how to deal with the article. Right now, I am choosing option number three, and I would rather not have to step back and revisit options one or two. I might suggest filing a request for comment so as to gain more opinions and build a consensus. Thanks, Resolute 21:09, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * What I'll do in response to your warning is take the article off my watchlist - or rather I just did that - although I may stop by the article to insert cites for various items I've added (including the LoO controversy and the human rights commission/tribunal issue - and leave it to you, if you wouldn't mind, to watch for any other unwarranted deletions of policy history that may occur, from GD or anyone else. There's a history in BC of things being covered up and whitewashed by all sides in the polarized political equation; to me deletion of obvious and well-known facts IS censorship; similarly the reduced budget, staff and powers of the HR Tribunal vs its predecessor body are established facts and not "controversial" (what was controversial was the Commission's disembowelment).  I add material rather than delete it (except for completely spurious fluff along the lines of "he worked really hard on his summer job" etc.), and that's what makes me different from GD....I should have just ignored his fourth reversion this morning and let you block him...but once I saw it, well...that's why I'm taking it off my watchlist.  Also because of "political burnout".  It's an important article, obviously, as far as BC goes, and shouldn't be left unwatched by someone politically astute (as I know you to be from previous encounters); my interest is in truth, the whole truth; not partisanship; I haven't paid much attention to the Glen Clark article, perhaps I should to show I'm not an NDPer (which I'm decidedly not); for a while now I've meant to put together an article on the Salmon War and work on updating the BC Legislature Raids article, which needs it badly given a number of recent events.  I invite you to read the upper part of the Campbell talkpage so as to be aware of a previous wave of deletions of valid material that were unfavourable to Campbell's very cultivated p.r. image/campaign, and would like you to be aware of the existence of the Public Affairs Bureau, which has 223 staffers actively working on controlling information about the govenrment in all kinds of media; assuming they have a hands-off approach to Wikipedia would be too generous an assumption; I know too much about the way BC is to be innocent about that.  So please watch this article for such deletions as the one I've been disputing.  I hope to not return to it and see it turned back into a pro-Campbell press release, which is what it was when I found it....Skookum1 (talk) 22:11, 21 May 2009 (UTC)


 * You may wish to show a little more good faith. I was offline all weekend, so did not see GoldDragon's edits until you pointed them out to me today. Resolute 23:52, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, I forget that other people don't live on Wikipedia in perpetuum as I am in the bad habit of doing; I didn't mean to be quite so pointed in alerting you....and also should have waited a while, for my own frazzled nerves, from looking at that article again so soon.Skookum1 (talk) 23:55, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
 * And that is fair enough. It is too late to levy any kind of sanction (blocks are meant to be preventative, not punitive), and I don't personally feel that his changes have significantly altered the meaning of that statement.  Leading it the statement in question with "Campbell maintained..." pretty much argues that it was his/Liberal position rather than a fact of government procedure.  I have, none the less, tweaked the wording slightly to try and balance your position and his. Resolute 00:02, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

sacred headwaters removed
Hey Skookum, I removed Sacred Headwaters/Klappan Coalbed Methane Project from WP:CWNB, I feel the neutrality and move/merge/split issues have been addressed adequately, they are on my watchlist and I haven't seen any action there in a while, also I am going to remove the cleanup/nutrality/peacock terms banner from the top of Sacred Headwaters, I think it is sufficiently neutral now. Feel free to revert if you think I am mistaken, have a great weekend, Memorial Day on Monday here, maybe I will take the day off...--kelapstick (talk) 20:42, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

