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This is a summary of current styles and conventions on Wikipedia for Canadian-related articles, as determined by application of Wikipedia policies, existing practice and current consensus among the users of Wikipedia:Canadian Wikipedians' notice board.
This document may be added to as needed. However, if you believe that a guideline listed here should be changed, then please solicit consensus at Wikipedia talk:Canadian Wikipedians' notice board rather than changing the guideline unilaterally.
Contents
Canadian English
Canadian English dialect and spelling should be used in newly created articles. Talk pages of Canadian topic based articles may be tagged with {{Canadian English}} to indicate this fact. An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation uses the English of that nation.
Places
In article text
In articles that identify a Canadian location, the location should be identified with the format [[City, Province/Territory]], Canada unless the article text or title has already established that the subject is Canadian, e.g., it is not necessary to identify the "Parliament of Canada" as being located in "Ottawa, Ontario, Canada".
Article names
Cities[1] that either have unique names or are unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name can have undisambiguated titles. Canadian settlements that have not been disambiguated with the name of the province are listed here.
Note the following considerations:
- Cities can be moved if they (a) have a unique place name, or (b) are the most important use of their name. A city's relative international fame, or lack thereof, may have some bearing on criterion (b), but it is irrelevant if the city qualifies under criterion (a) — if there's no other Flin Flon anywhere in the world, then it's not valid to cite Flin Flon's lack of international fame as a reason to keep the article at "Flin Flon, Manitoba".
- Towns (unless the town's population is akin to that of a city), villages, neighbourhoods and other smaller settlements must have unique place names to qualify for a page move. At this smaller level, importance is too subjective, too prone to circular "mine's more important than yours because mine's the one I've heard of" debates, to be a viable criterion.
- Population and Google-hit comparisons between cities of the same name may be helpful in determining primary usage, but are not conclusive in isolation. For example, Hamilton and Windsor are larger than their namesakes in other countries, but for historical, political or cultural reasons they are both less internationally significant than at least one of their smaller namesakes, and thus do not qualify as primary usages. Further, Google searching is geolocated, so that users in different areas will get different sets of results — a user in Canada will see results pertaining disproportionately to the Hamilton in Ontario, while a user in Scotland will see results pertaining disproportionately to the Hamilton in South Lanarkshire and one in New Zealand will see results pertaining disproportionately to the Hamilton in Waikato — and thus "which one comes up most often when I search on Google" is not a definitive measure.
- Cities may also lose out as primary usage to non-city topics — for example, Regina and Prince Albert are both the largest cities of those names, but cannot be considered primary topics as both are overridden by their names' royal connotations.
- Per WP:DAB, disambiguation pages are not meant to serve as search indices for all Wikipedia articles that have a word in their titles — they are meant only to steer people to the correct choice among articles that could potentially have the same title. For instance, only articles that could potentially be given the title Toronto are to be evaluated when deciding whether that title should be a dab page or an article about the Canadian city. Topics such as Toronto Transit Commission, University of Toronto or Toronto Public Library, which merely contain the word Toronto in a longer name, are not to be considered when making such a decision, as they cannot validly be moved to the plain title "Toronto". A comprehensive article about the city would already include links to these topics anyway.
- In most cases, an article is a candidate for such a page move if "City" already exists on Wikipedia as a redirect to "City, Province". An article may also be a candidate for such a page move if "City" is a blank redlink. As Wikipedia is a work in progress to which new articles are always being added, the fact that another article doesn't already exist at the plain title does not inherently prove that a name is unique.
Previously, consensus required a page move discussion to take place in all cases before a page could be moved. This is no longer the consensus position, however; straightforward cases may now be moved at any time. However, a discussion should still take place if there's some potential ambiguity as to what the most appropriate name would be, or if there's a legitimate reason to believe that there may be a dispute. If you disagree with the suitability of a page move that has already taken place, however, then do not move the page back to the disambiguated title arbitrarily; rather, start a discussion on the talk page requesting a move back to the comma-province title.
For cities that do not qualify for undisambiguated titles, the correct title format is [[City, Province/Territory]] (the "comma convention"). For the territories, please note that the correct forms are "City, Yukon" (not "City, Yukon Territory") and "City, Nunavut" (not "City, Nunavut Territory"), but "City, Northwest Territories". For the easternmost province, the proper form is "City, Newfoundland and Labrador". Localities that need further disambiguation beyond the province or territory include their county, municipality or parish. (e.g. Armstrong, Thunder Bay District, Ontario, due to the need to disambiguate it from the Armstrong, Ontario in Timiskaming District — as the one in Timiskaming is an incorporated municipality, it gets title precedence.)
A Canadian city's article, however, should never be titled simply "city, Canada" (e.g. "Halifax, Canada"), although it is permissible to create a title of this type as a redirect to the properly titled article. Similarly, a title that uses the province's two-letter postal abbreviation should never be the primary article title, although creating a redirect is permitted. You may also create redirects from documentably common misspellings such as "Winnepeg", "Ottowa", "St. Catherine's" or "Iqualuit", although it is not necessary to anticipate every conceivable misspelling that could possibly arise.
