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User:Bobanny

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Bobanny (talk | contribs) at 10:11, 22 October 2006. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
File:VanPan.jpg
Van Pan

Hi

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I'm a thirty-something male based in Vancouver and a parent of a 9.5 year old daughter. I've been tampering with Wikipedia since August, 2006, mainly in the area of Vancouver/Labour history. I find it's a good exercise to write concisely and encyclopaedically, and synthesizing secondary material for a short article is a good way to learn more about that subject in short order, as well as a good skill to hone. If you look at my contributions, you'll see that concision isn't always my stong suit, so the practice is good for me. I find it hard to keep "original research" out sometimes in topics that I've done a lot of research on or haver personal experience with. I find this is also beneficial for learning to write from a more distanced perspective. My initial interest in editing for Wikipedia came from noticing that articles here often come up on the first results page in a google search. That's pretty impressive for a volunteer user-produced information source. True, there is a lot of crap on here, but as with anything on the internet, you can usually tell what's reliable or not and should always comparison shop when looking for the truth. I often find the talk pages more revealing that the actual article because you'll see right away what debates have been provoked by the subject and what the main interpretations are.

If you find this page boring, try clicking here for some entertaining Wikipedia articles. You'll find links to articles such as The Smurfs and communism and the Forest swastika, a recently discovered forest planted by Nazis, only visible from the air as a giant yellow swastika when the leave change colour in autumn. There's also lists of things like inventors killed by their own inventions. Tragic, I know, but still funny.

The Headington Shark, erected in Oxford to commemorate the 41st anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.

Historical interests

Outside of Wiki, I'm currently working on a history of policing in interwar Vancouver. Some other things I'd like to research and write about:

  • The history of Hogan's Alley in Vancouver, and its demise. It's a little known neighbourhood with hardly anything published about, but its close to where I live, and I think it would be a fascinating subject. It was a neighbourhood based around an alley way, sort of wedged between Strathcona and Chinatown. It was destroyed late 1960s, early 1970s when the current Georgia Viaduct was built. Prior to that, it was the only neighbourhood with a significant concentration of Blacks in Vancouver. In the early decades of the 20th century it was pretty much a red light district, and apparently had a pretty lively nightlife. Not much else is known about it, but I'm guessing an old newspaper search would turn up some interesting stuff that would say something about the history of this city.
  • The history of Stanley Park. I did some digging into this for a university course, and its something I'd like to go back to a take a little further. The environmental history of the Park is fascinating, for me not in itself, but in its relationship to the city. It's never been pristine during Vancouver's existence, yet people have gone to great pains and expense trying to create that illusion and mythology. Jean Barman's written on settlements in the park, but no one's done an environmental history as far as I know. Mike Steele's The Stanley Park Explorer is filled with interesting historical tid bits, but its basically a tour guide presented as neat-o trivia. A more coherent narrative would be fun to do. Two events that stand out is a snow storm that caused a lot of damage in the winter of 1935-1936 and Typhoon Frieda in the early 1960s. The latter is why there's so many huge decaying tree stumps around the miniature railroad and Beaver Lake with new trees growing out of them.
  • History of Fascism in Vancouver. I came across a collection in the Vancouver Archives that is terribly interesting about the far right during the 1930s. According to the existing Canadian historiography, Outside of Montreal and Winnipeg, there wasn't a fascist movement in Canada. There's a great story behind that that some day needs to be told, particularly why Vancouver's fascist movement is so obscure.
  • The 1918 and 1919 General Strikes in Vancouver I would like to at least read more about, if not write something up.

Contributions

Below is a list of articles I've written or have made significant contributions to, and stubs I might eventually get to.

Articles and stubs I've started, including stubs turned into articles

  1. Arthur "Slim" Evans
  2. Asiatic Exclusion League
  3. Battle of Ballantyne Pier
  4. British Columbia Maritime Employers' Association
  5. Carnegie Community Centre (stub)
  6. Deadman's Island (Vancouver)
  7. Hastings Mill (stub)
  8. J. S. Mathews
  9. L. D. Taylor
  10. Lord Strathcona Elementary School
  11. Plaza of Nations
  12. RMS Empress of Japan
  13. Relief Camp Workers' Union
  14. Sam Kee Building
  15. Tom MacInnes
  16. Vancouver Museum (stub)
  17. Vancouver Special
  18. Vancouver and District Waterfront Workers' Association (stub)
  19. Victor Odlum (stub)
  20. William Wasbrough Foster
Moving right along...
  1. Chinatown (Vancouver)
  2. Coalition of Progressive Electors
  3. Downtown Eastside
  4. Emily Murphy
  5. Estevan, Saskatchewan
  6. Gerry McGeer
  7. History of Vancouver
  8. Hogan's Alley (Vancouver)
  9. Industrial Workers of the World
  10. Marine Building
  11. Non-Partisan Association
  12. On-to-Ottawa Trek
  13. Port of Vancouver
  14. Royal Canadian Mounted Police
  15. Sam Kee Building
  16. Siwash Rock
  17. South Main
  18. Stanley Park
  19. Strathcona (Vancouver)

Articles I plan on mucking with or creating, someday

Police/paramilitary related:

  1. Company police (create out the current mess at Security police)
  2. Interpol (maybe a separate article on international police cooperation)
  3. Legion of Frontiersmen
  4. Royal Canadian Mounted Police (create separate history page)
  5. Special constable (create by rejigging Special constabulary and Special police)
  6. Toronto Police Service
  7. Vancouver Police Department (create separate history page)

History of Vancouver, places, and neighbourhoods

  1. History of Vancouver, 1886-1945 (expand out of History of Vancouver)
  2. Chinatown (maybe a separate History of Chinatown page?)
  3. Commercial Drive
  4. Downtown Eastside
  5. East Vancouver
  6. False Creek
  7. Grandview-Woodland
  8. Kitsilano
  9. Lumbermen's Building (509 Richards @ Pender)
  10. Mount Pleasant
  11. Vancouver Labour Temple (411 Dunsmuir [411 Senior's Centre])
  12. Yaletown

Other:

  1. Citizens' League (including variants: Vancouver CL, CL of BC, CL of Canada, Industrial Association)
  2. Frank Rogers (not the one this links to)
  3. Ray Cam Community Centre (incl. ray cam mothers protest/history)

Photos to take

  • Carnegie Centre
  • Chinatown
  • Deadman's Island
  • Vancouver and Victoria Stevedoring Co. (c. 1922, 300 Alexander)
  • other interesting buildings and neighbourhood shots.

Images I've uploaded

Port of Vancouver panorama.
This user is a member of WikiProject Vancouver

The project is an attempt to better organize information in articles related to Vancouver and the Greater Vancouver Regional District. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.

This person is interested in Organized Labour.
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