New categories for the Canadian History Project [closed]

Question

I'm working on B.C.'s 23rd Lieutenant Governor, trying to link him to the main tree. One of the sources I've found says that he spent 57 years in the Seaforth Highlanders, so I went looking for the Seaforth Highlanders category, only to find that there isn't one. (That is, there's one for the British Army unit, but not for the Canadian Army unit with the same name.) I could create a "Seaforth Highlanders of Canada" category, but it looks like I'd need to add 3-4 more before I could link that category to the Canadian Army category, so if anybody's been working on categories for Canadian military units, I'd appreciate some advice.

As part of looking around for clues, I took a look at the Canadian History Project page, and almost all the categories listed there are for politicians (except for "Other Protected Profiles" and "Persons of National Historical Significance"). I'd like to suggest a few other categories for notable Canadians:

• Notable Canadian Athletes (Wayne Gretzky, Sandra Schmirler)
• Notable Canadian Business Figures (James L. Kraft, Cindy Lee)
• Notable Canadian Journalists (Barbara Frum, Charles Lynch)
• Notable Canadian Medical Figures (Frederick Banting, Roberta Bondar)
• Notable Canadian Military Figures (Billy Bishop, Sir Arthur William Currie)
• Notable Canadian Performers (Gordon Lightfoot, Buffy Sainte-Marie)
• Notable Canadian Writers (Margaret Atwood, Pierre Burton)

Greg 

Comments

I'd go along with that list.  As a side note, several of the province sub-projects have some of those 'categories' but limited to folks from that province ... authors, actors, notables, performing artists ... so, we could add in several folks right off the bat.

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Okay, how about this for a reorganisation?

Current Sections:

• 1 Participants
• 2 Project Box
• 3 Sub Projects
• 4 Related Categories
• 5 Useful Links
• 6 Prime Ministers
• 7 Fathers of Confederation
• 8 Province and Colony Premiers
• 9 Province and Colony Governors
• 10 Province and Colony Lieutenant Governors
• 11 Other Protected Profiles
• 12 Persons of National Historic Significance

Proposed Sections:

1. Participants
2. Project Box
3. Sub Projects
4. Related Categories
5. Notable Canadians
   1. Canadian Athletes
   2. Canadian Business Figures
   3. Canadian Journalists
   4. Canadian Medical Figures
   5. Canadian Military Figures
   6. Canadian Performers
   7. Canadian Politicians
      1. Prime Ministers
      2. Fathers of Confederation
      3. Province and Colony Premiers
      4. Province and Colony Governors
      5. Province and Colony Lieutenant Governors
   8. Canadian Writers
   9. Other Protected Profiles
   10. Persons of National Historic Significance
   11. Useful Links

 Greg

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Would United Empire Loyalists fall under Notable Canadian Military Figures?

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Actually, I seem to recall seeing a United Empire Loyalist project somewhere around here...

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Yep, it's at:  http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:United_Empire_Loyalist

A sub-project of Canadian History ...

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Yes there is a UEL project which is where I have the profiles categorized along with the War of Independance 1776 and/or War 1812, but I would also call them Notable Canadian Military Figures otherwise they wouldn't have been on the UEL list.

Is Laura Secord or Col. Butler Notable Canadian Military Figures? Both are under the UEL category.

So perhaps what I am saying is what is the definition of "Notable"?

Is General Brock and Tecumseh Notable Canadian Military Figures because neither one was Canadian but both are military figures notable in Canada?

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The list is impressive - how about adding Canadian Scientists (& Researchers)???? we have many notable people who would fit that category.

Question?  what about Canadians who actually do most of their work in the USA? lots of entertainers, born in Canada, actually become famous in the US.

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I would put them under Notable Canadian Performers.

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Melissa, 

According to the Notables Project, "Notable" people include at least those who have an entry in Wikipedia, and others besides. I would consider being included in The Encyclopedia Canadiana (if only I could find a copy!) also also meeting the threshold. Similarly, an entry in The Dictionary of Canadian Biography or The Canadian Encyclopedia as similarly meeting the threshold.

I can easily see United Empire Loyalists and Canadian Military Figures in a Venn diagram: some people will belong to one set, but not the other, as not all United Empire Loyalists took up arms, and not all who took up arms were United Empire Loyalists. (Then again, not all United Empire Loyalists even moved to Canada, so I'm thinking that we might need a new category, subordinate to both the Canadian History Project and the UEL project, for Canadian United Empire Loyalists, or something like that. And, yes, that does mean that some people would get both categories. But I don't see having lots of categories on a profile as a bad thing, which some people apparently do.) And, for the record, I'd call Laura Secord a United Empire Loyalist, but not a military figure.