Dedicated city categories should always be named with the same title format as the city's main article. That is, if the article is at Toronto, then use "Toronto" rather than "Toronto, Ontario" in category names, but if it's at Regina, Saskatchewan, then name the related categories in the format "Regina, Saskatchewan" rather than "Regina".
A former geographic name, such as Berlin, Ontario, Fraserville, Quebec, Bytown or York, Upper Canada, should only have a separate article if there's something substantial that can be written about the history of that name — otherwise it should exist only as a redirect to the place's current name.
See also Wikipedia:Canadian wikipedians' notice board/Cities, an ongoing project to review which Canadian cities are likely or unlikely to qualify for page moves.
Neighbourhoods/communities
Article titles for neighbourhoods (and other communities within municipalities)[1] are subject to the same considerations as municipalities, as set out in points 1 to 6 above.
For neighbourhoods that do not qualify for undisambiguated titles, the correct title format is [[Neighbourhood, City]] (not [[Neighbourhood (City)]], as the "bracket convention" is generally reserved for geophysical features such as rivers and mountains). Where a neighbourhood straddles a municipal boundary and is located in two separate municipalities, the correct title format is [[Neighbourhood, Province]] (e.g. Thornhill, Ontario) if disambiguation is needed, regardless of any other consideration listed here.
Where a neighbourhood is recognized as a distinct and valid municipal address by Canada Post (see city lookup here), the title may be at [[Neighbourhood, Province]] rather than [[Neighbourhood, City]] (e.g. East York, Ontario; Dartmouth, Nova Scotia). Such neighbourhoods were usually once autonomous municipalities that have since been annexed or amalgamated, or are semi-autonomous municipalities (e.g. Montreal's boroughs).
A neighbourhood article should never be titled [[Neighbourhood, Canada]], [[Neighbourhood, Former City]], [[Neighbourhood, Upper-tier Municipality]], [[Sub-Neighbourhood, Larger Neighbourhood/area]], or disambiguated with a descriptor (e.g. [[Neighbourhood (Borough)]]).
Ridings
The names of federal ridings (electoral districts) on Wikipedia follow the conventions of Elections Canada. Different regions within the riding are separated using em-dashes, even when normal style would use en-dashes (e.g. Kitchener—Waterloo). The same is true for a region and its sub-region (e.g. Scarborough—Agincourt, but note also Edmonton Centre). Names within each segment are separated with spaces in English, but are often separated with hyphens in French (e.g. St. John's South—Mount Pearl versus Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine). All reasonable uses of hyphens should redirect to the proper name.
Provincial ridings follow the conventions established by the province's own elections agency. Generally, provincial riding names use hyphens to separate two regions or a region and its sub-region, but this is not always true. One exception is Ontario, which bases its provincial riding boundaries on the federal ones and uses the same names. Another exception is Quebec, which uses hyphens within region names (like French ridings at the federal level) and uses en-dashes to separate regions (e.g. Rouyn-Noranda–Témiscamingue).
When a riding is renamed with nearly identical boundaries, it does not need a new article. When the names and boundaries of federal and provincial ridings are almost identical (as in Ontario), they optionally may share an article.
In any case where disambiguation is needed in the title of a riding article, use (electoral district)
. If further disambiguation is needed, use (federal electoral district)
or (provincial electoral district)
, and only if that is not sufficient, add the jurisdiction, such as (Manitoba federal electoral district)
, or (Manitoba provincial electoral district)
. When federal and provincial riding names differ only in punctuation, one or both should include disambiguation in their titles as if their names were identical (e.g. Edmonton—Strathcona and Edmonton-Strathcona (provincial electoral district)). Whenever federal and provincial riding names are similar enough that they could be confused, the two articles should be linked to each other in hatnotes.
The word "riding" may be used in articles, but because that usage is unique to Canada, the first time it is used it should either be wikilinked or include the official term "electoral district" in parentheses.
Article or redirect?
Articles are always subject to WP:RS, WP:NPOV and WP:V, regardless of the topic, and the concept of "inherent notability" for geographic locations on Wikipedia is not an exemption from these content policies. While any named community is valid as a potential topic for a properly referenced article, a community is not automatically entitled to a poor-quality, unreferenced independent article solely on the basis that it exists.
Incorporated municipalities can always be referenced at least to Statistics Canada census data, and accordingly these should always have independent articles. A neighbourhood or community within an incorporated municipality, however, should only have an article independent of its parent municipality when an article can be written that meets the core content policies and guidelines. A community whose article does not meet that threshold (e.g. an unreferenced three or four line stub) should be redirected to its municipality or to an appropriate subpage of the municipality, such as a borough or an omnibus "Neighbourhoods in City" subarticle, until a properly referenced article can be written about the neighbourhood as an independent topic.
