Talk:British Columbia

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Archives

Archive 1

1 SHIFTING FORTUNES
2 Francais
3 Kyle Washington and the Washington Group? and other thoughts
4 Archive
5 shifting fortunes
6 Demographics
7 Pauline Johnson

[edit] SHIFTING FORTUNES

aight, I guess it's time we actually work on the shifting fortunes part about how the NDP came along and destoryed us, damn socialists, aight I guess that's POV besides I cannot write anything about the NDP without going on a huge rant. TotallyTempo 20:35, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, well the same is true for those of us who would write about the Socreds or the Campbell psuedo-Liberals....which is IMO one reason we've all shied away from writing too-recent history; too easily POV, y'see, and not an easy one to de-blinker oneself of either.Skookum1 00:58, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Francais

Is there any reason the French name for BC is listed in the first paragraph? I've nothing against French, or official bilingualism, but it seems odd for English language Wikipedia. I notice some (but not all) of the other provinces have this as well, but I see no logical reason for it.Bobanny 21:26, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

It's because of the pan-Canadianist pretense that because BC is a province of Canada, it should have a bilingual name (why this is done for the Latin "Nova Scotia" into French, when we don't say "New Scotland" in English, is another matter); I agree with you and I think once-upon-a-time removed the French, but I guess it's back. There's a certain lexical irony/injustice in the French translation, too, because the "Columbia" part of the name comes from the river (via the fur district named after it), not the country (i.e. Columbia as the poetic name for the US, with nothing to do with Colombia except the shared namesake); the river got its name not from the poetic name of the US, but from Capt. Gray's ship The Columbia, which was the first to enter and sail up the river (so 'tis claimed); and the ship was named for the US, by way of its poetic name. Confusing, huh? Yeah, but the upshot is that in French the name of the river is la fleuve Columbia, but they insist that BC's name in French should be la colombie-brittanique i.e. from la colombie, which is the name for the South American country. This is not just bad history of course, it's downright incorrect; We are expected to use accents on Montreal and Quebec when writing English; they can't even be bothered to get our name, and its history, right. "They" includes me, by the way, as I'm 1/4 Franco-canadien and, for someone born in BC, speak it pretty well (from my own initiative, not from family background). Anyway, in a historical/lexical sense the French name SHOULD be la columbia-britannique; the clincher would be in any historical French-language HBC or NWC documents referring to the Columbia Fur District in French, i.e. as to which form they used; not that anybody in l'office de la langue francaise or the academie francaise gives a ****. My two bits, and what-for.Skookum1 01:06, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kyle Washington and the Washington Group? and other thoughts

As you can see by the redlinks there's no article for KW yet; the second should perhaps be The Washington Group as I think the Washington Marine Group is a subsidiary (they're into more things than just marine industry now, can't remember what it was that was recently announced though - I don't follow the business pages in the rags); I found this out while writing about the cross-border culture/economy/society/history of the Pacific Northwest on Talk:Pacific Northwest and was a bit surprised, given the large role he's had in BC in recent years. He's not a British Columbian, though he does live here part-time, so he shouldn't be on the List of British Columbians, but he is one of the province's most influential and gung-ho business leaders, I think one of the biggest players but I'm not sure. I'm not familiar enough with business data or business bios to know what to write up even as a stub, so I'm posting this here if someone might take an interest in it.Skookum1 23:43, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Aha - there's a Washington Marine Group article, listing his father Dennis Washington as in control; but from what I know Kyle's in charge of operations or he's CEO or whatever (er, that's the same thing isn't it?); but it's Kyle who's got the profile in BC, not his Dad.Skookum1 23:51, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

In the same vein maybe we should have an article maybe on people notable in BC business and other fields who "did their thing here" but were never naturalized. Historically there's others: I'm thinking Mr. Hill from the Northern Pacific as well (who not incidentally was also on the board of the rival CPR; see http://www.dickshovel.com/two2.html); I'm not meaning recreational visitors like Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, who fished at Painter's Lodge regularly for years (that's probably another redlink but could use an article), although Errol Flynn's death in Port Coquitlam would seem to be of note; and Malcolm Lowry's in Maplewood of course. There were certain mining and forest industry people and companies likewise that were cross-border, including one bio I'll write up at some point on Ben E. Smith, an eye-patched NYC stock promoter who hyped the Pioneer Mine somewhat infamously back in the '20s and '30s; and a lot of major mine discoverers and other pioneers were Americans, esp. in the Kootenays. Maybe there's not enough to make the list worthwhile; it's just a thought in the wake of the Kyle Washington thing. John McCaw just occurred to me as well, although he just sold the Canucks, but he did build GM Place (I just checked that page, which is linked off the Vancouver Canucks page, but it's just a stub; is he Craig McCaw's brother or did the writer of the Vancouver Canucks article get things mixed up and created the "John" stub?...some of the list might also be film/TV industry people who work here but remain citizens elsewhere, ditto professional athletes.Skookum1 23:43, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Archive

All discussions before November 2006 have been archived in Talk:British_Columbia/Archive_1. Mkdw ^talk 10:37, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] shifting fortunes

Once I get my computer back, (sometime this week) I will tackle shifting fortunes and trun it into an awesome part of this article, hopefully I'll be able to do up to the 2001 election when our fortunes finally turned around. TotallyTempo 19:05, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry my computer graphics card is stuck in an endless loop which keeps reoccuring unless I use software rendering, dell now says they want the computer back to fix whatever they messed up. TotallyTempo 03:29, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Aight I'm starting, I got part of an afternoon to kill...TotallyTempo 20:14, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Demographics

I just want to register my disagreement that we have to slavishly conform to Stats Can definitions. "East Indian" is a dated term that the Man should stop using because it only derives its meaning from its relative position to Europe and North America, like Orientalism generally (and it discriminates against Central Indians!). I believe "South Asian" has more currency. "Indo-Canadian" doesn't really work either because it's inconsistent with all the other categories, which don't use the -Canadian, probably because it refers to identity/current residence rather than ethnic origin. That said, I guess we're stuck with Stats Can thinking in lieu of consensus amongst editors on this and I'm too lazy to try and get a consensus. Also note that there isn't even an article East Indian on Wikipedia. Bobanny 18:28, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Whatev if we are using statistics by stats can than we should use the format they use. Besides if I were to say Indian especially in a population survey people would think I was referring to American Indians. It's just a way of distingushing one Indian from another.

Bobanny, I understand your frustration - the terms "East Indian" and "North American Indian" are not the ones I would normally choose! However, I do believe we almost don't have a choice - The most direct reason is the one I referenced when I reverted the changes, and is the same idea that TotallyTempo mentions in his comment above - we have to stay true to the reference if we are going to cite them otherwise verbatim. However there is a second reason - Ethnicity-related discussions can become horribly tainted with POV, and some ugly POVs, too - have a look at the White Canadian talk page, for example. So I really feel that the one safe, NPOV way to discuss ethnicity is to use definitions provided by as neutral an outside source as I think we're going to find - Note, I didn't say correct, I just said "neutral". AshleyMorton 16:08, 9 December 2006 (UTC)