User:Barry Wells

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is a Wikipedia user page. This is not an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user this page belongs to may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia itself. The original page is located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Barry_Wells.

Leave a Message on my User:Talk page here

Contents 1 Quotes worth considering ... 2 Brief bio and background 3 Pages that I've started or contributed significantly to 4 Community involvement and service 5 Precedent-setting cases won 6 Interests 7 User in-fighting 8 Community hot buttons

[edit] Quotes worth considering ...

• "Anytime you have an opportunity to make things better and you don't, then you are wasting your time on this Earth."

-- Major League Baseball player (Pittsburgh Pirates) Roberto Clemente (August 18, 1934-December 31, 1972).

• "Bob, you're like a pay toilet -- you don't give a sh-t for nothing."

-- RKO movie mogul Howard Hughes (December 24, 1905–April 5, 1976) talking to American actor Robert Mitchum (August 6, 1917–July 1, 1997) in the late 1940s.

• "Stick with me and you'll be farting through silk."

-- Actor Robert Mitchum after he proposed to his future wife, Dorothy Spence, in the late 1930s. Mitchum remained married to Dorothy until his death in 1997.

• "Never mind the 60 feet, let's talk about the 6 inches."

-- American Actress Mae West (August 17, 1892 or 1893-November 22, 1980) commenting on the distance of 60 feet, 6 inches from the pitcher's mound to home plate in the game of baseball.

• "My wife Betty and and I are both experts in animal husbandry. She's better with the animals than I am but I'm a better husband than she could ever be."

-- Canadian writer and Ontario pork producer extraordinaire, Butch (The Beast) McLarty.

[edit] Brief bio and background

This contributor has been named to the 2006 Mayor's New Year's Honours List for Heritage for the City of London, Ontario, Canada.

• 2006 Mayor's New Year's Honours List

My name is Barry Wells of London, Ontario. I was born in the Dairy Capital of Canada (aka "The Friendly City"), Woodstock, Ontario, in the mid-1950s when Cadillacs had the big rear fins and "greaseballs" wore pointed leather shoes to "shoot the boots" at you.

I left Woodstock for London, Ontario, in the mid-1960s to escape these greaseballs but found that they had plenty of cousins in The Forest City. Funny how that works isn't it? Who to blame? Elvis or John Lennon?

The Wikipedia Project is a remarkable endeavour, offering a sensible and comprehensive set of policies and user-friendly software programs. I hope to contribute to it in a positive way on a semi-regular basis.

Here's my edit count on WP according to Essjay's Tool Here's a list of my contributions: [1]

• 3,000th edit: Monday, September 18, 2006.

[edit] Pages that I've started or contributed significantly to

Labatt Park; London Tecumsehs; London Majors; Brantford Red Sox; Stratford Nationals; Arden Eddie; Roy McKay; Frank Colman; George Gibson; Peter Desbarats; Eager Beaver Baseball Association; Megan Walker; Dianne Haskett; Anne Marie DeCicco; Black Donnellys; Chris Doty; South Secondary School; Joe Swan; Marc Emery; Paul Lewis; Richard B. Harrison; Paul Haggis; Vic Roschkov Sr.; Norm Aldridge Field; Intercounty Baseball League; Baseball; Fred Goldsmith (former London Tecumsehs player, co-inventor of the curveball); International Association; London Tigers; Mike Kilkenny; London, Ontario; Philip Aziz; Saugeen-Maitland Hall; Candy Cummings (also credited as a co-inventor of the curveball); curveball; Friends of Labatt Park; Western Fair; London Free Press; Fergie Jenkins; John Labatt Centre; Stanley Glenn; Wilmer Fields, Jack Jacobs, Saugeen-Maitland Hall and many others that I can't even remember ...

[edit] Community involvement and service

From November of 1996 to November of 2004, I worked as the senior editor/ news editor of SCENE magazine, a locally owned bi-weekly publication covering news, arts and entertainment. I was also a regular columnist at SCENE, writing a lively opinion column under the banner of "RamFed&Loaded." Today, I am a freelance writer and researcher/ author.

ArtSCAPE, a monthly arts publication (www.artscapemagazine.ca) in London was launched on January 25, 2006, features my column on city hall and the arts and often a second column on arts-related subjects.