Newfoundland and Labrador
Note that Newfoundland is not a Canadian province; it is an island that forms part of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. While a title in the format "Jonesville, Newfoundland" or "Smithburg, Labrador" may be created as a redirect, it is never to be the article's primary title — places in this province that require disambiguation are always to be titled "Place, Newfoundland and Labrador". In a few cases, places may require added disambiguation — in these instances, the preferred format is "Place, Region (e.g. Twillingate, Bonavista, Conception Bay, Placentia Bay, Labrador, etc.), Newfoundland and Labrador", not just "Place, Newfoundland" or "Place, Labrador".
The exception is for articles about events that took place before the province changed its name in 2001, for example, Newfoundland general election, 1999.
Territories
In body text, either "Yukon" or "the Yukon" is acceptable, although "Yukon" without the word the is preferred. However, Yukon-specific article, category and list titles should always use the "Yukon" form without the word the. For the Northwest Territories, however, the preferred form is the Northwest Territories in article text and in the titles of list articles, but geographic articles about the Northwest Territories (e.g. Ulukhaktok, Northwest Territories) do not use the word the in the title.
Population and demographics
Use of census data
Per WP:RS and WP:V, all population figures and demographics must be referenced. Although some supplementary sources may be added, the population figure and demographics from the last official Statistics Canada census is the principal definitive source for population data in articles. Do not cite unofficial population estimates such as the "Welcome to Jonesville" sign at the city limits or the local Chamber of Commerce business directory, do not perform your own statistical analysis to arrive at an original research estimate, and do not round population figures or demographics off.
Official population updates
Between censuses, properly sourced intercensal population and demographic updates from a government source such as Statistics Canada, a provincial statistical agency or a formal municipal census such as those in Alberta, may be provided in addition to the 2011 census data. For example, as long as the figures are reliably sourced, it is acceptable for an article to say that
- In the Canada 2011 Census, the City of Vancouver had a population of 603,502 and Vancouver census metropolitan area (CMA) had a population of 2,313,328. As of 2013, the city had an estimated population of 616,794 and the CMA had an estimated population of 2,420,845.
It is not acceptable to remove the 2011 census figure such that the article's only population figure is an intercensal update — the 2011 figure must remain in the article until the results of the 2016 census are published. This applies to both the prose of the article and its infobox. Other figures are provided as a supplement to the census population figure, not as a replacement. It is also not necessary for an article to provide a continual tally of intercensal updates for every year between federal censuses—only the current year's figure needs to be provided. The updated figures can be provided in the article body, but for the sake of consistency across all municipalities, the infobox's population = field should reflect the federal census figure, while its population_blank1 = field can be used for intercensal updates. List articles, such as List of the 100 largest municipalities in Canada by population, are only to list federal census data, and are not to be updated with off-year estimates or municipal census data regardless of sourcing.
Similarly, unless a) you know how to retrieve individual census tract data from the Statistics Canada site, or b) the place has a documented census population figure by virtue of being a designated place or a recognized population centre (urban area prior to 2011), do not give an unsourced population estimate for a neighbourhood or community within an incorporated municipality. It is preferable for an article to have no population information at all than it is to give an unsourced or poorly sourced figure.
A population figure that is provided without a valid source for the number must be removed from the article.
Metropolitan area vs. city population
Do not confuse the population of a city with the population of its census metropolitan area (CMA) or census agglomeration. While these are both valid statistics to cite in an article, they do not represent the same thing. There is no contradiction between the fact that two million people live in the Vancouver CMA and the fact that only about 600,000 of those live within Vancouver's city limits, and it violates WP:NPOV to assert that the distinction is trivial or irrelevant.
Geography
For a geographical feature (river, mountain, valley, island, etc.) that requires disambiguation, the standard convention is "Name of Feature (Province)". Where that isn't sufficient, then choose a more specific disambiguator, such as by region (e.g. Whitefish River (Northwestern Ontario) vs. Whitefish River (Northeastern Ontario)), by parent river, or by the lake or ocean that the river empties into.
However, it is also acceptable to cover multiple topics in a single article (e.g. Black River (Ontario)) if separate articles would be too stubbish.
Do not disambiguate geographical features unnecessarily. If there is no other significant Lake Nipigon, then the one in Ontario does not need to be at "Lake Nipigon (Ontario)".
When writing articles about communities, describe and categorize them by their correct legal status and definition. That is, if Topicville is not independently incorporated, but is a part of a larger incorporated municipality, then Topicville is to be described as a hamlet, a community, a neighbourhood or a settlement, not a city, a town or a village.
French names
Note that Wikipedia's Use English guideline does not mean that the words in an article title must invariably be in English; it means that the title needs to be what an English speaker would most likely recognize as the usual name of the subject in actual usage. For example, the Parti Québécois does not have a recognized English name — the standard usage by speakers of Canadian English is the untranslated name "Parti Québécois". On the other hand, the Parti Rhinocéros is not usually referred to in English by its official French name, but by the unofficial translation "Rhinoceros Party". In both cases, the correct title on the English Wikipedia is the name that's actually used by speakers of Canadian English to refer to the parties.
