Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Charles Trudeau (businessman)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   nomination withdrawn due to sourcing improvements. Bearcat (talk) 23:45, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Charles Trudeau (businessman)

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Biography of a person notable primarily as the father and grandfather of more notable people (oh, just you guess). While there are marginal hints of an independent notability claim as a businessman, they aren't really substantive enough or reliably sourced enough to get over our inclusion rules for businesspeople — they amount to his being a shareholder in a few companies, and are sourced entirely to passing mentions in coverage of his son rather than to any substantive coverage of him. The only source here which, judging by the "1951" tag in the URL, might have been actually about him is a deadlink, incompletely cited and thus impossible to verify or retrieve whatever it was, to a document hosted inside a non-notable blogger's WordPress storage bin in likely defiance of WP:COPYVIO. Notability is WP:NOTINHERITED, so having famous spawn doesn't give him an inclusion freebie — to qualify for an article of his own, he has to actually get over our inclusion rules on his own achievements and his own sourcing independently of his notable descendants. A prior discussion in 2006 leaned strongly toward merging this somewhere instead of leaving it as a standalone biography — but the merger simply never happened, as there wasn't a clear consensus established about where to merge it. Delete. Bearcat (talk) 15:04, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. —  San ska ri  Hangout 16:00, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions. —  San ska ri  Hangout 16:00, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. —  San ska ri  Hangout 16:00, 25 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Redirect to Pierre Trudeau's article or simply delete as I see nothing obviously better. Pinging, , , , , and .  SwisterTwister   talk  05:23, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete, agree with nom's argument. Young Trudeau by the Nemnis and Citizen of the World by English both have info about Charles Trudeau, the former very little, and could serve as reliable sources, but neither offers any additional info to confer notability beyond that conferred upon him by his scions. The little content herein could be merged into the beginning of Pierre Trudeau but just as well could be deleted. Thanks for pinging me -- Samir 05:50, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Collect's point on NYT articles prior to PET being famous is compelling -- Samir 22:35, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. Fyddlestix (talk) 18:39, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep Noteworthy enough for several NYT mentions well before Pierre was noteworthy.   owned a baseball farm team noted in NYT.   noted figure in Canadian baseball history. Is the "side stuff" about Pierre important to his basic notability? No.  The baseball and other factors are sufficient to establish notability under WP:GNG.  Collect (talk) 12:33, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Interesting. In French, he's also cited as a propononent of Borduas, of all things, in in this book, and of course he owned the Champlain gas station chain. A true renaissance man! 14:18, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment, mentions two books about Charles's son, Pierre, saying that while they "both have info about Charles", they don't have enough to establish notability.   Hmmm.  I have two concerns with this dismissal.  First, there have been far more than two books written about PET.  It wouldn't surprise me if there were hundreds.  If Charles had led an uneventful life I'd expect all these books to cover the same small handful of details about him.  But everything I have read suggests he too led an eventful life.  Pierre is reported to have grown up in awe of him.  So, I expect if were to go to a large library, where I could check the indices of a dozen books, or a couple of dozen books, I would find that the authors of those books selected different notable events from Charles's life, when they covered how he influenced his son.  Second, if Samir is relying on google books, we have to remember that few recent books let online readers read more than a fraction of books they haven't paid for.  For all Samir and I know, in the parts that google books won't allow us to read, there is even more information about Charles.  Geo Swan (talk) 21:02, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much Geo. The two books on PE Trudeau that I referenced are two of the few biographies that deal only with PET's early life, and consequently are resources that would have high yield in biographical information regarding his father when compared to other biographies, or the 100s of other books. I have both on Kindle along with several other books on PET, but admittedly just re-read the early sections -- Samir 22:29, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Also, Collect's points are compelling -- Samir 22:29, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment There is nothing in our policy that calls upon us to argue for keeping articles when our tools show people are reading them. There has been a big spike in readership of all the articles of everyone related to new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.  Our tools show the article on Charles Trudau was read 21366 times mainly since his grandson's election.  Justin's stats, and his wife's stats show the same curve, but 100 times and 10 times the readership.  1708 people read Charles's article in September .  So, people have been reading this article.  