Talk:Canadian Labour Party

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[edit] Labor vs Labour

I have moved to the proper name based on historical record, it was called the Canadian Labor Party, a proper record of this can be found at Alex Ross will run in Calgary, Calgary Herald June 8, 1926 --Cloveious 19:55, 14 October 2006 (UTC) Having Labour instead of Labor constitutes original research.

  • Does this historical record reflect the Canadian Labo(u)r Party's preferred spelling, or the Calgary Herald's house style? I don't think that we should be so quick to jump to that conclusion. (I'm not saying it should be chaned back, but that it deserves more research.) The Parliamentary website ([1]) uses "Labour". Ground Zero | t 20:20, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
    • Robert Parkyn 1933 campaign flyer
      Robert Parkyn 1933 campaign flyer
      All sources I have seen from the period indicate Labor as being Labor, like this that was stored at the Glenbow Museum. Here is an example from the Edmonton Bulletin September 18 1926 in regards to the federal election Kindersley in the doubtfull list --Cloveious 23:13, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Perhaps this will be the best source for the moment in determining this, this article Calgary Hearld Election Forum June 19, 1926 was written by each party and Indepenedent F.C. Potts for publication on their 1926 platforms. --Cloveious 23:26, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

The newspaper articles only confirm that newspapers used the American spelling during this period. this is not surprising as it was not until the Globe and Mail developed its own style guide in the early 1990s that Canadian newspapers started to switch from American style guides. The election flyer if not from a CLP candidate, but from an independent labor candidate, so I remain unconvinced that this issue is resolved. As I said before, I don't think that we have enough evidence to switch it back to "Labour" either. The Parliamentary site has been wrong about other things. Ground Zero | t 16:51, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. Looking at the newspaper I see instances of "labor" used as a word (that is, not part of an official name) as well as "color" and "favorite". To argue that "Labor" was the official spelling would, to me, suggest there was a period in which Canadians routinely used American spellings, which seems highly questionable. --Saforrest 04:28, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
As some rather weak counter-evidence, the party is listed as "Labour" on a page about B.C. electoral history by the B.C. government: [2]. --Saforrest 04:32, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
The party is referred to as 'The Canadian Labour Party' by the Canadian Encyclopaedia, by Norman Penner in 'From Protest to Power: Social democracy in Canada from 1900 to present', Lorimer: Toronto, 1992. and by various articles in: 'The Canadian Journal of Political Science', 'International Political Science Review' and 'Political Behaviour'. Excluding the book reference, all of which I managed to find in ten minutes. Academic consensus, then, apparently stands at 'Labour' party. Style guides for newspapers aren't generally very good. However, our best bet would be to look at a University style guide for Canada at the time, or failing that, a British university style guide. I'm going to 'be bold' or whatever and change it because there is apparently more evidence for 'Labour'. If anyone finds anything more concrete, I don't have books on Canadian history to hand or a university style guide, then we'll go with that. I don't think the word even needs a reference: if Canadian people and Canadian academics generally spell it 'Labour' today. Molotov2 (talk) 02:57, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
I've no idea how to change the name of the page, if someone could that would be good. Molotov2 (talk) 03:01, 12 May 2008 (UTC)