When using the French language title for an article instead of an English one, always use the proper French orthography, including accents and hyphens, but create redirects from the appropriate unaccented titles. Similarly, when using the English title, create a redirect from the French one.
Also create redirects from any translated titles that have documented current or historical use. For instance, a translated redirect should be created from Three Rivers, Quebec to Trois-Rivières, as the name "Three Rivers" was historically used in English. Do not, however, create a translated redirect if the translated name is not demonstrably linked to the topic — for example, Rivière-du-Loup has never been referred to in English as "Wolf River" (its historical English name was "Fraserville"), and Notre-Dame-du-Nord has never been referred to as "Our Lady of the North".
Institutions
For many current institutions (hospitals, universities, etc.) in Quebec, standard Canadian English usage is ambiguous and not clear-cut: some English speakers refer to the Université du Québec à Montréal, while others refer to the "University of Quebec at (or in) Montreal", while still others simply use the acronym UQAM (you-kam). In such cases, title the article with the proper name of the institution in French, and create redirects from any English translations that are genuinely likely to be used as alternate search or link terms. However, where there is a single standard and generally accepted English name for the institution, use that rather than the French name (e.g. National Assembly of Quebec rather than "Assemblée nationale du Québec") regardless of whether that name is "official" or not.
Places
For geographic names, again, the current practice is to reflect actual English usage. Specifically, the unaccented names Montreal, Quebec and Quebec City (as opposed to "Montréal" or "Québec") are the majority usages in English. However, usage for most smaller cities and towns in the province is less clear-cut, due in part to the lesser number of documented English references — as with institutions, some places in fact may have several competing "English" forms rather than one standard one. Accordingly, for most municipal names in Quebec apart from those noted above, use the French spelling unless a clear usage consensus in favour of an alternate name (e.g. Montreal West rather than Montréal-Ouest, Mount Royal rather than Mont-Royal, etc.) is seen outside of Wikipedia.
People
People's names should reflect the spelling most correctly used in reference to that specific person, regardless of how the same name might or might not be spelled by a different person. For instance, a French-speaking politician from Quebec whose surname is Lévesque should retain the accent on his article title, even though an English-speaking hockey player from Alberta who has the same surname might drop the accent and spell it as Levesque instead. Each person should be titled with the form of the name actually used by that particular person; do not follow a blanket policy of always keeping or always dropping the accent across all people on Wikipedia who happen to possess that surname.
Artistic works
For films from Quebec that have been released in English Canada or the United States, use the title under which the film was released in the English market, but create a redirect from the original French title. For films that did not garner release under a distinct English title, use the original French title and do not rename the film with an original research translation. Wherever relevant, however, other articles (e.g. the filmographies of actors and directors, Genie Award and Canadian Screen Award articles, lists of Canadian films by year, etc.) should list both the English and French titles, with one appearing in parentheses after the other. Additionally, the redirect from the French title should be categorized in Category:Quebec films by French title, so that users who know the films by those titles rather than the English ones still have the opportunity to find them.
Television series from Quebec, however, are usually not exported to English-speaking markets, and thus usually have no English name. Most television series, thus, should be titled with their original French titles, and not translated into English. However, when such a series has also been seen in English markets under an English title, then use the English title with a redirect from the French.
Works of French literature that have been republished in English translation, similarly, should be named with the title of the English translation, with a redirect from the original French title. Works that have not been republished in an English translation should be named with their original French title.
Historic sites
Properties in Canada can be designated as being of historic, or heritage, value by different levels of government. When one is referring in an article to historic designation(s) applicable to a site, it is important to specify the specific designation(s) and to not confuse or conflate the designations (they are not interchangeable and confer different legal protections). Typically, designations are ordered international/federal/provincial/municipal rather than by date.
In Canada, we usually use the term "designated" to described a property that has been granted official heritage status. Depending on the circumstances, we can refer to a site being designated under a particular statute (e.g. the Aberdeen Pavilion is designated under the Ontario Heritage Act) or designated as a certain type of historic site (e.g. Halifax City Hall is designated a Municipally Registered Property under the Nova Scotia Heritage Property Act). We often avoid the term "listed" since it means different things in different jurisdictions (e.g. in Vancouver "listed" can mean the same thing as "designated", while in Toronto a "listed" property is one that has not been designated, but rather has been identified for potential future designation). We similarly avoid the term "protected", since some designations offer no legal protections, while some others provide limited, or appealable, protections.
Inclusion on the Canadian Register of Historic Places (CRHP) is not the same thing as being designated. The CRHP is merely an online database of sites that have otherwise been designated, and it does not confer any historic status. The CRHP is a fantastic resource, and can be used as a reliable source in citations pertaining to the historic status of a site, but the main body of a Wikipedia article should never refer to a site being listed or included on the CRHP. See the essay at WP:WHATISCRHP for additional information.