Geo Swan (talk) 22:22, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep as per above I too think Charles Trudeau would meet our notability criteria, even if he didn't have a son who became notable. Geo Swan (talk) 18:54, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I can remember as a child being driven by the Trudeau family home on Cote-Ste-Catherine Road and Pierre's father was definitely a notable figure, in his own right, to my ears. His ownership of the Champlain gas chain (which doesn't have a Wiki article) and his involvement in the Montreal Royals was certainly high-profile. But of course none of that actually means a whit in an Afd. There has got to have been coverage of Charles in francophone newspapers of the day, yet I can't find those archives on line. And I see he doesn't even have a French Wikipedia article. So while I do believe he was notable, I can't cast a !vote. Just wanted to say why. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 20:03, 31 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Pour vous: L'Action universitaire, Volumes 1-2 Université de Montréal., 1935.  Collect (talk) 22:21, 31 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Found it: his death made the front page of Le Devoir, on April 11, in a story running almost the entire length of the cover page. The only way to find it was to go into Google's News Paper archive and browse, as you would microfiche. Keep. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 00:24, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * And I've added the feature story in La Patrie, on April 11 (see page 14). Shawn in Montreal (talk) 00:43, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * And I've added this Montreal Gazette cover story, "J.C.E. Trudeau dies in Florida: French Canada Loses Prominent Businessman," which continues on page 10, as well. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 01:06, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, La Presse doesn't seem to have its 1935 issues online, and L'action catholique is missing the April 11 issue. But with major coverage of his death in the three cited dailies above, I do believe this easily meets WP:GNG. He was according to reliable sources a notable French Canadian lawyer, businessperson, philanthropist and sports owner in his day, and I wonder if Bearcat would consider withdrawing this. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 00:50, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I should also emphasize that I chose April 11 1935 to browse likely newspapers, simply because it was one day after his death and I was confident I would find coverage. But this is certainly not a case of WP:BLP1E. The scope of his achievements outlined in the three cited articles clearly suggest notability in life as well as death. If we had had a way to search instead of manually browse, it would make this that much easier. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 01:33, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh and finally, I expanded a little based on the Gazette, Patrie and Devoir articles. But these are long pieces and there's much more info that could be added or at least referenced. And BTW, Le Devoir said he had three kids, not four - unless one had died? Shawn in Montreal (talk) 01:42, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep. He was significant enough in 1935 -- long before PET became PM -- that his death was front-page news in multiple publications. If he was notable in 1935, he is notable today per WP:NOTTEMPORARY. T.C.Haliburtontalk nerdy to me 16:34, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh and I see the Quebec government's "BANQ" digital database has a lot more Montreal dailies online, here. Unfortunately, one needs Flash in order to be able to view papers and I just don't want to download it onto this brand new Mac but one can add more major page coverage of Trudeau on or around April 11, 1935. I may do so, when I get access to a PC or browser with Flash installed. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 16:51, 1 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep per above, but I suggest removing Joseph from the title since few seemed to call him that. (Joseph isn't in the title Pierre Trudeau, though that was PET's first given name.) Ribbet32 (talk) 18:55, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, I wanted to disambiguate naturally, per WP:NCPDAB. And I saw that Gazette, La Patrie and Le Devoir all actually called him that, so I added "Joseph." No one ever called Pierre Trudeau 'Joseph Pierre' indeed, but every daily paper I could find for April 11 called him J.C.E. I don't mind if someone wants to move the article again. We have enough ways to precisely name the article without resorting to a parethentical, that's for sure. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 19:00, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * It's not the way things work anymore, but the naming tradition among francophones in Quebec used to be that a child was almost always given a triple-barrelled hyphenated name: first part always "Joseph" for a boy or "Marie" for a girl, second part the common name of the appropriately-gendered godparent, third part the name that the child would actually be known by in real daily life (the only variation from this was that if Joseph or Marie was the godparent's name and/or the name you were actually choosing as the child's daily name, then you could skip the reduplication.) Another noteworthy example is Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien, obviously (and logically, once you know how the naming rule worked) far better known as Jean. We do still have some stragglers where an article was erroneously created at "Joseph/Marie-B-C Surname", and there were certainly also some people who used the B name and/or weren't actually named in that tradition at all — but for WP:COMMONNAME reasons the correct title for a francophone from Quebec in that era, if they have a hyphenated compound given name beginning with Joseph or Marie, is indeed almost always to elide the Joseph/Marie part and usually though not always the B name as well. Bearcat (talk) 23:40, 1 November 2015 (UTC)


 * I'd still like to see some additional sourcing improvement, because there's still a little too much of the "passing mentions in coverage of his son and grandson" type of "coverage" for my liking, but it's not resting exclusively on that class of sourcing anymore. So consider this withdrawn. Bearcat (talk) 23:45, 1 November 2015 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.