I don't see a definition of who qualifies as "Canadian" (for the purposes of the project) on the project page, but personally, I would include anybody -- whatever their birth or citizenship -- who had an impact on Canada's history, and General Brock and Tecumseh would definitely qualify.

Greg

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Sharon,

I didn't mean the list to be exhaustive. I just wanted to make the point that there is way more to Canadian history than politicians. I'd be happy to see a  Canadian Scientists & Researchers category, too. Or, for that matter, a Canadian Educators category. We could add categories endlessly, so maybe we need a guideline that we need to identify some minimum number of people to go into a category before we create the category itself.

And I agree with Melissa: Canadians who hit the big time in Hollywood still count as Canadians to me.

Greg

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Okay that makes things clearer.

Laura Secord is only famous for her actions in the War of 1812.  While she wasn't in the military, they were for the benefit of the military and she took on the mission because her husband, who was in the military, wasn't physically capable to do the task. So she really was his proxy in the military and to me it makes her a Notable Canadian Military Figure who has an entry in Wikipedia, and likely others.

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I just had a thought should we change the "Notable Canadians" part of each category to "Notables in Canada".

I believe it better reflects the category definitions.

Answer 1

Many lower level categories belong in several higher level categories.  What that means is that some coordination is important -- if you are dealing with Notable people, then you would want the Notables project to weigh in with thoughts on how Notables are best organized.  With the Seaforth Highlanders, I'd bet there is a common history between the British and Canadian Units, and so both should also be categorized under a higher Seaforth Highlanders Unit that could give (or link to) a bit of history on how the unit started and where it originally came from.  At this moment, however, the Military and War categories are being reviewed and I believe there is a moratorium on creating any new military and war categories until an overall structure is agreed to.  

Another factor is ease of reference when subcategories are grouped together on a page -- people will be looking for proper subcategories.  So if the subcategories all start with the name "Notable Canadain" they're all going to be grouped together under "N".  Is that the most important word in the title and is "N" the place you want people to be looking?  

In my experience the very most important category is the low-level category that your profile will be linked to, because once it has 30 profiles attached to it and THEN it's decided that the category name needs to change, you've got to manually go to 30 profiles to do the fix, some of which are closed profiles and you have to get the profile manager to do the change.  So it's worth the thought to get the lowest level category right;  the ones above are much easier to re-name, re-arrange, and fix when desired.

Comments

On the Seaforth Highlanders, at least according to Wikipedia, the Vancouver unit was organised independently, but named in honour of the British unit, and the organisers obtained permission from the British unit to use the name (and even the tartan).

My understanding (which I didn't catch from reading the Notables Project page until someone else brought it to my attention) is that the Notables Project only covers notables who aren't already covered by another project. So anyone who does come under the Canadian History Project would therefore not fall under the Notables Project. However, the Notables Project team undoubtedly have useful suggestions to make on how to categorise people, so you're right that they should be in on this conversation. I'll add that tag.

Perhaps category names like "Notable Canadian Writers" aren't the best category names, but I did want to make some kind of distinction between, for example, every Canadian who's ever had a single article published in a magazine or newspaper (which would include me), and those who are actually notable. I'm assuming that the Canadian History Project doesn't want to assume responsibility for anybody who has ever done anything in Canada, but rather just those people who are notable or significant or important, or whatever term we want to use to distinguish people. I wanted to use category names which stand apart from occupational categories like "Shoemakers", which anybody can add to any profile where they're appropriate. I suppose we could use something like "Writers from Canada of Note", but while that puts the part that people are most likely to be searching for first, it's kind of clunky.

Greg

Answer 2

This prompts some thoughts that the Notables project might best answer:  

First, is there a useful overall list of the kinds of people who are notable, to expand upon the list that you started -- journalists, athletes, etc?

Second, what is the best higher level categorizations?  At the moment, it is impossible to find "Notables"  under categories or to imagine which category there it might fit under.  Should there be a high level Notables category, under which there would be Athletes and Journalists, under which there would then be Notable Athletes, United States or American Notable Athletes, and Notable  Athletes, Canada, or Canadian Notable Athletes?  

Third,  do you want all Canadian Notable Athletes in one destination category to which profiles would be attached, or do you want the profiles attached at the provincial level, so you would really have to look province by province to see what Canadian Notable Athletes have been categorized?