NowCommons: File:Stnhs1a.jpg
File:Stnhs1a.jpg is now available on Wikimedia Commons as Commons:File:Stnhs1a.jpg. This is a repository of free media that can be used on all Wikimedia wikis. The image will be deleted from Wikipedia, but this doesn't mean it can't be used anymore. You can embed an image uploaded to Commons like you would an image uploaded to Wikipedia, in this case:. Note that this is an automated message to inform you about the move. This bot did not copy the image itself. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 01:01, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Reqphoto categories?
Any decisions made on these yet? - TheMightyQuill (talk) 15:06, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry, been preoccupied with taxes and as you can see from my special contributions putting out fires in other areas; I'll try and remember by the end of the week....beginning to think that I should get down the political geographic subdivisions list/article done yet, maybe as a precursor (MoF, MoE, MoTourism, etc)....though the reqphoto categories won't necessarily correspond to any of those; some of the MoTourism ones seems to work well, though, e.g. Coast Chilcotin Cariboo where "Coast" means "Bella Coola" vs. "Central Coast" which is Bella Bella-Rivers Inlet and would seem to tie more into either North Island-Queen Charlotte Strait or the North Coast; so maybe North Island-Central Coast would work; the Charlottes seem pretty easily their own category, likewise Skeena-Bulkley vs Prince Rupert-North Coast (probably); Prince George-Omineca-Nechako seems workable though maybe Robson Valley should be included in that; Stewart-Cassiar-Stikine-Atlin (Atlin is almost more likely to have pics from people in Yukon...), Peace River-Fort Nelson-Alaska Highway or Peace River-Fort Nelson-Liard....some areas still don't quite fit, e.g. Mackenzie-Kwadacha (Northern Rocky Mountain Trench]] is kinda marginal, but doesn't belong in either PG or Peace River.....; Okanagan seems simple enough though Shuswap could be paired eiether with it, or with Thompson/Nicola seems natural enough..though "Fraser Canyon" could probably be added into it ,except that Lillooet's ostensibly in Coast-Chilcotin-Cariboo...... ;it's toss up areas like Boundary, which could either be Boundary-Similkameen (which would include/overlap with the South Okanagan) or West Kootenay-Boundary. Give me a few more days except that Similkameen can also be paired with Nicola.....Skookum1 (talk) 23:51, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Here's the obvious ones:

Note that these don't (necessarily) correspond to other uses of the same combinations, i.e. Coast-Chilcotin-Cariboo includes Gold Bridge-Lillooet for example in MoTourism terms; I'm looking at "driveable range" more than actual boundaries; Gold Bridge is not road-accessible from the Chilcotin. What can be done is that two of these categories can be used in such cases, e.g. Hope-Yale would be in bother the GV-FV/Lower Mainland cat as well as in the Fraser Canyon one, likewise Spences Bridge in both Thompson-Nicola-Shuswap and Bridge River-Lillooet-Fraser Canyon, Clinton could be in the Cariboo cat as well as the Thompson one, and so on....Skookum1 (talk) 16:58, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Columbia-Kootenay (would include Revelstoke-Big Bend)
 * Greater Vancouver-Fraser Valley or Lower Mainland
 * Howe Sound-Sea to Sky (would include Pemberton-D'Arcy and ostensibly Port Douglas) - maybe Howe Sound-Sea to Sky-Gates Valley for sake of argument
 * Sunshine Coast-Powell River-Northern Gulf Islands or just Sunshine Coast-Northern Gulf Islands
 * Greater Victoria-Juan de Fuca-Southern Gulf Islands
 * Cowichan-Nanaimo-Alberni-Comox Valley (would include some of the "southern" Gulf Islands - Gabriola, Thetis, Kuper, Denman, Hornby
 * Campbell River-Discovery Islands
 * West Coast of Vancouver Island (excepting Juan de Fuca as noted above)
 * North Island-Central Coast
 * Queen Charlotte Islands
 * North Coast-Prince Rupert - would include Terrace-Kitimat so maybe North Coast-Prince Rupert-Terrace for clarity; North Coast begins at Hartley Bay, but an overlap with Central Coast there would work.
 * Skeena-Bulkley-Nass
 * Prince George-Omineca-Nechako-Robson Valley (and we'll include the Northern Trench in that, which is only Mackenzie-Kwadacha/Fort Ware)
 * Stewart-Cassiar-Stikine-Atlin
 * Peace River-Fort Nelson-Liard
 * Cariboo-Chilcotin-Bella Coola
 * Bridge River-Lillooet-Fraser Canyon ("Fraser Canyon" in the popular imagination includes Spences Bridge but "overlap" with the next one)
 * Thompson-Nicola-Shuswap (would include Bonaparte/Clinton though that's also South Cariboo, but then so is Cache Creek-Ashcroft)
 * North Thompson-Clearwater-Wells Gray
 * Okanagan-Monashees-Boundary-Similkameen (would tend to include Monashees, i.e. Cherryville-Shuswap River)
 * where have I missed?Skookum1 (talk) 16:50, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * These look fine to me, btw. Do you want to create them? - TheMightyQuill (talk) 00:09, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * You could even split some up... Northern Gulf Islands and Sunshine Coast, for instance.

