Ontario Categories

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Ontario Categories

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I find the categories in Ontario to be really hard to work with, and I'd like to suggest some improvements:

First, I'd suggest that all the categories which currently fall under the "Ontario, Canada" category be moved to the "Ontario" category, the people listed in "Ontario, Canada" be categorised to their correct towns, cities, etc., and, once it's empty, that the "Ontario, Canada" category be deleted. Until that happens, we're going to have duplication between those two categories.

Second, I'd suggest that all the "City of..." and "Town of..." categories be replaced by simply the name of the city or town. Granted, the legal name of these places is probably always "City of Toronto" or "Town of Fort Erie", or whatever, but nobody ever says, "I live in the City of Toronto." They just say, "I live in Toronto." Having "City of..." and "Town of..." categories just confuses people when they go to add a category like "Toronto, Ontario" and have it come up red. (You know they're going to say, "Seriously? Are you trying to tell me that Toronto doesn't exist?" Granted, if they ask in G2G, somebody will probably look up the Ontario categories and tell them to use "City of Toronto(Modern), Ontario", but they're going to look at that, and conclude that, if that's the official category, then we're all whacked.)

That brings up another point: There are a ton of categories in Ontario that have messed up spacing. Either there's a space before the comma (where there shouldn't be one), or there's no space after the comma (where there should be one). In some cases, there are duplicate categories; one with correct spacing, and one with incorrect spacing. Just cleaning up that mess would be a full-time job for somebody. Preferably somebody who's nit-picky enough that they can catch all of the errors, and would be motivated to fix them.

I'd also like to get rid of all the "Modern" (and, presumably, there are some "(Ancient)" ones kicking around) categories. I'm assuming that some party or parties unknown put those in to distinguish between places before or after the different municipal amalgamations that seem to be Ontario's provincial sport. But in my opinion, as long as a place has the same name, it should be the same category. For one thing, Toronto has gobbled up so many suburbs over the years that it would require a pile of categories, like "Toronto (Really, really ancient)", "Toronto (Not quite that ancient, but still pretty ancient)", and so on. Plus, with having multiple categories for a place with the same name, you would end up having to apply multiple categories (for the same place, mind you) to the profile of somebody who never moved from the place they were born.

I wold also like to suggest, because of all those amalgamations, that every category have before and after links in it. For instance, in the Regional Municipality of Niagara, Ontario category, there should be a link saying something like, "For events in what is now the Regional Municipality of Niagara before January 1, 1970, see Welland County, Ontario.", and a reciprocal link in the Welland County category. Similarly, all the places that existed before and after July 1, 1867 should have reciprocal links between the Ontario versions to the Canada West versions, and the same for places which existed before and after February 10, 1841 for the Canada West and Upper Canada versions. etc.

I'd also like to suggest that we make up our minds whether to list towns and cities under their respective counties and regional municipalities, or loose in the Ontario category. Personally, I think nesting them under the counties and regional municipalities would be better, because it would shorten up the category list under Ontario and make it easier to find the things that are there (although still have the category names be, for example, "Toronto, Ontario", and nest them through the upward links on those categories, rather than, for instance, "Fort Erie, Welland County"). But as it is now, some towns are nested under their respective counties and regional municipalities, and some are listed directly under Ontario. I haven't actually noticed any cases where that has led to duplicate categories, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were.

If we can agree to a common set of standards, and then implement them, Ontario categories should be a lot easier to use. (And, well, it would make us look, you know, competent.)

asked Sep 23, 2017 in The Tree House by Greg Slade G2G6 Pilot (685k points)
retagged Nov 20, 2017 by Ellen Smith

8 Answers

Answer 1 · 2017-09-23T23:38:52+0000

Greg, I am going to use London, Ontario, Canada as an example because that is where I have the roots of 25% of my family.

I have no idea what county that is in. I had to look on multiple pages on their official website below to find it is in Middlesex County. I would rather leave the counties out of it and go for London, Ontario, Canada because that is how you address letters to people there. You can find it in an alphabetical list of cities or towns easily if you know the name of the town. But if I had to know the name of the county I would be hard pressed to find it easily.

This is its official website https://www.london.ca/Pages/default.aspx

Yes its official name is City of London. So your suggestion is to push the style guide aside and set up a new style for Ontario? Personally I think the style guide is in need of updating with all the international differences to what it was based on. It needs tweaking in my opinion to be more internationally valid. I agree that City of is cumbersome even if it is the official on documents name...

Answer 2 · 2017-09-25T12:41:12+0000

I will speak specifically to the Ontario Cemetery project categories.