Infoboxes
The following conventions apply when adding names to the infobox of a Canadian geographic article:
- Articles should follow the guidelines outlined at WP:CANSTYLE and WP:PLACES. If a particular usage is more common in English, such as "Montreal", then that name should be used throughout the article and in the article's title. In that regard, "Iqaluit" is to be used over "Frobisher Bay", despite the latter's more apparent English origin.
- The infobox name field ("name") should contain the most commonly used place name in English. This field should be at the top, and should be more prominent than entries in the alternative ("other_name"), native ("native_name") and official name ("official_name") fields. These other names should only be added if they are official and verifiable, and should be presented below the primary name, preferably in smaller type. Additionally, an official name in another language should be included only if the short form portion of the name is substantively different from the English name — such as Montreal/Montréal, Mount Royal/Mont-Royal, Greater Sudbury/Grand-Sudbury or Iqaluit/ᐃᖃᓗᐃᑦ. If the name is spelled the same in both languages, such that the only difference between the two forms is the class noun (e.g. "City of"/"Ville de") that each language attaches to it, then do not include the French name as separate information.
- Names should only be prefaced with "City of" in the "official_name" field, and then only if such usage is verifiable. “City of X” should not be used in the primary name field ("name") or other fields.
- The settlement type field should use English-language terminology such as "city", "municipality", "community", or "town". Non-English terms such as "ville" and "communauté" should be avoided.
- Place names should not be translated based on the etymological origin of the name. For example, Montréal should not be translated as "Mount Royal", and "Wetaskiwin" should not be translated as "the hills where peace was made".
- All articles on Canadian cities[1] should use the following model for name fields:
|name = Sample |official_name = City of Sample |settlement_type = City
- All names within the nickname field ("nickname") must be appropriately referenced with reliable sources that discuss how the nickname in question is in wide use by the general population. Merely supplying examples of usage (even in mainstream media) is insufficient. Nicknames used in the infobox should not be derogatory, nor should they only reference one particular demographic aspect of the place in question (e.g. Hongcouver, Tehranto) or one particular event (as such references quickly become dated, e.g. the Megacity). The field should be limited to two or three nicknames; additional nicknames should be provided through a link to the appropriate section in List of city nicknames in Canada or to the "Name of [place]" article (if one exists) (for example, "Town, NewfieJohn, more..."). Slogans used by the municipal government or local tourism authority, although they might be encyclopedic in their own right, are not necessarily nicknames unless they are used colloquially by the general population, and should otherwise not be included in the nickname field (although consideration could be given to including them in a blank parameter of the infobox).
These conventions apply to the use of the nickname field in the article infobox. References to nicknames and slogans in the body of an article or list are subject to Wikipedia's other content policies and guidelines.
Media
Television and radio stations are always titled with their legal Industry Canada-issued call signs rather than their on-air brand names; note that in the Canadian context, the call sign always includes the -FM or -TV or -DT suffix (unlike in the United States, where the suffix is only used when it's necessary to disambiguate multiple stations with the same Wxxx/Kxxx calls). There is no such thing as an -AM suffix in broadcasting — the actual legal call sign of an AM radio station is always just Cxxx. However, because of the frequent need to disambiguate them from FM or TV stations, or other things with the same acronym, Wikipedia uses the format "Cxxx (AM)" when necessary. As many readers are not familiar with this convention, a title in the format Cxxx-AM may be created as a redirect to the Cxxx or Cxxx (AM) title, but is never to be the primary title.
The brand name may, however, be created as a redirect to the call sign (e.g. MIX 99.9), a disambiguation page (e.g. Q107) or an article about the brand itself if it has a substantial history (e.g. EZ Rock, Jack FM, NRJ). The only exceptions to this are where a single radio or television network broadcasts across multiple transmitters with different call signs but no local variances in programming — for example, TVOntario, TFO, Télé-Québec or CKUA Radio Network. In such cases, all of the call signs should be redirects to a single article about the network itself.
A radio station's article may list certain notable programs that air on the station, but per WP:NOT, it is not to list the station's entire broadcast schedule. Only a service whose schedule consists primarily or entirely of programs that are themselves notable enough for independent articles, such as the CBC's national radio networks, may contain a comprehensive schedule — however, programs on local commercial radio stations are rarely notable on their own, and so listing the entire schedule of such a radio station is essentially unencyclopedic advertising. Content that describes a station's programming in greater depth is permitted, however, as long as it is properly sourced and is not just a list of hosts' names.