Fort Langley
btw re Fort Langley you were right, I think my confusion is that the 2nd and 3rd forts are possibly different and that's where I got the ideas I'd fielded; also that Derby, not Fort Langley was the proposed capital and so my confusion about where the declaration of the Colony took place; Douglas' vessel had touched shore at Derby, but it was at Ft Langley where he disembarked and did the deed; the logic with Derby, and not Fort Langley, being proposed at the capital would seem to be that too close an association with the HBC was something that was trying to be avoided due to the politicking about the HBC's too-great power on VI.....Skookum1 (talk) 16:21, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, supposedly Douglas really hated Yale (you know their history of romantic conflict, right?) and might well have opposed making Fort Langley the capital for personal reasons. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 22:12, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Do you have a clear idea of where Derby was? I know where Derby Reach is, and if Douglas touched shore in Derby, it must have been along the river, but Derby Reach is different than Derby, no? Is downtown Fort Langley (ie. the community) built on top of the old Derby? - TheMightyQuill (talk) 19:44, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * No, it's northwest of there, literally an intersectoin in the middle of fields, not a house for a hundred yars; I've been to the spot and I think there used to be a sign. It's explained in the Ghost Towns of British Columbia book (author I'm not sure) and it might be in one of T.W. Paterson's Gold Trails and Ghost Towns series, or should be....I'll look at Basemap and see if I can come up with an approximation.  Downtown Fort Langley would appear to be, by what I was told by Lisa from fortlangley.ca (a buddy, who's one of the RE re-enactors and helped build the RE site as well as her own Children of Fort Langley website), about where the 2nd fort was - 200 yards west of the current one, which was built on high ground more for anti-flooding reasons than defensive ones; though if you look at a topo/aerial you'll note that the 3rd location is pretty much surrounding by a filled-in oxbow, which in those days would have been a swampy "moat".  There might be something in the Akriggs' British Columbia Placenames volume, too.Skookum1 (talk) 20:00, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

What do you mean second fort? There have only been two locations. The second fort was burned down and rebuilt in the exact same place, no? I never read anything about there being a third location. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 14:15, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Here's Lisa's reply:
 * ''The first fort was built at Derby, July/August 1827, then they moved the whole shebang up-river in 1838. They were just starting to settled into their more roomy new fort when the fire happened, initially attributed to the inattention of an apprentice blacksmith (it has since been determined that it was not at all Bruléz's fault).


 * ''Now I've hear two different stoies about the 3rd fort. (1) They re-built about 200 yards up-river from site 2 and (2) the re-built on the same site.  Either way,  it was in this 3rd fort the proclamation was read/signed -- the same year Jason Allard called my gr'gr'granddad out of retirement to help whip the HBC Farm back into shape.


 * ''The moved off Derby because they discovered that the Derby site had this alarming tendency to flood, with bits of the bank falling away ino the river, and anyway the fort *was* falling apart. Can't keep trade goods safe when the palisades have gaps the size of small boys.


 * ''When the RE arrived in 1858/59, somebody wanted to make the "old Derby site" the capital of the Colony of British Columbia, and started selling buiding lots. Somebody else said that, stratigically, Derby was on the wrong side of the river, making it waaay too vulnerable to atttack by the USofA, and after squabbling over names Queensborough aka Queenborough aka New Westminster became the capital of the Colony of British Columbia because it was on the north side of the Fraser.  Moody was involved, as was Douglas, and--


 * ''Damn. I can see the dude's face; he was RE and he and Moody had a mutual dislike of each other.


