Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/C. D. Howe/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Laser brain 02:56, 24 January 2011.

C. D. Howe

 * ''Nominator(s):Bzuk (talk), Wehwalt (talk) 16:25, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

We am nominating this for featured article because... I believe it meets the criteria. C. D. Howe virtually ran the Canadian economy for over a decade after the Second World War. Described as "a Fascist—but a nice Fascist", he had little use for Parliamentary review of his actions, and that led to his personal downfall and that of the Liberal government that had ruled Canada for over two decades. Today, I think, he is better remembered for his accomplishments, including the founding of Air Canada and the CBC. The third in my series on postwar Canadian politics, and I should add that the nomination comes on the 50th anniversary of Howe's death. Wehwalt (talk) 16:25, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Sources comments:
 * There are no citations to the Stursberg book listed in the bibliography (also the book lacks a year of publication)
 * Ref 141 supports the statement: "In 1958, the C.D. Howe Memorial Foundation was created to bestow an Engineering Award in the name of Howe". However, the linked source makes no mention of 1958, or of C.D. Howe, or of the Memorial Foundation.

Otherwise, all sources and citations look good. Verification spotchecks on the few online sources produced only the query raised above. Brianboulton (talk) 12:21, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Those things are fixed. Thank you.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:05, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Dab/EL check - no dabs or dead external links. -- Pres N  22:15, 3 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment. Have read first couple of sections; thoughts:
 * Howe was born - and raised?
 * He passed, and attended the school - majoring in?
 * Howe accepted, although the young engineer felt that he should leave the Boston area to begin his career - bit confusing: do you mean he took it in spite of thinking he should leave Boston? Or he took it but planned for it not to be long-term?
 * There is a common tale - I don't love this phrase, bit weaselly. Anything more available?
 * Barker stated he had always intended a career in business, and in fact went on to become chairman of Sears, Roebuck & Co - is this relevant to the article?
 * In any event - unsuitable tone for an encyclopaedia. The last four sentences of that paragraph seem to lose their way a bit.
 * casual equality - odd-sounding phrase; are these your words or copied from the source? The sentence this phrase appears in has too many commas, it's not fluent. The following sentence has a similar problem, and is hard to follow because of it.
 * That is from the source. I could not think of an alternative phrase I was convinced would carry the same meaning.--Wehwalt (talk) 00:02, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not 100% sure that I understand what it's supposed to mean. If it is straight from the source, I think quote marks and a direct citation would be better, although I could probably be convinced otherwise. Trebor (talk) 00:42, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I've deleted it and rephrased that sentence, and I think it has lost little.--Wehwalt (talk) 00:54, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * In general, it seems like it could do with another copyedit to tighten things up a bit. Trebor (talk) 02:03, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Reply I will seek a copyeditor. Please feel free to leave additional comments. I will see that your specific comments are addressed.--Wehwalt (talk) 02:14, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Just a few little prose issues. Apologies if I'm on the wrong track with any of them. Prose is not my strong point, but I was interested in the article so I read it and thought to pick up anything I noticed:
 * "he was often a target for accusations by the Opposition". Accusations of what? A very brief explanation might help.
 * "Beginning in 1954, Howe began to plan for pipelines to take Alberta's natural gas to market". Repetition.
 * "Professor Howe took his students". Surely Professor is unnecessary here, read with previous sentences.
 * "His student Denis Stairs, who would go on to lead a major Montreal engineering company, said of Howe that by the time the camp ended, they had great respect for Howe, and student C. J. Mackenzie, who Howe would later appoint to the National Research Council presidency, stated that Howe was not a brilliant lecturer, but that his presentations were always extremely clear." This sentence was a bit long for me and there is a clear point where it could be split without losing any flow.
 * "he applied for citizenship". The reader has to assume it is Canadian citizenship. It could be made explicit.
 * "Clarence and Alice Howe decided to entirely separate their roles, with Alice Howe having entire responsibility for their domestic lives" Repetition of "entire".
 * "Norman Platt Lambert, a Liberal Party official and friend of Howe brought him to a meeting". Seems to be missing a comma after Howe.