The call sign of a rebroadcaster should always be a redirect to its programming source, rather than an independent article, unless the call sign has a prior history (e.g. CKNC-TV, CJBR-TV) as an originating station. Note, however, that a few Canadian radio stations retain call signs with extra numeric suffixes that make them appear to be rebroadcasters (e.g. CITE-FM-1), but are in fact licensed as originating stations. Most stations with call signs of this type, however, are true rebroadcasters. If you see an article titled with such a call sign, please verify it before arbitrarily redirecting it to another article.
Newspaper articles should reflect the title as it actually appears on the newspaper's masthead. For example, The Globe and Mail, not "Globe and Mail", but National Post rather than "The National Post". If a masthead title is not unique, include the city's name in parentheses as a disambiguator (e.g. The Guardian (Charlottetown)) rather than titling the article with the unofficial form "Charlottetown Guardian". Do, however, create a redirect at the latter title format. Exclude the word "the" from the masthead title if the city's name is present in the publication's proper name (e.g. Sudbury Star, not "The Sudbury Star"; London Free Press, not "The London Free Press"), but include it if the city's name is not part of the publication's name (as in The Guardian or The Globe and Mail).
A television series with a non-unique name is disambiguated as "(TV series)"; if that isn't sufficient because another country has had a TV series of the same name, the next preferred step is "(Canadian TV series)", then "(year TV series)", then "(province TV series)" if necessary. Disambiguate TV series by network only as a last resort.
People
Whenever possible, people should be at the name by which they are most commonly known rather than an obscure full name. For example, the Trudeau-era Minister of Justice is at Ron Basford, not "Stanley Ronald Basford". However, as with Basford or (Henry) Perrin Beatty, do not assume that the person's usual name is necessarily their first name. In some cases (e.g. Bud Germa, Bush Dumville), their most common name may not even be either of their given names. When in doubt, research or ask WP:CWNB for assistance.
For older or less prominent political figures for whom limited sources are available, such as a person who was a backbench MP in the 1890s, it may be difficult to determine which name the person was best known under. In such cases, it is permissible to use the full name as indicated by the Parliament of Canada's website — but Wikipedia does not have an invariable requirement to precisely title-match that source for all figures. If sources can be found for which name a person actually used in their public life, use that name as the title, not the full name as listed in the parliamentary database. Note that occasionally the parliamentary site will provide this information for you by including an additional given name in parentheses, such as Victor Fredrich (Vic) Althouse — this means that his most common name, and hence his correct Wikipedia title, is "Vic" rather than "Victor" or "Victor Fredrich".
For people with non-unique names, the standard hierarchy for disambiguation is as follows: occupation, Canadian occupation, provincial occupation, affiliative (e.g. political party) occupation. Only disambiguate by obscure biographical details such as the person's place of birth, years of life or not-widely-known middle name as an absolute last resort if none of these other disambiguation criteria are sufficient. Never disambiguate a person by geography alone, such as "John Smith (Canada)" or "Jane McGillicuddy (Prince Edward Island)", and never step further down the hierarchy than is necessary at the present time — as in the case of André Bachand (Progressive Conservative MP) and André Bachand (Liberal MP), base the chosen disambiguator on their current distinction, not on the fact that one of them might (see WP:CRYSTAL) re-enter politics in the future with a different political party. An article can always be moved at a later date if circumstances change.
Titles for articles about people should also not be disambiguated by municipality, instead of country or province, except as an absolute last resort — for instance, this may be necessary if two different cities in the same province have had mayors with the same name, and no middle initial is known for either one.
Do not place honorifics such as Hon., Dr., Fr., PC, MP or OC in the article title.
Politics
Candidates
Wikipedia is not bound by a requirement to give equal time to political candidates, but neither is it prejudiced in favour of or against any political party. Wikipedia is, however, bound by a requirement to demonstrate the notability of article subjects through the verifiable use of reliable sources about the topic.
As a result, Wikipedia consensus has determined that candidates for political office are not inherently notable just for standing as candidates. Per WP:POLITICIAN, a candidate in a federal, provincial or municipal election is only presumed notable in one of three cases:
- the person has already held federal or provincial office (i.e. incumbents, people who have previously held another notable political office, or newly elected political figures on or after election night),
- the person was already notable enough for other reasons to support an independent article even before they entered politics at all,
- If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be a suitable article topic (see Wikipedia:Notability for what this entails). Note that this coverage must actually be about the person themselves — coverage that merely mentions the candidate in passing, such as the table of election results, is not sufficient to justify an independent article.
If a political candidate does not meet either of these requirements, they may be mentioned in a candidates list such as Green Party candidates, 2008 Canadian federal election, but are not inherently entitled to their own separate articles. Note that under Wikipedia's copyright policies, it is not acceptable to cut and paste a politician's campaign literature directly from their website, regardless of whether they have an independent article or an entry in a merged list. Articles on Wikipedia must be original content, written in a neutral point of view and properly referenced to reliable media sources independent of the subject.