 * I think she's referring to Grant....anyway I'd heard the 200 yards upriver thing too, I think in Howay/SCholefield but maybe in one of the "popular histories" like Paterson or Hauka....14:46, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Regional cats
Btw, why include something like School District 35 Langley directly into Category:Lower Mainland, when it's already in two Langley categories, which can go into Category:Lower Mainland? If you don't allow cities to be subsections of C:LM, you're going to have in include every article within Vancouver, and the category will overflow. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 22:12, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The logic with the separate geography category was eventaully to subcategorize it in various ways; Category:Rivers and streams in the Lower Mainland, Category:Lakes in the Lower Mainland, Category:School districts in the Lower Mainland. Some school districts match municipal boundaries; Langley is one of those, so's Burnaby, so's Delta, so's Richmond and of course Vancouver (er, except for the UEL...) and Burnaby etc.  Others include unincorporated areas, notably Mission (over half the SD is not in the municipality) but also Fraser-Cascade and Chilliwack; Surrey SD includes Barnston Island, Abbotsford SD includes the remaining unincorporated area of Sumas Mountain.  SDs, like Health Boards, are not creatures of the municipalities; only in some cases do they coincide.  I agree there's some redundancy at this point; I was regarding the municipal categories as parts of t he RD hierarchy but yeah, they're regions too when it comes down to it; especially when their boundaries coincide with municipal ones as in Langley's, Burnaby or New West's cases....but as to the others?
 * In cases when all the shools fit within a single city, or within a few cities, it might make sense to organize them within city categories. If they are regionally based, as is sometimes the case, then you're right, it makes more sense to categorize them regionally. Actually, a lot of the towns and cities in BC don't have their own categories at all, in which case it definitely makes more sense to categorize them regionally, as you've been doing. Basically, sub-categorize with the narrowest category you can while remaining accurate. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 19:44, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, like I said in some cases that's appropriate; in other cases it's pretty much gonna have to be two categories, one of them a parent; e.g. the Mission school district should be in both the Mission category and in the Lower Mainland cat (because of Hatzic Prairie/Durieu, McConnell Creek, Dewdney, Nicomen Island, Deroche, Lake Errock...)....the old term "Dewdney-Alouette" was already a region name I think before the creation of the DARD in 1966/7 but it's obsolete now, other than for a brief appearance as a federal riding-name and still in use in weather reports...it included Chehalis, which the school district did not....I'm still not sure where Chehalis fits (school district-wise), presumably in Fraser-Cascade as (in my day anyway) those kids went to Agassiz if they went anywhere (most were native and went to St. Mary's in Mission...). I'm going to make a Category:Kent, British Columbia cat because of the proliferation of articles there but as a municipal-defined category it won't include Harrison Hot Springs which .  Anyway re the school districts I think {[:Category:School districts in the Lower Mainland]] is worth doing, pointedly because other than those which conform to municipal boundaries they don't belong in RD categories, or as a subcat of the RD categories....breaking up SDs in the Interior is a bit more problematic beacuse of the same region-name/definition problems we've got with reqphoto; because these are public categories we can't use the reqphoto categories listed above (do you like them?) but Category:School districts in the Southern Interior, Category:School districts in the Central Interior, Category:School districts in the North Coast and Category:School districts in the Northern Interior are all viable once we settle on definitions for Southern/Central/Northern (PG-ites consider themselves Central Interior, and in creating Summit Lake and such lately I've put them in Category:Greater Prince George though they're a bit farther afield, but no farther than Purden or Giscome Portage...this is the reason with the region cats I didn't make Kamloops-Shsuwap i.e. because of Shuswap-Okanagan, Columbia-Shuswap, Thompson-Nicola...i.e. I made each component of the usual pairings as a separate category, which is of course where the pairings came from....."Central Interior" ostensibly is the Cariboo Plateau northwards, inclusive of the Omineca and McLeod/Summit Lakes, even though southern BC-ites refer to PG as "the Northern Interior"....that's a very vague term; Peace River/Fort Nelson is "Northeastern BC" and it gets even fuzzier westward; in article texts Iv'e been using "Northwestern British Columbia" for hte Stikine Country and Atlin Districts, and whiel Stewart is often referred to as being in the Northern Interior it's actually North Coast; and it's so much easier to refer to the Hazeltons as "Skeena Country/Skeena Valley" than trying to consider it either Coast or Interior; ditto with Pemberton re Sea to Sky/Lillooet Country.  Category:School districts on Vancouver Island seems fairly easy to consider though...Skookum1 (talk) 20:12, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Afterthought: we might want to look at the regions, if any, used by the Ministry of Education....ditto with ProvParks which should be grouped by BC Parks regions (which, curiously, aren't the same as MoE regions even though it's the same ministry). Hospitals shoudl be grouped by MoHealth region....Skookum1 (talk) 20:14, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Schools districts of the Lower Mainland might make sense, or school districts of greater vancouver. School districts of vancouver island maybe... but there aren't that many of them (92 in the whole province... and they all fit in one page of category listing) so it shouldn't be a priority. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 14:20, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Cayoosh.net is down?
