Wikipedia talk:WikiProject New Brunswick

Albert County, New Brunswick and counties in general

An editor, @PonapsqisHous:, has fixated on a single usage of the term county to mean the municipalities that were abolished in the 1966 Municipalities Act, despite being pointed toward active legislation and continued use of the term by governments for non-municipal purposes. While a third editor has agreed with me, I think something more formal is needed. Could somebody more senior/level-headed than me please take a look? Relevant uses include:

• Territorial Division Act
• Use as Census divisions.
• Post-1966 use for defining electoral districts.
• Other provincial Acts and regulations that use the counties to define boundaries of non-municipal administrative units such as forestry and highway departments.

Thank you for any help G. Timothy Walton (talk) 00:46, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

@G. Timothy Walton I think making a request at WP:RFC or WP:3O, or even WP:DRN if absolutely necessary, would be a good idea. B3251_(talk) 01:47, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

@B3251 I think this is where I'm supposed to start, but I could easily be wrong given how my mind glazed over reading some of the WP: stuff. G. Timothy Walton (talk) 01:54, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

No objection of course. I just typically bring up discussions in more broad areas since the WikiProject only has a handful of active editors. If a discussion is made to invite non-NB editors for comment, I'm more than happy to participate in it. B3251_(talk) 02:02, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

@G. Timothy Walton is incorrect; no assertion that is a single usage for the term relating to municipal councils made by this editor. I object to editor's manipulation of the issue and hope to join the call for an escalation.

The editor's leaps of argument show a failure to account for their own assertions, and forcefully advance an interpretation. At issue is an apparent refusal to discuss the defect in advancing NB counties as current to readers, as is insisted on by the editor, simply because "they exist", and listing ways in which the county territorial divisions remain in official use, when central to what counties are, and were in NB, is a jurisdiction. Historic jurisdictions with the magistracy. Municipalized jurisdictions. They had a seat of power. A county removed of its jurisdiction is a former county, and it is fine when we mean the territory of the former county when we say "county", but not in an encyclopedic article.

This editor does not "fixate" on single meanings of the term the way the OP fixates on advancing understandings that prevent article readers from accessing the relevant information. Attention is required in the matter of this topic and it's authour's uneven perspective. Resolution will be an important step forward so that editors can move on to the work of updating the many articles relating to local government in New Brunswick left in a state of deferred maintenance. PonapsqisHous (talk) 14:57, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

PonapsqisHous To quote from edit summaries:

The point of the county was not simply to have a territorial divsion, which should be obvious. Dissolution of political and administrative body = former county. vestigal territorial division legislation = skeleton without life

The counties had become municipalities which had been dissolved and what people mean when they say county is the territorial division; but this is an article about the county.

That's a fixation on the county municipity governance structure that was predated by creation of most of the counties and was subject to only two of many Acts of the legislature. It is unsupported by continuing use of the county entity by provincial and federal governments for other purposes. G. Timothy Walton (talk) 16:04, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

@G. Timothy Walton is incorrect and becoming nonsensical above. An assertion of "fixation" is an aggression in place of discussion of the central jurisdictional aspect of a county. The editor is incorrect in calling the county an entity or a body, which they have done without evidence or example as if to simply slip in the language of territorial jurisdictions. Failing logic allows for focus on the municipal governance structure and subsequent use of "county" in legislation, and continuing use as a geographic unit to to mean that "counties still exist". PonapsqisHous (talk) 16:46, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Request for comment (RfC) on definition of county

In 1967, the Government of New Brunswick abolished county municipal governments. Do counties still exist in New Brunswick despite this abolition? (Note: This question has been significantly reworded for clarity.) G. Timothy Walton (talk) 16:37, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