I've been a volunteer member of numerous community organizations at various times in recent years, including the following:

• Secretary, The Oxford Park Residents' Association (OPRA), 1994-1997
• Member and Vice-Chair, London Canada Day Committee, 1994-1996
• Member, The Urban League of London, 1994-1997
• Co-chair of the Taxi Reform Coalition, 1994-1995
• Member, The London Advisory Committee on Heritage (LACH), 1995-1998
• Member, London Endowment for Heritage Grants Committee, 1996-1998
• Member, Education and Stewardship Sub-Committees of LACH, 1995-1998
• Member, Western Fair Association, Attractions and Entertainment Sub-Committee, 1996
• Member, Western Fair's Transportation and Technology Exhibit Steering Committee, 1996
• Member, Heritage London Foundation, Board of Directors, 1996
• Member, London & Middlesex Historical Society, various years
  
• Intermittent Chair, Grosvenor Lodge Management Committee, 1996
• Co-founder, The Friends of Labatt Park, 1993-the present day
• Member, Checker Limousine Union Organizing Committee, 1992-1993

• Member, Labatt Park 150 Reunion Event Organizing Committee, 2005 and 2006
• Doors Open London, 2001-2006 (hosting the public at Labatt Memorial Park)

I've also done some paralegal work, successfully representing a variety of individuals (occasionally former colleagues at work) in areas of employment and labour law, small claims court, landlord-tenant, EI Board of Referees and Criminal Injuries Compensation Board hearings, traffic court etc., winning a case at the Ministry of Labour Office of Adjudication Tribunal level in 1994-1995 and then in Divisional Court in 1996 before three Justices of the Ontario Court of Appeal and another in the Tax Court of Canada in 1998, that remain precedent-setting in the area of employment law, employment standards and employment insurance eligibility.

[edit] Precedent-setting cases won

• 858532 Ontario Limited o/a Checker Limousine v. Jim Eiler, Director of Employment Standards, Ontario and Dana Randall (Court File #544/95).

• Stuart Campbell v. Ministry of National Revenue and Jack Anderson (Court File #97-739-UI).

• Another public interest case that I was involved in and won involves our municipal freedom of information and protection of privacy legislation. After being denied access to the identity of the holders of two City of London taxi-plates (#320 and #323) by the City Clerk on August 12, 2003, I filed a formal appeal to the Information and Privacy Commission (IPC) office in Toronto on October 6, 2003 (MFIPPA Request #2003-28), pursuant to the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

DECISION: Finally, after 13 months, the IPC reversed its earlier decisions/ position on similar cab industry information requests/ appeals and ruled in my favour on October 28, 2004, ordering the City of London to release the information to me (IPC's seven-page decision and Order #MO-1862, dated Oct. 28, 2004). This decision has a province-wide impact involving similar requests for municipally held information about those holding taxi-cab owner licences -- relevant to those who undertake to track the ownership of lucrative cab plates in an often controversial industry.

[edit] Interests

I am currently completing a 135-page, fully footnoted paper entitled, A Colourful History of London, Ontario's Acrimonious Vehicle-for-Hire Industry, 1855-2005, as part of London, Ontario's 150th anniversary as an incorporated city (more than 10,000 residents).

Also in the works is another book, tentatively titled, Juice Monkeys: The Incredible Cock-Up at London Hydro, 1996-1997. This electrifying civic nightmare has more twists and turns than the road map of the U.S. State of Georgia.

My primary interests are:

• Local, regional, national and world history, including built, moveable, cultural and natural heritage
• Archaeology
• Legal/ justice issues
• Politics of every stripe, including the structure of government
• Land-use planning and urban development
• Media studies
• Cosmology and astronomy
• The history of Labatt Memorial Park in London and the history of baseball in London and Canada.

[edit] User in-fighting

Being an administrator on Wikipedia has no interest for me. While there's obviously an extremely valuable role for administrators, bureaucrats, stewards and arbitrators to play, it seems that the deeper one gets involved with the project, the greater the expectations and ultimately, the heartaches. Kind of like life itself.

No wonder so many Wikipedians wind up taking "wiki-holidays" or "wiki-breaks."

The often-petty in-fighting that I've come across amongst various contributors over this or that information/ edit/ block is unfortunate. But, given a project of this size, its complexity, the number of active users and human nature itself, I suppose that it's surprising there's not more nastiness, trolling and vandalism.