Comments

I understand that it's a principle of using categories here that people should be in the lowest possible category (in this case, by province).

Personally, I would like to see an exception made in this kind of case: I'd like to see lists at both the national and the provincial/territorial levels, so people can look through the national list and say, "Yeah! We're cool because this person was born/lived/worked here!", and people can look through the list for their province and say the same thing. It kind of dilutes the effect, I think, if people had to look through 13 different lists to find out that somebody is/was a great Canadian. (Although Americans would have it worse: they'd have to look through more than 50 lists...)

Greg

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Greg, the problem is numbers.  While a category with over 200 names permits you to look at one screen of 200 and then another and then another, it would be really rare that I'd be up for looking at more than one screen.  So a 200 name category is about tops for me.  

So, you've got 1000 notables -- how do you break them up so lazy people like Jack Day can find them.  One way is by place.  Then Jack Day has to, as you say, know which place to look for them in, or look for them in all the categories.  Another way would be by type of notability.  Swimmers to the left, politicians to the right.  If you've still got too many in a group, then break it into free style swimmers and breast stroke swimmers.  That's the challenge of categorization.  And always lurking in the background is that question, "how does this help genealogy?"

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Well, Jack, that's why I want to put people into both the national and the provincial categories, so if lazy Jack Day wants to see a list of all the great Canadian downhill skiers, then he can look at the national list. But if Jack's cousin Jane is hyper-enthusiastic about Prince Edward Island, and wants to see a list of only great downhill skiers from P.E.I., then there'd be a list for her, too.

To put it another way, "how does this help genealogy?" is the wrong question, because there are all kinds of genealogists with all kinds of interests, and a biography or feature which one person thinks is absolutely marvellous is going to strike somebody else with all the force of a wet noodle. So to me, the question is, rather, "Is this going to help or interest enough genealogists that it's worth my time adding it?" 

Greg

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I never thought "how does this help genealogy" needed to be a narrow question!  But for categories to work, the profiles that belong in them need to be attached to them, so that means slowing down the people who love creating categories, and motivating the others who love creating profiles but haven't seen the point of categorizing them!

Answer 3

Have you seen Category: Famous Canadians?  It has subcategories:

1. Alberta Notable People
2. Alberta Performing Artists
3. Alberta Sports Hall of Fame
4. British Columbia Authors
5. British Columbia Notable People
6. British Columbia Performing Artists
7. British Columbians (added by template - have asked for category name to be changed)
8. Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame
9. Canada's Walk of Fame
10. Canadian Artists
11. Canadian Athletes
12. Canadian Authors
13. Canadian Inventors
14. Canadian Music Hall of Fame
15. Canadian Musicians
16. Canadian Politicians
17. Canadian Prime Ministers
18. Fathers of Confederation
19. Notable Nova Scotians
20. Olympians Representing Canada
21. Persons of National Historic Significance

Personally, because other countries may have Fathers of Confederation and Persons of National Historic Significance, I think it would be a good idea to rename:

1. [[Category: Fathers of Confederation]] to something like:
   • Fathers of Confederation, Canada or
   • Canada's Fathers of Confederation 
2. [[Category: Persons of National Historic Significance]] to something like:
   • Persons of National Historic Significance to Canada or
   • Persons of National Historic Significance, Canada or
   • Canada's Persons of National Historic Significance

You can also add profiles to categories such as Category: Famous People of the 20th Century which is divided into the areas for which people were famous, such as Category: Famous Composers of the 20th Century etc.

Then there are categories in Category: Hall of Fame Inductees to which some Canadians may already have been added.

There is also Category: Orders, Decorations, and Medals of Canada.

For example, Neil Young is in Categories: Canadian Music Hall of Fame | Rock and Roll Hall of Fame | Canada's Walk of Fame | Order of Manitoba | Officers of the Order of Canada.

Comments

Ah. Good catch, Maryann. I should have figured that there would be more categories that I didn't know about. My response would be to rename my proposed "Notable Canadians" category to "Famous Canadians", and move all of my proposed sub-categories under that.

Regarding the "Fathers of Confederation" category, Wikipedia only lists Canada as using that term. The Americans use the term "Founding Fathers", and a bunch of countries refer to individuals who led to independence for that country as "the Father of [wherever]", but  "Fathers of Confederation" does seem to be a uniquely Canadian term. (Then again, confederation is a relatively uncommon form of government.)