Federal or provincial office
People who have held the following roles in Canadian politics are always notable enough for an article on Wikipedia under WP:POLITICIAN, and subjective debate is not allowed about how much achievement is necessary to qualify them as notable beyond the fact of having served in politics:
- Governors General and their viceregal consorts,
- Lieutenant Governors,
- Prime Ministers,
- Federal MPs or Senators,
- Provincial or territorial premiers,
- Members of a provincial, territorial or colonial legislature or council.
Leaders of smaller political parties at the federal or provincial levels are valid as potential article topics regardless of how much success the party has or has not had in politics; however, you must be able to write and source more about them than the mere fact that they led a political party. If you cannot write and source a separate article that provides significantly more information about them than the presence of their name in the "leaders" section of the party's article already does, then they do not merit a separate article and their name should exist as a redirect to the party's article rather than as a standalone biography. The fact that a person may be an interim leader rather than a permanent one has no bearing on whether they qualify for an article or not. Interim leaders have sometimes served for years in that role, and still have the ability to lead the party into an election if one occurs during their interim leadership — so an interim leader is judged by the same inclusion standards as a convention-elected one.
Presidents of political parties, and other officers inside a party's internal organizational structure, are not entitled to an automatic presumption of notability, but may be kept only if a solid and well-sourced article that properly demonstrates their individual notability can be written — or if they have also held one of the above offices before, after or simultaneously with their role inside the party. Generally speaking, federal political party executives are more likely to meet this standard than provincial ones are — however, at either level of government they are not entitled to an automatic presumption of notability, or to an unsourced or poorly sourced stub that does not provide substantially more information than a mention of their name in the party's article would.
Politicians' spouses are notable just for being spouses only if the person is either a Spouse of the Prime Minister or a Viceregal consort. Any other spouse, including the spouse of a provincial premier or a provincial lieutenant governor, qualifies for his or her own independent article only if he or she has separately established notability for his or her own independent accomplishments, and is not entitled to inherit notability from their spouse.
Municipal politics
Politicians at the municipal level are not presumed notable on Wikipedia solely by virtue of holding political office, but are kept or deleted based on a variety of factors.
The determining criterion for mayors at WP:POLITICIAN is that the city[1] is of at least "regional prominence" — this is commonly interpreted in many cases as a minimum population at or near 50,000, although this is not a strict cutoff (for instance, mayors of the territorial capitals are permitted, despite their smaller populations, because their status as divisional capitals increases their prominence.) In practice, well-referenced and reasonably detailed articles on mayors may be kept, and brief stubs that say little more than "Person is the current mayor of City" may be deleted, for any size of community.
City councillors are deemed notable just for being city councillors only in "major metropolitan cities"; in the Canadian context, present consensus has applied this only to Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. This "exemption" exists only for the main municipal governments of those seven cities themselves; it does not extend to smaller municipalities within their metropolitan areas (i.e. Ottawa's status does not extend to Gatineau; Vancouver's status does not extend to Coquitlam; Toronto's status does not extend to Mississauga; and on and so forth.) For any other city besides those seven, a city councillor is permitted an article only if you can make a valid claim of notability for reasons beyond simply holding a city council seat, such as having held a more notable office or being reliably sourceable as having prominence well beyond their local area.
School trustees are not notable just for being school trustees, nor are candidates for any municipal office notable just for being candidates. In any city, people in these classes are permitted articles only if you can provide a stronger claim of notability.
Terms in office
The terms in office listed in a politician's infobox are to reflect the official dates that a person held office, as determined by government policy around how these are denoted. For provincial and federal legislatures in Canada, a newly elected politician's term is normally denoted as beginning on the date of the election or by-election — however, regardless of whether a member retired from office or was defeated on election day their term in office is denoted as ending on the date the writs were dropped to start the election in which they retired or were defeated, not the date of the election itself. The fact that a newly elected MP or MLA may not have been sworn into office is not relevant — since this ceremony is rarely if ever covered as news in its own right except occasionally in the case of a standalone by-election, it is often not even possible to properly source the date on which the swearing-in actually occurred. Thus, the only dates we can use are either the date of the election itself, or the date of their first actual sitting in the legislative house — however, since nobody else holds the office in the interim, and the legislature is sometimes not convened until months after the person has already been sworn in as a member, consensus has settled on using the date of the election.
For Prime Ministers or premiers, however, the situation is slightly different: an outgoing Prime Minister or premier typically continues to hold that office as a caretaker until their successor is sworn in. Despite losing the 2015 federal election on October 19, for example, Stephen Harper remained the incumbent Prime Minister until Justin Trudeau was sworn in on November 4 — Trudeau did not immediately become Prime Minister on the night of October 19, but remained only a Prime Minister designate until November 4. Similarly, Kathleen Wynne did not become Premier of Ontario the moment she won the 2013 Ontario Liberal Party leadership election on January 26, 2013; she was not sworn in until February 11, and Dalton McGuinty was still the premier until that later date. However, note that historically first ministers have resigned, or died in office, before their successor is chosen and sworn in, leaving a vacancy in the office.
