Famous Canadian Aviators Wiki Pages

[Colonel Sanders]

It was pointed out to me today that Fern Villeneuve,
Canada's "Bob Hoover", does not have a wiki page.

Horrors. So, I created this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fern_Villeneuve

It's pretty minimalistic. My wiki skills are non-existent.
I'm just a country doctor, Jim.

If anyone here would care to improve the presentation
or content, please edit the page and do so! For example,
there is not one word about his years of work with the
Air Cadets, a terrible omission on my part.

Anyways. It annoys me sometimes that we Canadians
are so low-key. I try to make up for the rest of you,
but ...

EDIT: to change topic title

[Shiny Side Up]

I would have modified it myself but I defer to your better knowledge on the subject. Incidentally there were a lot of red links on that museum page that we should have a project here to have the pages completed for posterity's sake.

[Colonel Sanders]

there were a lot of red links on that museum page
that we should have a project here to have the pages
completed for posterity's sake

I think SSU is referring to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_A ... #Inductees

If the name is blue (eg Fern V) there is a linked wiki page for that person.

But if the name is red (too many to list) then there is no wiki page for
that person, whom almost certainly deserves one because of their
induction into the Canadian Aviation Hall of Fame.

Additionally, I can imagine that many of the AvCan people would have
valuable information to contribute about these noteworthy Canadians.

We need to figure out some way to organize this ... creating crappy
wiki pages (like I did) is not difficult!

I just noticed Neil J Armstrong (NOT the astronaut, the Canadian
pilot who has a COPA scholarship named after them) doesn't
have a wiki page!

Canadians are just too unassuming.

SSU, I did Fern, you do Neil. Start with this content:

http://www.copanational.org/NAbackground.cfm

which you can use as a (required) inline ref as follows:

<ref>http://www.copanational.org/NAbackground.cfm</ref>

No XML boy, am I!

[YYZSaabGuy]

Embarassed to admit I never heard of Villeneuve but I sure have now. Quite a career. Good on you CS for taking the lead on this.

[Shiny Side Up]

SSU, I did Fern, you do Neil. Start with this content:

I'll take on that task, I'll try to get to it in the next day or so.

Incidentally maybe we can get volunteers for the other names?

Here's the list.

William Keir Carr *
Walter Chmela *
Larry Denman Clarke
Thomas Charles Cooke
Thomas Paul Michael "Mike" Cooper-Slipper
Paul Yettvart Davoud
Stanley Matthew Deluce
Robert Leslie Dodds
Vera Elise Strodl Dowling
John Talbot Dyment
Maurice D’arcy Allen Fallow
George Harold Finland
Norman Gladstone Forester
Robert Howden Fowler
Walter Warren Fowler
Thomas Payne Fox
James Henry Foy
Douglas Cowan Fraser
Alexander Beaufort Fraser Fraser-Harris
Elmer Garfield Fullerton
Philip Clarke Garratt
Walter Edwin Gilbert
Roy Stanley Grandy
Keith Rogers Greenaway
Seth Walter Grossmith
Harry Halton
Paul Albert Hartman
Henry Winston Hayter
Robert Thomas Heaslip
Richard Duncan Hiscocks
Fred Harvey Hitchins
Basil Deacon Hobbs
Herbert Hopson
Frederick William Hotson
Albert Edward Hutt
William Gladstone Jewitt
Frederick Ronald Kearns
Harry Marlowe Kennedy
Leslie George Kerr
William George Melvin Knox
Reginald John Lane
Thomas Albert Lawrence
Wilson George Leach
Zebulon Lewis Leigh*
Alexander John Lilly
George Bayliss Lothian*
Joseph Henry Lucas
William Floyd Sheldon Luck
Charles Horace Luttman
Gerald Lester MacInnis
Merlin William MacLeod
Kenneth Cecil Maclure
Kenneth Berry Marsden
William Sidney May
Fred Robert Gordon McCall*
Donald Stuart McClure
Eric Charles McConachie
Robert Billo McIntyre
Alexander Daniel McLean
Walter McDonald McLeish
Stanley Ransom McMillan
Archibald Major McMullen
Robert Wendell "Buck" McNair *
Bert William Mead
Almer Leonard Michaud
Robert Bruce Middleton
Jack Moar
Angus Curran Morrison
Raymond Alan Munro
George Arthur Neal
William Francis Newson
John Ender "Jock" Palmer*
Hubert Pasmore
Ronald Peel
George Hector Reid Phillips
Welland Wilfred Phipps
John Lawrence Plant
Peter Geoffrey Powell
Robert Cheetham Randall
Bernard Anderson Rawson
John Hardisty Reilly
Moretta Fenton Reilly
Stanley George Reynolds
Robert "Dick" Richmond
Donald Howard Rogers
James Lindsay Rood
Frank Walter Russell
William John Sanderson
Kenneth Foster Saunders
Rayne Dennis Schultz
Eugene Howard Schweitzer
Herbert Walter Seagrim
Murton Adams Seymour
John Gavin Showler
Thomas William Siers
Arthur George Sims
John Charles Sloan
Elvie Lawrence Smith
Frank Ernest William Smith
Ernest Walter Stedman
Alexander Mackay Sutherland
Harold Rex Terpening
Samuel Anthony Tomlinson
Leonard John Tripp
Percival Stanley Turner
Joseph Pierre Romeo Vachon
Archie Vanhee
Donald Netterville Watson
Roland Burgess West
Robert Allan White
Arthur Haliburton Wilson
John Armitstead Wilson
Jack Fraser Woodman
Walter "Babe" Woollett *
Jerauld George Wright
Dennis Kestell Yorath
Michael Zubko