"Persons of National Historic Significance" also appears to be a uniquely Canadian term. (Possibly because other countries speak English rather than legal jargon, and therefore their governments know that the correct plural form of "person" is "people". ;-) ) Although truth be told, even searching on "People of National Historic Significance" didn't turn up any hits on Wikipedia, so other countries either haven't compiled such lists, or else use other terms like "National Heroes" or whatever.

So while I applaud your intention not to monopolise terms which other countries might want to use, it appears that, at least in the case of these two particular terms, we don't have to worry about it.

Greg

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I'd be inclined to share Maryann's concerns.  Perhaps there truly is only one country using the word Confederation, but if you Google Australia + Confederation you get some hits.  

And while "Persons of National Historic Significance" may be a special term of art in Canada, it SOUNDS like it could be an appropriate category for any nation.  So Murphy's Law says you'll get some profiles of wonderful people in China and Kazakhstan attached to it.  Add the word Canadian in some form to the two categories and the concerns will vanish.

Answer 4

Okay, I finally got around to working on the Canadian Notables. The naming is not absolutely parallel, since some categories already existed. Here's what's there now:​

1. Alberta Notable People
2. Aviation Heroes, Canada (I didn't choose the term "Aviation Heroes": it's an already existing higher-level category. So this category links up to that category, as well as to Notable Canadians. In fact, most of these categories have two upward links: one to Notable Canadians, and the other either to a worldwide category like Aviation Heroes, or, in the case of a Province Notables category, up to that province.)
3. British Columbia Notables
4. Canada's Walk of Fame
5. Canadian Artists
6. Canadian Athletes
7. Canadian Authors
8. Canadian Broadcasters
9. Canadian Business Figures
10. Canadian Inventors
11. Canadian Musicians
12. Canadian Performing Artists
13. Canadian Politicians
    1. Prime Ministers
    2. Fathers of Confederation
    3. Province and Colony Premiers
    4. Province and Colony Governors
    5. Province and Colony Lieutenant Governors
14. Manitoba Notables
15. New Brunswick Notables
16. Newfoundland and Labrador Notables
17. Northwest Territories Notables
18. Notable Nova Scotians
19. Notable Ontarians
20. Nunavut Notables
21. Persons of National Historic Significance
22. Prince Edward Island Notables
23. Québec Notables
24. Saskatchewan Notables
25. Unconnected Notables of Canada
26. Yukon Notables

Also, each province or territory notables categories has those sub-categories for which profiles already exist. I didn't create any empty categories (although some already existed).

 

And, because I wasn't creating empty categories, I didn't put in any of the new categories people have suggested (including my own suggestions of  Journalists, Medical Figures, and Military Figures). If you want to see a new category of notables, by all means add one. I wasn't trying to define what makes a person notable or not, I was just organising what was already there and eliminating duplicates. (Or at least, the ones I caught: for BC, I found Notable British Columbians, Famous British Columbians, British Columbian Notables, and British Columbia Notables. Not all of those linked to any other categories. Some of them, I just tripped over. So there may be still more duplicate categories that I missed hanging around out there.)

 

What was kind of disappointing to me was how few Canadian notables have been categorised. I didn't check to see if they had profiles, but no categories, but I kept on thinking, "What? No notables of this type in this province? But what about So-and-so?" But the reorganisation was a big enough job that I just couldn't take the time to go out and look to see if "So-and-so" even had a profile. My guess is that a bunch of Canadian notables don't have WikiTree profiles yet, but also that there are a bunch more who have profiles, but haven't been categorised yet.

Greg

P.S. I'm still trying to think of a category name for people like Terry Fox and Rick Hansen. They don't really seem to fit under Medical Figures, Philanthropists, or Activists, so I don't know what to call them.

Comments

Thanks so much for working on this Greg. Like you, I wondered how many Canadian notables had profiles and awhile ago started adding profiles for those on the Persons of National Historic Significance list. I also started working on Notables for the Ontario Project because Wikipedia's list tends to focus on modern-day celebrities. I think adding and connecting profiles for Notables is a good way to draw potential new members to WikiTree; i.e., hey so-and-so has a parent with my last name, maybe we're related.

On the Ontario Project we're using a free-space page Notable Ontarians to keep track of what needs to be done re bios, connections, etc. Does this make sense to you and others?

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I think most projects use a free space profile to keep track of what's been done and what needs to be done. 