References to the Prime Minister or premier must be kept correct at all times, regardless of which article they appear in. Articles such as Canada, List of current national leaders, etc., are not to be changed to reflect the new leader until that person is actually sworn in to office. During the transition period, such articles may list both the incumbent leader and the leader-designate, but the designate must be listed as a designate, and not as the incumbent, until they are sworn in, and the outgoing incumbent is not to be removed until the designate is actually sworn in to replace them.
Individual electoral district articles, however, may be updated anytime after the election results are announced. Technically speaking, every electoral district is actually vacant during the period between the issuance of election writs and the swearing-in of the new government — however, there is very little practical benefit to being strictly technical about this. As long as the dates listed for each member are kept accurate, do not get into a revert war over it.
Links to the relevant elections may be provided in an article's body text, but the dates in an infobox must reflect the official start and end dates of the person's term in office. These are generally provided by the relevant legislature's official website if you need clarification.
At the city council level, however, the outgoing council is not dissolved at any point prior to the election, and in fact the outgoing council may still hold at least one "caretaker" meeting after the election. A newly elected mayor or city councillor, thus, never takes office until the actual date of the first formal meeting of the new council, and may never be prematurely denoted as the incumbent holder of that office in any article.
Law
Legislation
When writing an article about a piece of legislation, whether it has passed into law or not, title the article with the short name of the legislation, and not with a title in the form "Bill #". Per WP:NC-GAL, the short form name ("XYZ Act") is preferred whenever possible, with the long form name ("An Act to XYZ") in place as a redirect to it. (The long form name is permissible as the primary title if a short form name cannot be properly sourced, although this should virtually never be anything more than a temporary measure.) Bill numbers, however, are routinely repeated in different contexts — different legislative bodies, different sessions of the same legislative body, etc. — and thus a bill number is almost never an unambiguous or unique name. When a piece of legislation is commonly referred to by its bill number, a redirect or disambiguation page should be created at "Bill #". When disambiguation is needed in a title, add only the jurisdiction, such as in Residential Tenancies Act (Ontario).
Case law
Names of court cases should generally follow the McGill Guide. In particular:
- case names should be in italic;
- parties should be separated with "v" for decisions given in English or "c" for decisions given in French;
- omit punctuation for common abbreviations in names like "Inc." or "Ltd.";
- for government bodies, write the jurisdiction followed by the body in parentheses
- example: Baker v Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration);
- use parentheses after the name for other descriptions of parties like in "Doe (Estate of)", and for cities like in "Edmonton (City)".
Elections
The naming conventions for election articles are as follows:
- Federal: "Canadian federal election, YYYY"
- Provincial or territorial: "Province/Territory general election, YYYY"
Although not all of the older municipal election articles have been converted yet, WikiProject Canada's current consensus around municipal elections is that they should be organized into one merged article per county or region, with only "independent cities" (i.e. cities that constitute their own independent census divisions, and are not part of any "upper tier" of municipal government) given their own standalone articles. The naming convention for a standalone article is "City (comma-province/territory if necessary) municipal election, YYYY"; merged articles that cover multiple municipalities are named in the format "Jurisdiction (county, province, territory, etc.) municipal elections, YYYY". School board elections are never given their own separate articles, but are discussed only in municipal election articles.
Federal or provincial by-elections do not each get their own separate standalone article, but rather are discussed as subsections of a larger common article such as By-elections to the 41st Canadian Parliament. A municipal by-election, similarly, should be covered as a followup subsection of the previous regular municipal election's article rather than as its own standalone topic.
Currency
For currency values in articles on Canadian topics, the Canadian dollar is considered the default currency where an unprefixed dollar sign is used e.g. $123.45. However, the currency should be identified with the first appearance of a dollar amount for benefit of international readers. This can be specified as $123.45 (CAD) or some other statement indicating that dollar amounts are Canadian. Currencies of other nations in Canadian articles should always be identified, especially the United States dollar, to avoid confusion (e.g. US$45.67).
For Wikipedia articles not specifically on Canadian subjects, the Canadian dollar should be identified either in ISO 4217 format (e.g. CAD 123.45) or as CA$ (e.g. CA$123.45). Avoid use of other available prefixes such as C$ (also the symbol for the Nicaraguan córdoba), CAN$, Can$, Cdn$ or CDN$ since there is no consensus for these. Do not use the abbreviation CAD$ as CAD already means "Canadian dollar". CAD$ would be redundant since that would mean "Canadian dollar dollar"
The {{iso4217|CAD}}
template with "CAD" parameter may be used to format Canadian dollar amounts in ISO 4217 format and provide a link to the Canadian dollar article for reference.
Notes
- ^ a b c d The terms city and neighbourhood are used for ease of reference, but the guideline is not limited to these specific types of settlements. References to city or cities should be read to include all incorporated municipalities, while references to neighbourhood(s) include all communities located within a municipality, including urban, suburban and rural settlements.
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