 * I don't think the caption to the Pearkes and Howe picture should have a full stop.
 * "one of C.D. Howe's "dollar-a-year club" as president". Why C. D. here?
 * "Howe had an excellent reputation, even in the Soviet Union for his conversion of the Canadian economy," Seems to be missing a comma?
 * "Howe found that saddles and harness had been stored". Should be harnesses?
 * "Mackenzie King fell ill with pneumonia and, after recovering spent a month on vacation in the United States," Seems to be a missing comma?
 * "accusing him of both being power mad and of selling off". The "of"s don't seem to work with the "both".
 * The capitalisation of governor general seems inconsistent when referring to specific office-holders (eg Viscount Alexander). But I'm not so good on my Proper Nouns, so just raising this for attention.
 * "this time in Korea—On the train" capitalisation.
 * "Howe, unenthusiastic about the war, saw it as the wrong war in the wrong place. Errant quotation mark or should there be a quote?
 * "an old age pension for Canadians to receive at age 70". As Canadians would receive it after age 70 as well, might "to which Canadians would become entitled at…" be better?
 * "development had proven time consuming". Development of what? The context doesn't make it clear.
 * "The Liberals lost 20 seats from their 1949 high water mark, but still elected almost two-thirds of the House of Commons". The party doesn't elect.
 * "the Opposition met the statement with jeers and Opposition cries". Unnecessary duplication of Opposition.
 * closure is wikilinked to cloture in the body of the article but not in the lead. I didn't know what it meant when I read the lead.
 * C.D. Howe Memorial Foundation and Award: there are no spaces after C. which causes an inconsistency.
 * The "named for the former minister" and "named after him" are a bit ugly in consecutive sentences. I think the two sentences could be easily combined and some of the unnecessary details dropped.
 * "It describes itself as "the gold standard for public-policy research". This sentence adds nothing to the article. I think it should go.
 * Is there anything to balance Harbron's fawning statement? It doesn't come off well to me - a neutral article that suddenly drops in a lavish eulogy at the end. The article wouldn't lose anything if the quote was to go.
 * Overall, it was a great read. It doesn't jump around at all, and the lengthy article manages to retain the reader's interest with humorous events (the little aside about the smoking ban is a gem.). It's certainly comprehensive and I take it that all relevant literature has been consulted. There's been a lot of activity on the talk page and I want to wade through that which I don't have the time to do right now. But it certainly has FA written all over it.--Mkativerata (talk) 01:04, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the praise, I will make those changes tomorrow. One thing, though, on the citizenship thing, you caught me fair and square.  At the time, Canada had no separate citizenship, Howe was actually applying to become a British subject.  I was fudging it because I thought explaining that would be tedious.  Thoughts on how this should be handled?--Wehwalt (talk) 01:10, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmm, without knowing anything about the subject, could section 2 of the Immigration Act 1901 help? Could it be that "Canadian citizen" and "British subject" were for a time not considered to be mutually exclusive statuses? If I'm on the wrong path here, how about "naturalised by Canada as a British subject"? --Mkativerata (talk) 01:32, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I will review the source and see how far I can stretch it.--Wehwalt (talk) 01:42, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * On further review section 2 is just a deeming provision for the purposes of that one Act, so "citizen" is just a term of convenience not a conferred legal status. The Naturalization Act, on the other hand, speaks only of naturalisation of aliens as British subjects, making no mention of citizenship. --Mkativerata (talk) 01:47, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * You see my problem.--Wehwalt (talk) 01:49, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Indeed... "naturalised by Canada" would be short and, so far as I can tell, accurate. It could be accompanied by an explanatory footnote explaining he was naturalised as a British subject and would have assumed Canadian citizenship in 1947. --Mkativerata (talk) 01:51, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That sounds reasonable. All your comments will be done tomorrow.  I don't have my sources in front of me right now.--Wehwalt (talk) 01:54, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I have done all of Mkativerata's comments. I like the new ending very much.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:36, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I like the new ending too, and I like the way you've dealt with the British subject issue. My only remaining quibble, and it is so pedantic, is the "receive beginning at age 70". Assuming there are means tests and it's not a mandatory pension, some would start receiving the pension at a later age - perhaps something like "which Canadians could receive" might cover that.