I have always enjoyed reading your web site, however it seems to be inaccessible. Will it be going back up at some point? --Seatosky2 (talk) 02:16, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Er, yeah, how 'bout that. Seems to be my registration has expired and nobody at my registration company sent me a warning notice; I just wrote them.  If it's down-down there will be a time lag of about a month (or is it 90 days??) before i can get it again; hopefully there's still a window to get it reinstated without too much delay, but my last experience with this was frustrating; there's a "holding period" that the main registry has in place, for unknown reasons....I have to find a sponsor to pay for the registration, also....Skookum1 (talk) 02:44, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The site is now back up.Skookum1 (talk) 17:02, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Ned McGowan
Thanks for your note on McGowan. You're quick, Skookum, I only revised the article this morning. Yes I do have the Hauka book from the library so I will try and get a short biography done for this interesting gentleman. You are right about early BC. A combination of the most colourful Yankee ruffians and a shipload of English lunatics transported from the Bedlam Hospital together at the edge of the world. The more I read about the cast of diverse characters, the more I am of the view that there's a great comic opera lurking in that story. Maybe McGowan's War- it has an array of intriguing characters set against the backdrop of the struggle to retain a British presence on the Pacific in the face of the juggernaut of Manifest Destiny with musical numbers entitled: "A Pleasant Bit of Eden  Here Beneath the Union Jack" sung by Governor Douglas;                        "Hurrah Boys the River's Ours!" sung by the San Francisco Vigilance Committee; "Why Won't London Ever Listen?" lament sung by the Disgruntled Colonists"; "Moody New Westminster Blues" sung by Colonel Richard Moody and the Royal Engineers; "Just Hanging Around" sung by Judge Begbie and the Hell's Canyon Chorus; "Bostonmen and Kinggeorgemen: They Both Smell Bad the Same" sung by the Chief Kowpelst and the Nlaka'pamux Band; and "Lover of the Universe" ballad by Amor de Cosmos.   Corlyon (talk) 18:22, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The music I'd find the most fascinating is the orchestra for the Christmas Dance, as described by Hauka; I've been to native dances in Seton Portage and it's clear that they picked up forms from the Virginia Reel etc which they adapt to native song/dance, but throw in the Hawaiians and the West Indians and some mouth-harp players from black Dixie.....and a Chinese fiddle player....hmmm. Blues might not be appropriate for the REs (blues hadn't been invented yet)...."reconstructions of period music" in Barkerville, which I've heard, IMO miss the mark wildly.  What I saw with Hauka's book is the makings of a really good screenplay, which interestingly could get CanFilm money but feature British and American name actors in the title roles.  James Earl Jones as Gov Douglas (with a bit of lightener), maybe, and Kevin Costner or even Will Farrell as McGowan...Eddy Murphy as Isaac Dixon......toss in a few big-name Canucks like Mike Myers as Hicks and JIm Carrey as Whannell (?! - obviously worth comic send-ups) and Rick Mercer (?) or even Rex Murphy somebody with a Maritime accent to be Amor de Cosmos (though more likely he might have had a Brit accent in those days...and those two are Newfies rather than even Cape Bretoners...) and the Gandalf-Saruman pairing for Moody and Begbie, etc....(Raymond Burr played Begbie in Kootenay Brown, but it was dull, dull, dull and he wasn't put to good use).  Lots of room for name native players too huh? esp. if the Canyon War was included.  I'm surprised nobody's optioned the book yet, actually; some of the scenes, like McGowan confronting Douglas on the landing at Harrison Mills/"the Riffles" would be priceless, as also the courtroom scenes....Hill's Bar is available as a set, too....one of the best in-print histories of early BC in my opinion; though it's worth looking up Alexander Begg's and Howay's/Scholefield's ''British Columbia: from the earliest times to the present" and having a good read, also (on nosracines.ca).  Just at a public library at the moment so will not go on....for now.  Remember, you read it here first :-)Skookum1 (talk) 19:08, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Jarvis Pass
This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a web search with the contents of Jarvis Pass, and it appears to include a substantial copy of http://srmwww.gov.bc.ca/bcgn-bin/bcg10?name=2929. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions will be deleted. You may use external websites as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. See our copyright policy for further details.