I hit Wikipedia's list of Canadian Inventors, and found that two out of the first four are on WikiTree (and from Ontario): Frederick Walker Baldwin is (correctly) categorised in Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame, but I would also have categorised him as an Ontario Inventor and an Ontario Aviation Figure. Thomas Ahearn isn't categorised as any kind of notable. So if that trend holds, then the low numbers of Canadians in these lists is partly due to people not having profiles on WikiTree, and partly due to those who do have profiles on WikiTree being categorised as notable. So, the situation is pretty much as I expected.

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Thanks again. I guess the question should have been, Once people add a category, do they want to go to the bother of entering the profile and information on a free-space page? I see the value in it, but another WikiTreer questioned whether it was necessary.

That brings me to another question. Are categories tied to projects? We have a Quebecois project that covers French settlers, but we don’t have a Quebec project that covers everyone else. The categories for Quebec cemeteries are in French. We're a bilingual country, so I use them on the profiles of my English-speaking Quebec ancestors. But that may indicate that there's already a Quebec Notables category in French.

And, finally, is there any way to change Notable Ontarians to Ontario Notables?

Sorry if I'm getting off-topic here. Categorization has always been a bit of a mystery to me.

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I will sometimes put text on a category page to explain how it should be used, and/or to point to a project page to explain why it's there. I wouldn't be surprised to see people from the various provincial projects (or the Canadian History Project) put such text on various pages in this hierarchy. In fact, I've been noodling about maybe having some kind of Canadian History Challenge in July, to celebrate the sesquicentennial by trying to get all the Canadian notables who are already on WikiTree categorised, and add profiles for more. Certainly those kinds of project pages would be a huge help in coordinating something like that.

In my experience, most categories aren't tied to specific project (although I suppose, in a sense, all of them fall under the Categorization Project). But I've also see a bunch of categories which were created and are maintained by different projects. One example would be the assorted "Unconnected" categories, which are maintained by volunteers in the Connectors Project.

As far as I know, there's no way to change the name of an existing category, so what I normally do if a category is misnamed is create a new category with the correct name, re-point any profiles or sub-categories which point to the misnamed category to point to the new category instead, and then apply the Misnamed Category template to the old category to warn people not to use it.

There's a lot of good information about this stuff on the Categorization Project page. 

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A Canadian History challenge is a great idea! I'll continue on with the free-space page for the Ontario Notables, because I can see it would help in a challenge. And looks like it stays Notable Ontarians :(

Answer 5

Greg, thanks for your work setting up sub-categories for the provincial notables.https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:British_Columbia_Notables I’d like to add a few more but wanted to check with you and other members first. The list thus far is: Artists, Authors, Aviation Figures, Business Figures, Inventors, Jurists, Performing Artists, Politiicians (includes premiers, mayors, etc.) We have “business figures,” so should we use “military figures”? What about important clergy? “Religious figures”? “Medical figures” or “physicians”? How do we categorize the Heroine of Long Point and others known for acts of valour? 

Comments

On "military figures", yes, I'm good with that. It's nicely inclusive of every service.

I think I need to think some more about "Religious Figures". It's hard to find an inclusive term which isn't going to offend somebody. Some people really don't like it when they, or figures in their faith tradition, are referred to as "religious" because it sounds legalistic to them. Some people use the word "spiritual", but then others don't like that term because it sounds wishy-washy to them. "Clergy" wouldn't be a good choice, because there have been plenty of important figures who were never ordained.

I would prefer "medical figures" over "physicians". Perhaps I have Florence Nightingale on the brain, but it seems to me that nurses, or for that matter medical researchers like Frederick Banting, should be included in the category too, so let it have an inclusive name.

That's a good point about the Heroine of Long Point. There are a bunch of people who were pretty much "nobodies" as far as the rest of the world was concerned, until they did something brave that made people sit up and take notice. Maybe "Heroes and Heroines of [place]"? Or perhaps "Brave (or Heroic?) [place]ians"? Hmmm... I think I like that last one: "Heroic Canadians", "Heroic British Columbians", etc.

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Thanks, Greg. Jack Day uses Religious Professionals. See https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Category_Religious_Professionals_Formatting

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For an occupation category, that would work. For a notables category, not so well, because it would exclude people who aren't actually paid to be "religious", if you will. Some people are notable just for their faith, not their job. (I'm thinking of people like the Coptic Christians who have been attacked in Libya and Egypt recently, even though that's an extreme example.)

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Religious Leaders?

There are a number of newspaper publishers on the notables list. Newspaper Publishers okay?