Thanks, I appreciate it.--Wehwalt (talk) 00:01, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Support. Fantastic article. For the unfamiliar reader like me, one learns not just about Howe but about an era of Canadian political history as well. That means as a biography it adds the right degree of context to the biographical details. (I've waded through the talk page discussions and there's nothing there that indicates any issues in the current version of the article, which is stable). --Mkativerata (talk) 23:43, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Support: Disclosure - I have done some significant copyediting, and have also negotiated a number of changes to the article via sandbox discussion with User:Wehwalt. It looks to me to meet all criteria now, so I am happy to add my support. A solid piece to add to the Canada politics stable. Brianboulton (talk) 12:10, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Support. I peer-reviewed this fine article on December 23. I thought the article was nearly ready for FAC then, and it has since been improved. My concerns have been addressed, but I notice two new problems (or things I missed earlier).
 * If I understand WP:CREDITS correctly, the caption for File:C.D. Howe c. 1940.jpg should not include the credits, which properly belong on the image description page.
 * I'm not sure this needs fixed, but something peculiar happens to the "Postwar" and "McKenzie King years" subheads on my desktop screen, although they look fine on my laptop. On the desktop, the "Postwar" head is shifted to the right, almost to the middle of the screen. Adding the clear template just above the "Postwar" head seems to solve the problem, but I thought it best to ask about this rather than just boldly adding the template myself. I'm not sure if adding the template causes unwanted side effects on other screens. Finetooth (talk) 19:14, 15 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Has there been an image review? Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 21:47, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * No, there hasn't which is why I haven't posted my usual "x supports, this done, that doen" post like I tend to do. Can someone oblige on images?  I have taken care of the credits that Finetooth commented on, I don't know what to do about the other, it may be a browser issue.--Wehwalt (talk) 00:26, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I've added the template you wanted, Finetooth. Does that clear it up for you?--Wehwalt (talk) 03:37, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes. Looks fine. I thank you. Finetooth (talk) 06:36, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Image Review All but two of the images are clearly free for use on Wikipedia, but I am not sure about these: Ruhrfisch &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 17:09, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
 * File:C.D. Howe Portrait.jpg (the image in the Infobox) is claimed as free under PD-Canada, but its Library and Archives Canada (LAC) source web page does not indicate when the image was made, but does say that it is "Copyright: House of Commons". PD-Canada allows three ways for an image to be free. 1) It may be that "it was subject to Crown copyright and was first published more than 50 years ago", but without a date this is not clear (Howe died in 1960, so the photo itself had to be made more than 50 years ago, but no publication date is given). 2) Without a date it is also not clear that it is a photograph made before 1949 (the second way it could be free). 3) The photgrapher is Cameron Duncan, who died in 1985, so it is not a case of the creator having died more than 49 years ago. Duncan gave his photographic collection to the Library and Archives Canada, so it may be he released his copyright, but if so, I cannot find any notice of this. I suspect it may still be under copyright as the LAC page for other formal portrait in the article, File:C.D. Howe, wartime.jpg, clearly gives a date and says the copyright has expired.
 * The other problem image is File:CDHowe on cover of Time.jpg which again has a PD-Canada license, but has a date of 1952 (so it cannot have been created before 1949). The source of the image gives no further information, so there is no clear indication it is under Crown copyright or that the photographer has been dead over 49 years.
 * Those images are now gone. The Duncan Cameron images sparked a major battle at Commons about a year ago.  I did not realize it was by him.  The consensus at Commons was that his images are not PD    With those gone, I don't see any barrier to promotion.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:13, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
 * All images are now free for use on Wikipedia. Sorry about losing the Cameron portrait of him as it was a very nice image, but with all the free images of him available, it was not suitable for Fair Use. Ruhrfisch &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 18:19, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, the infobox one is much gentler. Howe looks like a real SOB in the one I deleted.  Three supports, no opposes, image check done, everybody very happy.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:26, 18 January 2011 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.