This message was placed automatically, and it is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article and it would be appreciated if you could drop a note on the maintainer's talk page. CorenSearchBot (talk) 02:57, 31 May 2009 (UTC)


 * CorenSearchBot was in error; BCGNIS content is not copyright, and the passages quoted are from very old editions of American Alpine Journal and a report of Natural Resources Canada.Skookum1 (talk) 03:05, 31 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I investigated this as part of WP:COPYCLEAN and I have some doubts about both the rationale and the usage of the source in respect to the entire text. I flagged this for further investigation at WP:CP to get clarity on the matter. Cheers, MLauba (talk) 17:03, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Do you wish to join the discussion?
Do you wish to add your two cents -Keep, Delete, Comment - to the articles for deletion discussion on Outline of BC. Are there any precedents? Kind regards SriMesh | talk  01:43, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Don't sweat the commas
Hey, like I said it was "strictly speaking" regarding using commas before state/province abbreviations, so consider what I wrote at WT:USRD merely my own observation. I read your bit about French, and am wondering if you would like to keep practicing by helping me contribute to Massachusetts related articles in French. See my note at fr:Utilisateur:Sswonk/Bac_à_sable and also the main talk page where I got a stern response to my first attempt at posting in my own mauvaise version de français. Sswonk (talk) 02:58, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * My own French is reasonable, but not great; I'll do what I can....Skookum1 (talk) 03:09, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Had a look but not sure where to find that "stern response" - do you mean on the Quincy MA page? Suffice to say francophones take a dim view of mis-use of their language by les maudits anglais.  I noted in the opening lines of the Quincy article "une part importante"....I'm pretty sure that should be une partie importante....in Canuck French anyway.Skookum1 (talk) 03:16, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Stern response. My basic interpretation of what he wrote was "thanks but no thanks". I didn't write the lead paragraph, someone else from the US did a while ago. I actually corrected a couple of things there. Hercule later broke the lead up into three sections and then I filled in the History section, which he summarily rewrote. I'll fix the partie part and replace Hercule's understanding of precinct, a redlinked precint, with quartier. I won't be writing a huge amount, but I do intend to work on several Mass articles there, using the method of posting in English to a sandbox page for someone to translate. Sswonk (talk) 03:39, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * It wasn't stern at all, rather equananimous and very polite and encouraging. He's bascially saying it's easier for your to write in English and have someone translate for you, and he'll help; the problem with writing in bad French is it's just as much work for them to fix as it is to translate from the start, and any points of clarification will have to be asked/answered in English anyway.  I was imagining you'd gotten an Inspector-Clouseau, zut, alors!! - Silly Englishman response...Skookum1 (talk) 03:50, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Funny, see http://www.spamspamspamspam.co.uk for similar funniness. Yeah, I just know enough to be dangerous. I thought it was polite, but maybe kind of formal with the "Bonjour," business letter style. Sswonk (talk) 04:01, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Really just as much "hi" as formal; no real distinction unless bonjour, monsieur; otherwise it's your usual, calm Wiki-admin type tone, and the smiley gives away the friendly tone.Skookum1 (talk) 04:09, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Do you know what the general atmosphere about references at fr: is? I try to cite everything but what I already have on Massachusetts history, geography and transportation is all in English. I looked around at other US articles on French wikipedia and there is a lot of unreferenced writing. For example, see John Adams, with many passages not having citations. I get the impression that they are a little more flexible on citations there. My main concern would be having articles I created being proposed for deletion due to notability and lack of references. Sswonk (talk) 04:25, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Arctomys Cave
I've currently got an stub on Arctomys Falls started (Arctomys Falls is on Arctomys Creek, a small stream which drains Arctomys Lake, which is located in Arctomys Valley). The falls, although they appear to be very unimpressive, also appear to be quite tall. Bryan Swan says they are around 500 meters high, however, at the same time, they won't garner much attention since they appear to be hard to see, unimpressive & on a very small stream.