I have been trying to work my way through these categories to standardize and fix up the cemetery names and locations. Unfortunately this is not always possible.

Category names cannot be edited. If there is a mistake, the category must be re-created, and the old category tagged to the Misnamed list. However, before that can happen, one must go to every profile with that category and change the old category name to the new. As you can imagine, this is not always possible as not all profiles are open.

So far in Ontario Cemeteries, I have managed to pare down the subcategories to match the 50 current divisions in the province, and I outlined my rationale on the main page. I have been trying to work through the regions but only have a couple done at this point. When editing the cemetery names it is often difficult to respect both the old/original community names and the new/more common names.

Here is one region that I have finished. Have a look at Hamilton Cemeteries: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Hamilton%2C_Ontario%2C_Cemeteries

answered Sep 25, 2017 by Christine Daniels G2G6 Pilot (171k points)

Christine, Thanks to some of Ales recent work with editbot, fixing misnamed categories is not nearly so labor intensive anymore. Don't let the idea of correcting a category name put you off if it would be a real improvement. We don't want to be renaming categories with no good reason, but we don't want to be stuck with confusing names either and there is no reason for getting stuck with a bad earlier choice.

Greg and all the rest of you. The important thing is to figure out what works for a particular area geographically and work out some principles and get them written up where they can be discussed. All sorts of different things have been worked out for areas with different history that affects their geography.

While usually, the same general rules apply to a whole country, there is precedent for different rules for different provinces or areas of a country based on history. In Denmark, we have some issues that will create some differences for the Duchy of Slesvig because of history. In Canada it would make some sense to have some different rules on cities and locations if the history justifies it for the different provinces. I can foresee some issues in Québec that might not apply to other provinces. Any you have pointed out that BC never had counties. That could be a reason for differences as well. It just depends upon what the local projects figure out works best for a particular location.

Sometimes it makes sense to limit geographic categories to a particular time period. We have done that in Denmark and to some extent in Germany. Other places have decided to name it all by the modern name because that makes sense and works in that location. Some places that approach does not work.

Look at some of the guidelines developed by the German Roots Project and Project Denmark. I think the Quebecois Project might be working on something for Quebec towns and cities. I know there has been some discussion on that area on both G2G and within the Category Project google group. What works there, may or may not work for Ontario and BC. But these other guidelines will give you examples of ideas to try and how to write a proposal up.

commented Sep 30, 2017 by Mary Jensen G2G6 Pilot (131k points)

Answer 3 · 2017-09-25T17:44:14+0000

I brought this up prior when I stumbled across the Sarnia, Ontario categories before, though I'm not sure if anything was dealt with since then. Sarnia, too, is one of the cities that suffers from many different categories/names and one with (Modern) after it. They were all also nested within each other like a group of nesting dolls of every single naming iteration Sarnia ever had. It was/is very difficult to determine which category was the correct one for which time period.

I honestly think the conventions should follow how the categories are set up in the US categories. I found it a whole lot easier to find the proper city categories and I recall some of them even have descriptions pointing you to the correct category for each time period.

I do think it should use counties to help make it easier to separate things.

The problem is, the counties were not always the same over the years so some thought would have to be given at how to structure things.

I'd be willing to help. Perhaps we can get volunteers, decide on a style/structure and then have people volunteer to apply that to chosen counties? I'd certainly take Lambton County, as the majority of my ancestors were from that county.

Answer 4 · 2017-09-26T19:14:15+0000

Well, I just had a moment of bravery and had a look at the Ontario Category page.

What. A. Mess.

Geographical categories, non-geographical categories, duplicated categories.... oh.

Where are we going to start?

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Ontario

Answer 5 · 2017-09-26T19:36:06+0000

You really have a lot to fix.

Here is one list, that is almost completely for you.

http://www.softdata.si/wt/Cat/All_Capitalisation-Separators_0.htm

Other similar lists of interest are at the beginning of misnamed category.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Misnamed_Categories

With EditBot running, your job will be much easier. You can merge/rename/delete hundred categories/day, so once you decide what you want, some things will be quite easy. I will help you out.

Here you can see multiple categories at once

http://wikitree.sdms.si/default.htm?report=srch5&Query=Ontario

http://wikitree.sdms.si/default.htm?report=srch5&Query=Ontario+toronto

And here you can navigate Canada or Ontario category.

http://wikitree.sdms.si/function/WTWebCategoryNavigate/Category.htm?Category=Canada&Levels=2

http://wikitree.sdms.si/function/WTWebCategoryNavigate/Category.htm?Category=Ontario&Levels=2

You can walk the tree by clicking tree icon before Category name.