edit: 1. * beside aviators with work done on their pages.

[Shiny Side Up]

Update: That taxed my cutting and pasting skills, I only added a bit more, but if I do more research I can add some.

[Colonel Sanders]

George Bayliss Lothian

I'll do this guy - his son is a good friend of mine. I just
couldn't resist referencing him when I wrote a letter of
application for a type rating for his son, but he made me
take it out!

EDIT: just did a quickie. It's being reviewed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_ ... ss_Lothian

Like the part about Howard Hughes?

[shitdisturber]

I wrote one on Buck McNair, also being reviewed. Just in case I did it wrong, I saved a word copy if someone more Wiki adept can figure out how to make it work.

[Colonel Sanders]

Thx SD! I'll see if I can do another one today.

Any other takers? C'mon, it's not that hard to create and edit
wiki pages. It can come in handy - just last year, I wanted to
go hunting and get some ivory tusks, so I took african elephants
off the endangered species list on the wiki and added a zero to
their population.

[Shiny Side Up]

Incidentally the easiest way to make a wiki page and get all the format in is find a page that is already finished, go into edit it, copy the page, then go back and paste into the new page that you're trying to create. That gets all the little box stuff in the top right corner of the page and keeps all the stuff on persons in the regular order. Then all you got to do is change the personal info on the page.

[Shiny Side Up]

Just started the one for Jock Palmer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ender ... %22_Palmer

Not complete yet, need to do some more research, but its a start.

[Colonel Sanders]

Thx SSU - the hardest part is getting a page started. Once
it's there, it's easy to edit it.

[Beefitarian]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_ ... ss_Lothian

Like the part about Howard Hughes?

Some wiki admin didn't like you saying Howie needed a bath and was crabby. Like there isn't ample evidence. I also found it kind of wierd that they have a page on "Trans-Canada Air Lines" yet wanted a citation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Canada_Air_Lines

[Colonel Sanders]

I will fix. I have GB Lothian's biography (a book)
which I will reference.

How about picking an aviator and doing a page, Beef?

[Shiny Side Up]

Doing research on Palmer one finds that there have been a staggering ammount of start up air businesses in the old days, usually ending when they wrecked the airplanes. Its amazing anyone bothered sticking with it.

[Colonel Sanders]

Its amazing anyone bothered sticking with it

If you ask any current airline executive, they will probably tell you the same thing

[Beefitarian]

How about picking an aviator and doing a page, Beef?

Will an engineer do? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_ ... 2_Richmond

[Colonel Sanders]

That's great! I should mention that the wiki-cops are going to
slap your pee-pee, because they want inline references for
facts. They look like this:

2+2=4 <ref>Book Of Arithmetic, ISBN 0-03-0223, pp 3-4</ref>

Also, you can spruce up your text with internal wiki-links. For
example, if you have

Royal Canadian Air Force

in your text you can do this

[[Royal Canadian Air Force]]

with double square brackets, which will turn it into a URL which
you can click on, and hop into the wikipage for the RCAF.

Note that the wiki does NOT approve of inline links to non-wiki
webpages. Those are the inline references, which are automatically
numbered for you and listed below.