What I am surprised doesn't garner much attention is Arctomys Cave, which is located very close to the falls. I've done a little research on it & all I can find is very general information on it (such as a BCGNIS page on it, as it is officially named). However, in a way, it may be more worthy of an article than the falls, since noboby really seems to care all that much about the falls. Although a lot is not known about the cave, I suspect this is because noboby really goes into Arctomys Valley since it requires fording the Moose River (btw I created that stub). I'd really like to see it sometime although I know that won't happen in the mere future for me. Do you know anything about the cave, because although I'm a rivers, lakes & falls guy, caves also fascinate me when I get a chance to learn about them. Do you know anything about the cave?

I, tommorow, will do a little fixing of the Mahood Falls page since it currently needs some fixing. The BCGNIS page for it does not lie, it is describing a locality not a falls. What I should probably put in is a little bit of information about both the locality as well as the unnoficially named falls (they don't have an official name, we already discussed this, they are just known as Mahood Falls after the locality). Too bad I don't really know anything about the falls. Oh well, at least I finally got this whole naming confusion with the locality & falls sorted out.

You may have noticed a did a few things to the Butedale, British Columbia stub. Ther biggest thing I did was make a stub for Butedale Falls, the big falls at the lake outlet. Speaking of falls, I found another major waterfall at the outlet of one of the lakes at the headwaters of the...  I think the Goat River. Geez, another Goat River stub to make I guess (there is one still to made for the Goat River that feeds the Fraser River above Prince George) but I won't be making it until I get my main computer back. Anyhow, these falls I believe are just under 1000 feet high & drop down a large headwall below a chain of lakes not too far from Butedale actually. I will get the coordinates & report it to Bryan Swan for his new WWD as soon as my main computer gets working again. Gnite AndrewEnns (talk) 05:44, 3 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I am not a caver myself, but have a good friend who is a hardcore splunker. I had not heard of this cave, but a quick search turns up some interesting info. It is apparently Canada's deepest, at 560 m (http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0010107 and http://www.cancaver.ca/docs/deepest.htm). According to this page, http://www.spiralroad.com/sr/pn/a/arctomys_cave.html, it is the deepest cave north of Mexico. That last link has an interesting quote: "The main cave is very linear, descending steeply down a seemingly enless series of free climbs and pitches. The last part of Arctomys Cave is extremely wet and the cave ends in a sump. The first sump has been freedived to a second chamber, but nobody has been beyond this point." Anyway, an article ought to be made! Pfly (talk) 06:02, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * There's some important caves on Vancouver Island, sure if they've got articles or not; might be in a park article....I think Monkman Provincial Park mentions one, maybe it's in Kakwa Provincial Park....the Hart Ranges are all limestone, or mostly, so there's probably more up in there. There's been talk there might be some in the Clear Range and Marble Range, though I don't think one's ever been found; because of the geology around there (Marble Canyon is a karst formation).Skookum1 (talk) 16:17, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * To Andrew: I think the logic with the Mahood Falls locality name may be that while it's above Mahood Lake, it may just have a view of Canim Falls...haven't looked at the map again before I came up with that idea, but just a hunch. The Wells Gray-Clearwater tourism association or a website owner from up that way may know some history, or the Clearwater Museum may be able to answer the question of the origin of the name, and if there are names for the individual falls on the Mahood Rivert don't show up on Basemap/in BCGNIS.Skookum1 (talk) 16:19, 3 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Ya this whole thing about the Mahood Falls is really confusing. You did say there are some falls at the Mahood Lake outlet so for now, until I go there & find out in person, I will assume that statement is correct & therefore, when I get a chance, do a few changes to the Mahood Falls stub.  