Answer 6 · 2017-09-26T20:47:35+0000

As Project Coordinator for Categorization, let me weigh in!

First of all, while we've identified a number of reasons to have categories, I still maintain that the primary reason to have categories is to group people together for genealogical purposes. So there may be other reasons to develop categories, but it should assist genealogy rather than not!

Second, the people who are most concerned with categories in a specific place are those who focus on that place, so if there is a project associated with Ontario, I would want them to weigh in. I know listing places by county works very well in Maryland; if you live in the state, you know what county you're in. But different places use counties differently, and as you say, there are Canadian provinces that don't have counties. So standardization is not always possible or beneficial.

Third, there is an advantage to categories for historical places because it groups people of an era together. My wife had ancestors who moved through Canada. One (Cooney-187) was listed in the 1861 Census for Canada-West -- the area that later was re-named Ontario. I haven't categorized that person, but the most useful categories to add to that profile would be categories that help me find other people who might have interacted with him. Apparently the census entry I found didn't give a specific place name other than just Canada West.

I hope if there's not already a project working on this that one will emerge. Then Categorization can assist if you run into difficulties, but it's best if the initial thinking is done at a project level.

Answer 7 · 2017-09-27T01:12:15+0000

Show 6 previous comments

I don't think I have any full paths set up in Ontario, but this might give you some idea of what I'm talking about:

The British Columbia category says, in part,

British Columbia joined Confederation as Canada's sixth province on July 20, 1871.

For events in British Columbia prior to July 20, 1871, see Colony of British Columbia.

Oh, I should also point out that it has a Resources section, with links to various places where people can do further research online. There could be more resources added, but at least the ones that are there can give people a start. I think it would help if we could add similar lists to every category.

Colony of British Columbia category says:

British Columbia was created as a crown colony by the British Parliament on 2 August 1858^[1]. As originally established, the new colony consisted of those parts of the former Columbia_Department north of the 49th parallel, and New Caledonia. For events in the former Columbia District prior to August 2, 1858, see Columbia_Department.

In July, 1863, that portion of the Stickeen Territories south of 60 degrees North was amalgamated into British Columbia, and that portion north of 60 degrees was returned to the North-Western Territory. For events located in the former Stickeen Territories prior to July 1863, see Stickeen Territories.

In July, 1863, the Colony of the Queen Charlotte Islands was amalgamated into British Columbia. For events located in the former Colony of the Queen Charlotte Islands prior to July 1863, see Colony of the Queen Charlotte Islands.

On August 6, 1866, the Colony of British Columbia and the Colony of Vancouver Island were amalgamated into a single colony name British Columbia. For events located on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands prior to August 6, 1866, see Colony of Vancouver Island.

British Columbia joined Confederation as Canada's sixth province on July 20, 1871^[2]. For events in British Columbia after July 20, 1871, see British Columbia.

The Columbia_Department category says, in part,

The Columbia District was a fur trading district on the Pacific coast of British North America. It was established by the North West Company around 1810. In 1821, the North West Company was absorbed into the Hudson's Bay Company, which renamed the area to the Columbia Department.

On June 15, 1846, the United Kingdom and the United States signed the Oregon Treaty, which gave the land in the Columbia Department south of the 49th parallel to the United States. For events in the former Columbia Department south of the 49th parallel after June 15, 1846 see Oregon Territory.

On August 2, 1858, the British Parliament proclaimed the Colony of British Columbia, consisting of those parts of the former Columbia Department north of the 49th parallel and New Caledonia. For events located in the former Columbia Department north of the 49th parallel after August 2, 1858, see Colony of British Columbia.

I would only trace back each region as far as there are actual events in that place. I wouldn't bother building out a region even to Canada West days (let alone Upper Canada, or Province of Quebec) unless there were births, deaths, marriages, etc. recorded on WikiTree profiles which justify adding a "Whatzittown, Canada West" category to at least one profile. (Not that we can't add those later if somebody ends up needing them. I just think it would be a waste of time creating a whole bunch of empty categories for the sake of completeness.)

commented Sep 28, 2017 by Greg Slade G2G6 Pilot (685k points)

Thanks, Greg! I like the way the links direct you to the appropriate category. I'll look at this more closely later today, but just wanted to point out that I'm frequently adding Canada West or Upper Canada to births, deaths, etc. on profiles. In some ways, as Jack says, the historical places are the most important for genealogy. That's one reason the Ontario Project started free-space pages on the Talbot Settlers of the late 1700s in London Township, Upper Canada, or the Lost Villages, which disappeared during the Seaway construction. It groups people by place and sometimes in places that no longer exist. But I do see your point that creating an empty category doesn't make sense either.