Got it? NB I didn't make up this insanity, I just drink the [[Kool-Aid]].

As I tell my instructor candidates our motto is: "We eat this sh1t with a spoon!"
I'm considering having bumper stickers made up.

EDIT - I couldn't help myself - I editted your page and added some
links. Some of them even work.

[Shiny Side Up]

Did some fixing so that Fred McCall's page now has the correct Wikilink. I'm going to edit the list I posted above to put a * beside each inductee who we do work on their page.

edit: Did up a page for Basil Hobbs.

[Beefitarian]

No worries. It's open source and anyone can attempt an edit. I am undecided about their new direction. I like that they are making an effort to cut back on me going on one of their pages and making it funny. I don't love the way they question your statement because they don't like your source.

[bmc]

George Bayliss Lothian

I'll do this guy - his son is a good friend of mine. I just
couldn't resist referencing him when I wrote a letter of
application for a type rating for his son, but he made me
take it out!

Next time you are talking to Bruce, say hello from a former Nordair base manager. He'll figure out the name by the initials. I knew him when he was driving the FH-227.

[Beefitarian]

EDIT - I couldn't help myself - I editted your page and added some
links. Some of them even work.

Looks better with the links. I fixed the Pratt one because it went to the American page instead of Pratt & Whitney Canada. I would have made the inline references to begin with if I knew how. I fixed them.

[Colonel Sanders]

Next time you are talking to Bruce, say hello from a former Nordair base manager

Will do! He is retired now and living in Perth. He helps us fly the twin engine stuff at CYSH these days. btw, how old are you?! Bruce is no spring chicken ...

Looks better with the links

Yup, spruces it up. Note that you can link in two different ways.

[[kool-aid]] both displays and takes you to the wiki kool-aid page. But
sometimes you want to display something other than the wiki page name.

For example.

[[kool-aid | Jim Jones Go-Juice]]

will display Jim Jones Go-Juice but when you click on it, will
take you to the internal wiki page for kool-aid.

Did up a page for Basil Hobbs

You are a machine, SSU!

[Beefitarian]

I'm down with a jim jones discussion thread where we talk about people constantly confusing kool aid with [[flavor-aid]]

SSU, I did Fern, you do Neil. Start with this content:

I'll take on that task, I'll try to get to it in the next day or so.

CorenSearchBot is whining about too much copy paste. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_J_Armstrong

Here's an edited version you can copy and paste. I moved his notible achievements to their own section and changed the wording hopefully without altering the content.

Early years

Mr. Armstrong born at Alvinston, Ontario Canada, on April 15, 1920 and educated in Alvinston and Petrolia, Ontario. After graduation he joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, being stationed in Manitoba, Ontario and Saskatchewan.

Aviation career

Neil joined the [[Royal Canadian Air Force]] in 1943. After graduation from pilot training he became a flying instructor serving in that role until an honourable discharge in 1945.

Neil attended the University of Toronto in 1946, earning an degree in Engineering with a major in Geology and Geophysics in 1949.

From 1953 to 1969 he was associated with Spartan Air Services in Ottawa and became the first known helicopter pilot geologist. He worked with the Geological Survey of Canada on Operations Baker and Thelon in the Barren Lands to help map a 100,000 square mile area. During this time he flew a Bell 47, Registration marks CF-FCL. In some cases Neil's helicopter would be the first such machine some of the resident inuit had ever saw.<ref>www.peregrinehelicopters.com,/ref>

He was named to [[Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame]] in 1973.

Neil flew the Atlantic Ocean non-stop with his friend Max Conrad in a [[Piper Twin-Comanche]], from Newfoundland to Ireland in 1961.

1963 he shared pilot/navigator duties with Roy Moore, flying a [[Piper Aztec]] non-stop across the Pacific Ocean, from California to Hawaii.

In 1964, Neil was elected president of the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association, a position he held for three years. He also wrote a regular column in COPA's Canadian Flight magazine, from 1972 to 1995. <ref>http://www.copanational.org/NAbackground.cfm</ref>

Check and fix my spelling. That should placate the bot.

[Colonel Sanders]

Oh yeah. That's another thing the wiki doesn't like - copy
and paste. I might suggest you google some more information
about him and merge it together to avoid p1ssing off one
of wiki's many bots.

PS nice page, SSU:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_Deacon_Hobbs