I may e-mail Bryan Swan & ask for his take on this. AndrewEnns (talk) 18:38, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, I just had a look through Randall & Kat's Flying Photos trip via the Canim and Mahood areas, hoping there might be a good shot of the outlet of Mahood Lake, but there's only distant shots from over the Mahood River canyon; there's a glimpse of the lake's outlet but it may only be a cataract, not an actual falls at that location; no. 134.jpg on that page and its neighbours, and some others farther down on the return flight, only hint at it. There's a cataract marking at the mouth on Basemap, but the only named falls on the river are farther downstream.  Those pictures aren't public domain but they can be linked directly - click on the "Raw image" link and it'll open independently and you can link it if you want to illustrate the lake and/or river pages, ditto with Canim - disappointingly, they didn't get a shot of Canim's outlet either, where Canim Falls is.  It's a great site, have a look around it; I use a lot of their shots (with permission) on my http://www.cayoosh.net site on various pages...when I get a chance tonight I'm going to fiddle with Basemap and see if the Mahood Falls locality has a view of Canim Falls or another set of falls; it's up a hillside so I imagine it has a good view, plus southwestern exposure which was probably the attraction to settlers given the climate and altitude around there.  Some nice shots of Helmcken and maybe other falls, I haven't look through their flight index to see which are what.Skookum1 (talk) 21:27, 3 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't have much to say other than this is a lot more confusing than I originally though. I thought that we had it sorted out after the first discussion but I guess not.  I guess when I go up there, I will report what I find trying to avoid WP:OR of course.  BY the way, those photos are pretty sweet.  I hope one day to have my own helicopter so I can take photos like those.


 * As for Cheslatta Falls, leave it to me to create that stub (I'll do that sometime soon but not right away since Arctomys Cave is my main priority at the moment). You should make Nechako Canyon.  I'm better with waterfalls & you are better with canyons & that sort of thing so I think I'd be better with making the falls & you with the canyon.


 * Also, I'm making sure I'm putting all the rivers that are tributaries of the Fraser River in that cat; nobody except me & you seem to be doing that. Kind of odd.  Oh well.  Anyhow, I'm making Arctomys Cave right now (its the deepest in Canada; it is to bad there are not many cave stubs in BC. AndrewEnns (talk) 23:49, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Cheslatta Falls and Nechako Canyon
I might have already made the Nechako Canyon aka Great Canyon of the Nechako already but if not I'm going to be making it later with Cheslatta Falls and Cheslatta River. The falls are the last hundred yards or so of the river and end at the confluence with the Nechako at the foot of that canyon; there's a shot of the falls on Flickr but check out the picture on Nechako Canyon Protected Area's BC Parks page - here. I have to go out for the afternoon so those will be redlinks until I get back, unless you (Andrew) want to start first. Only 59' tall but pretty impressive-looking....Skookum1 (talk) 16:17, 3 June 2009 (UTC)