And, as another aside, can we agree on "religious figures" so that I can categorize a few bishops, etc. in the Notables :)

commented Sep 29, 2017 by Laurie Cruthers G2G6 Pilot (167k points)
edited Sep 29, 2017 by Laurie Cruthers

I'm going to try to log how I move a profile out of the Ontario, Canada category to where it belongs:

I chose Albert Leroy Ellsworth, because he was born in Welland, which is close to my current stomping grounds.
Since he was born in Welland, I would change his Ontario, Canada category to Welland, Ontario. (Or I would if he wasn't marked as Public. I'm going to write to the Profile Manager about that.)
Looking at the Welland, Ontario category, it has a bunch of history stretching back to 1829, so I plan to add in reciprocal links over 1867 and 1841, and divide up the history into the appropriate periods.
I also plan to add some resources.
The Welland, Ontario category also links upward to a Town of Welland category, so I plan to move all the profiles within the Town of Welland category into the Welland, Ontario category, and then delete the Town of Welland Category.
I also see a City of Welland category, so I also plan to move all the profiles within the City of Welland category into the Welland, Ontario category, and then delete the City of Welland Category.
I also plan to edit the Welland County categories to note that Welland was the county seat from 1856 until the county was dissolved.
According to Wikipedia, Welland was named Merrittsville before 1858, so if one doesn't already exist, I plan to create a Merrittsville category, and put reciprocal links over the 1858 divide between Merrittsville, Canada West and Welland, Canada West.
I will also need to put in reciprocal links between Regional Municipality of Niagara, Ontario and Welland County, Ontario over the 1970 divide, between Welland County, Ontario and Welland County, Canada West over the 1867 divide, and between Welland County, Canada West and Lincoln County, Canada West over the 1845 divide.

That's a bunch of work to move one profile, but as more and more towns and cities get cleaned up, the work should go faster.

Greg

commented Sep 29, 2017 by Greg Slade G2G6 Pilot (685k points)
edited Oct 1, 2017 by Greg Slade

That's great, Greg. I'd say we're on the same page. I'm happy to see that in your model, we won't be losing the historical information on each category page.

In going through the categories for Georgetown, Ontario, what I noticed was missing on the category pages were the years that Georgetown existed in each of its various forms. This makes it difficult for the non-historian to figure it all out. Since we are, I believe, supposed to use the name of the location that was in use at the time of each event in a person’s life (birth, death, etc.), we can’t get rid of Upper Canada and Canada West. What we can do is place the relevant dates directly under the title on the category page to make it clear when this particular location should be used on a profile. It would look like this:

*Category: Georgetown, Upper Canada 1823-1841

*Category: Georgetown, Canada West 1841-1867

*Category: Georgetown, Ontario 1867-1974

*Category: Town of Georgetown, Ontario. See Georgetown, Upper Canada (1823-1841); Georgetown, Canada West (1841-1867); Georgetown, Ontario (1867-1974); Halton Hills, Ontario (1974-)

*Category: Halton Hills, Ontario 1974-

As a semi-retired indexer, I dislike the use of Town of or City of, Modern, etc., too, so I agree with you about getting rid of those with links.

How do you want to involve the other WikiTreers who are interested in helping out? I'm happy to put the dates on the category pages, if you agree that's helpful. Did you want to use Welland as an example and we can all take a look once you're done?

Here I thought you were out in B.C. and now I find out you're just around the corner from the Falls where I was born!

commented Sep 29, 2017 by Laurie Cruthers G2G6 Pilot (167k points)

Well, WikiTree's all-volunteer, so it's really a matter of getting people interested in helping out. Mentioning the need in the "Ontario Monthly" thread would be a start. Surely, with the population of Ontario, there'd be a bunch of Ontario WikiTreers lurking around here somewhere.

I'm not quite finished fixing up Welland, but I did build reciprocal links from Welland, Ontario to Welland, Canada West to Merrittsville, Canada West to Aqueduct, Canada West, and spread out the historical stuff accordingly. I also built a chain of links from Regional Municipality of Niagara, Ontario back through Welland County, Ontario and Welland County, Canada West to Lincoln County, Canada West.