• Comment: Please reconsider editing the question. It is really difficult to understand/follow. Something like, "In 1967, the Government of New Brunswick abolished county municipal governments. Do counties still exist in New Brunswick despite this abolishment?" If you revise like I've suggested, your "No" below would flip to a "Yes". Hwy43 (talk) 21:54, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice; I've reworded it. G. Timothy Walton (talk) 03:09, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Support renaming question per Hwy43. B3251_(talk) 22:29, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

• Comment: The request for comment appears to disregard this editor's assertion there is need for clarification of how a NB county continues to exist, since it does without question. This request maneuvers around discussion of what a county in the province is, compared to what it was. Which is central to the issue of articulating them. The question's author has been installing the terms 'geographic county' and 'geographic parish' in place of 'county' and 'civil parish', respectively, and despite this neglects to discuss or to provide clarification. There are examples of how dis-enabled county territories are handled, but these have not yet been provided for readers/editors.

If a county territory remains without its enabling body, what is it? A geographic county is still indicative of an entity, which is not what NB citizens have in counties. What there is is former county territories, which are non-administrative divisions. The question should be reworded accordingly. PonapsqisHous (talk) 01:31, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Your assertion has been that counties no longer exist. The question is sufficient to address this. G. Timothy Walton (talk) 07:33, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

No it is not not. Statutory authority for Counties are no longer in force. You wish to enliven spent legislation. PonapsqisHous (talk) 23:05, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

You have been repeatedly presented with evidence of continued use of counties by government for non-municipal purposes, yet refuse to accept any possible usage other than one that was ended in 1967. You can call it spent legislation—a meaningless term in New Brunswick—all you want, but your opinion is not supported by evidence. Any further attempts to refine the language to a quantum of denotation will be dismissed as the smokescreen they are. G. Timothy Walton (talk) 03:03, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

• Yes Other legal uses of counties continued after the governments were abolished, including but not limited to: addresses for land registration; boundaries for school districts, forestry regions, highway divisions, and electoral districts; and census divisions. Their continued existence is defined in the Territorial Division Act, which was included in the 1973 Revised Statues and last updated in 1998. While the regional service commission model has supplanted many of its functions, this model did not take effect until 2013. G. Timothy Walton (talk) 16:46, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

  Yes per G. Timothy Walton. B3251_(talk) 12:49, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Obstain The generality of the question would seem to wish us to circumvent the issues around the editor's unlimited use of "county". His assertion is that the geographic areas are bodies/entities separable from the incorporations, which is not true; that they have a local government relevancy today, which is also not true.

It is precisely the county body and local governance relevance which do not exist. The fixing of 'typos' by statute amendment act does not loan any greater currency in the legacy application of the county territorial divisions. Counties can be named and described as in the act, but as such they do not again pertain to the historic jurisdictions as it is implied. PonapsqisHous (talk) 20:42, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

No editor has agreed with your single-possible-use approach to the word, nor has the government of this province; the counties existed long before their governments became incorporated entities. G. Timothy Walton (talk) 21:20, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Comment Ignorance about the matter and historic counties shown in statements like "the counties existed long before their governments became incorporated entities" seem to be what are in the way of sufficiently improving articles, which editors collaborate on to make encyclopedic. Also, insistent falsely attributing arguments and statments to editors is out of line with the collaborative approach asked of editors here, if I am not mistaken.

When information becomes a threat, it is clear it is a matter of challenged authority. I would like to keep a modicum of accessibility for editors, not to mention readers. PonapsqisHous (talk) 22:21, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Any information counter to your argument that the counties are synonymous with the county municipalities has been dismissed by you. Ganong mentions the letters patent that established each of the first eight counties before the province passed its first acts, including Northumberland. Northumberland wasn't incorporated ("constituted a body corporate and politic") until October 1875; it was 1877 before the last of the counties was incorporated (An Act relating to Municipalities, 40° Victoriæ if you're intested in looking it up). But mentioning this is apparently "ignorance about the matter and historic counties". G. Timothy Walton (talk) 22:49, 5 December 2024 (UTC)