I also managed to find a copy of the proclamation which created the original 19 counties, and put that on Lincoln County, Upper Canada as a source. That took some digging, so if anybody's working on any of the other 19 original counties, feel free to copy that source. (I've found a bunch of unsourced and contradictory information on things like the dates that places were established, merged, changed names, and even who they were named after, so I've taken to looking for sources on the categories like I do on profiles.)

Unfortunately, all those chains have left me with a bunch of red categories, which refer to categories which either haven't been created yet, or else have spacing issues or some other reason they're not showing up. So I still have a bunch of cleanup to do. But at least you can see a couple of paths of linked categories now.

And, yes, I am a B.C. boy. I moved out east to be as close to the light of my life and the delight of my eyes as I could get without actually crossing the border into the Unexplored Southern Area.

commented Oct 3, 2017 by Greg Slade G2G6 Pilot (685k points)

Okay, going back to my original post (and stripping out the reasons for each suggestion), what I suggested was:

all the categories which currently fall under the "Ontario, Canada" category be moved to the "Ontario" category, the people listed in "Ontario, Canada" be categorised to their correct towns, cities, etc., and, once it's empty, that the "Ontario, Canada" category be deleted.
all the "City of..." and "Town of..." categories be replaced by simply the name of the city or town.
fix all the category names with spacing errors.
get rid of all the "Modern" (and similar) categories.
put reciprocal before and after links in every category.
make up our minds whether to list towns and cities under their respective counties and regional municipalities, or loose in the Ontario category.

I took it from Laurie's post on September 27 that she in favour of all my suggestions, except for nesting towns within their respective counties/regional municipalities/districts. At first, I was inclined to disagree on that last point, because the mess the current categories is in now means that I usually have to go into a county/regional municipality/district category to find out what the heck somebody actually used instead of Mytown, Ontario, but the way the Regional Municipality of Niagara, Ontario category was organised, with a list of the constituent municipalities, made me realise that we could do that on every level: put in the town category that it was part of this higher-level structure from this year to that year, and put lists of constituent lower-level categories into the higher level categories.

I have already worked the "Ontario, Canada" category down to having fewer than 10 profiles under it (none of which I can fix), and set it to be renamed, so we can forget about that step.

So, what I would ask people to do is:

if you find any category which is named in any format other than "Anytown, Ontario", "Anytownship Township, Ontario" (I figure leaving the "Township" part in won't hurt, since they'll still sort alphabetically), or "Regional Municipality of Anytown, Ontario", either create "Anytown, Ontario", and then move all the content and profiles into that category (or move the content and profiles from "Town of Anytown, Ontario" and "City of Anytown, Ontario" to "Anytown, Ontario" if it already exists), and then add {{Delete Category}} to the "Town of Anytown, Ontario" and "City of Anytown, Ontario" categories so that EditBot will delete them the next time it runs.
link up from each town/city/township to [[Category:Ontario]] only. (Not to higher level structures like counties/regional municipalities/districts.)
link back from each town/city/township to its Canada West equivalent (or its previous name, if it's been renamed or restructured since July 1, 1867), and link forward from the previous category.
link up (in the text, not as a category) to to higher level structures like counties/regional municipalities/districts, or to cities that have annexed/amalgamated surrounding towns/villages, and down from the higher level structure or town-eating city.

Oh, yes. One formatting tip: If you put a colon at the beginning of a category (like [[:Category:Welland_County,_Canada_West|Welland County, Canada West]]), then the category you enter just works like a normal link, and doesn't make the category you're working on appear as a sub-category of the category you link to.

Those four steps should fix everything I complained about in my original post.

I'd also recommend putting in "Resources" links like I did in the Regional Municipality of Niagara, Ontario category, and finding and sourcing exact dates for transitions (other than the Canada West/Ontario transition on July 1, 1867, and the Upper Canada/Canada West transition on February 10, 1841. We can take those as given.) If you happen to be working in one of the original 19 counties, and work your way back to the Upper Canada era, I have sourced the creation of those counties in the Lincoln County, Upper Canada category, so you can grab the source from there if you want to.

commented Oct 7, 2017 by Greg Slade G2G6 Pilot (685k points)

Answer 8 · 2017-10-20T20:34:02+0000

As an aside, I got kind of distracted by the fact that the original 19 counties in Ontario were named by John Graves Simcoe, the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada. I saw that he wasn't connected to the main tree, so I did some research, and worked out a connection path. (There are probably other, shorter paths, but that was the first one I found.) So if you want to know how you're related to him, you should be able to work out a connection now (as long as you already have a connection to Queen Elizabeth). If you can make more connections and find shorter connection paths, so much the better.

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