Talk:HMCS Bonaventure

message: The article says
:She was acquired in the early 1950s by the Canadian Navy, which was looking to replace its aging WW2-vintage light carriers Magnificent and Warrior which were deemed too small and slow for the jet age.
This makes no sense, because Magnificent and Powerful were both Majestic-class carriers. So if one was too small and slow, why wasn't the other? There needs to be a better explanation here. Gdr 16:14, 2004 Nov 16 (UTC)
Gdr, I believe you may have misread that paragraph. I believe what the author was trying to say was that the Magnificant and Warrior were to small and slow compared to the ships that were in exsistance during that time frame, and the Canadian government wanted them replaced with bigger faster ships
[[[Capt.Nero]]
: The Bonaventure was a Majestic-class carrier. And so was the Magnificent, its predecessor; the article says that the Canadian Navy wanted to replace its small, slow Majestic-class aircraft carrier with another small, slow Majestic-class aircraft carrier. It has now been rewritten to take account of the angled flight deck, but it's still confusing. -Ashley Pomeroy 16:45, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It was a modified, souped up Majestic with all the mod-cons: angled flight deck, steam catapult. I've had a brief squiz at the history of the Majestic class while writing up HMAS Melbourne (R21), and have come to the conclusion that it is a class of five unique ships and one pile of scrap. -- saberwyn 09:05, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Majestic class 

message: This vessel is categorized in :Category:Cold War aircraft carriers of Canada.  As such, it should not be also categorized in that category's parent category (:Category:Aircraft carriers of Canada per Wiki's categorization rules.  Josh 17:06, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categorization 

message: This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 06:01, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiProject class rating

message: There is a long running legend that the Bonnie went to the Indian Navy after decommissioning.  The INS also had the INS Vikrant which was also a Majestic Class Air Craft carrier.  Does anyone have any sources that confirm or debunk the transfer of the Bonnie? --Clausewitz01 (talk) 23:50, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Absolutely false. If you read INS Vikrant you'd see that the Vikrant was the uncompleted HMS Hercules which was sold to India and completed as the Vikrant. -MBK004 23:56, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

text: Also the dates don't match up. Vikrant was commissioned in 1961, Bonaventure was decommissioned in 1970. -MBK004 23:58, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

text: I concur, and I've removed the section. Any mention as trivia would of course need to cite verifiable reliable sources. - BilCat (talk) 13:55, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

text: Reverted and edited for cultural/historical significance with the 1968 disbanding of the RCN for the Canadian Forces.  The cite link is still good, not sure why you are having a problem with it, it is the Naval Officers Association of Canadia though archived on archive.org.  from the Wikipedia Forrestall page: "Forrestall was first elected to the Canadian House of Commons in the 1965 federal election as the Progressive Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Halifax, Nova Scotia. He was elected the MP for Dartmouth—Halifax East in the 1968 election, and remained in the House for a total of twenty-three years.Forrestall was first elected to the Canadian House of Commons in the 1965 federal election as the Progressive Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Halifax, Nova Scotia. He was elected the MP for Dartmouth—Halifax East in the 1968 election, and remained in the House for a total of twenty-three years."79.182.20.133 (talk) 17:52, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed it again. You need to read and understand WP:RS. Simply repeating the bios of the MP and Senator prove nothing to back up the reliability of the source or the veracity of the rumor, or prove that they even participated in the claimed incidents. The Naval Officers Association of Canada site was simply repeating a rumor, and the fact that the page is now gone from that site probably says something about it's significance and veracity. If it's significant to the history of the carrier, then find a published reliable source such as mainstream newspaper that says it's an important legend. Even the original Halifax Herald article by reporter Mike Bembridge, assuming there was such an article, would be a good start. - BilCat (talk) 18:45, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I did a quick double paste, it is a talk page not for production, please don't get hung up on that.  The NOAC, an association with a royal charter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_organizations_with_royal_patronage has split web presence to separate provincial websites so the obviously fictional story(I don't think anyone seriously believes this rumor) showing the cultural impact of the disbanding of the RCN is no longer up and must be retrieved from archive, these cites from are to back up that there was a survival rumor not a real swap.79.182.20.133 (talk) 06:21, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: This is more or less an appeal to authority though, the NOAC itself is more of a social group than a historical society.  I agree that nobody believed the story, but I think to qualify as a bona fide rumour worthy of an encyclopedia article we need to have more than one sketchy article.  There are rumours of all kinds of wacky things that really don't deserve mention here, even if they are "real" rumours.  I suggested the deletion in the first place, not so much because the rumour wasn't interesting but because WP seems to be a bit of a collecting ground for wacky conspiracy theories in some of its less popular articles (my personal favourite was the article on Japan's atomic weapons programme where at one point there was an editor claiming that there had been a cover-up and that Japan had actually detonated a small bomb or at least a dirty bomb near the end of WWII).  There was even a book published (I think), but it didn't deserve much coverage in an encyclopedia unless the topic of the article was about the conspiracy theories themselves.  The point of this digression is just that the article itself is the beginning of a good one and HMCS Bonaventure is certainly significant in the history of the RCN as well as the history of naval air power and its relationship to NATO's control of the North Atlantic during the Cold War and the effects of politics and budgets on these requirements.  I'd hate to see the rest of the article cast into doubt because of very poorly sourced trivia.  So for those reasons I really think it would be better for the overall article if it was left out. Gabe (talk) 02:24, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, not to mention the unlikeliness of such a switch happening with or without witnesses or anyone noticing that the Indian carrier suddenly had a lot of weird changes from one year to the next. NiD.29 (talk) 06:38, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rumors of India 

message: This is clearly a fringe conspiracy theory with no proper sources to support it.  It really diminishes the quality of an otherwise interesting article.  The referenced article is no longer online.
Swapping two major warships without it being immediately obvious to observers would be nigh on impossible and would have been widely reported or at least very well known in the naval community during the Cold War.  Particularly so when we're talking about a class of ships as heterogeneous as the Majestics.  They weren't ever close to being identical except on the original uncompleted plans.   Beyond this, the Bonnie was clearly at last partially scrapped since this article itself references the fact that her catapult was salvaged in order to repair the HMAS Melbourne.
An undertaking like replacing an aircraft carrier and sailing it from Japan to India would have left at least one witness willing to speak by now and there would be little motive to cover it up in the first place unless the working theory is that the Indian government simply wanted to steal a Canadian aircraft carrier.  It wasn't until Smiling Buddha that Indo-Canadian relations cooled and I have a hard time imagining that a military sale would have been impossible given that Canada was providing nuclear technology and assistance through the 60s.
Beyond these practical considerations, there are other problems with the sourcing.  Michael Forrestall was not a senator in 1989, according to WP he was appointed to the Senate in 1990 so while I may be splitting hairs, it seems odd to refer to him as such in the context of the Oral History Project except so as to reinforce an appeal to authority.  It's worth noting that no part of this tale is included in the entry for Forrestall himself and I can't find any sources for this story that don't eventually loop back to the same two web pages.
There are no mainstream media or academic sources to support this idea and I don't believe you need to prove the negative on WP, though I'm rusty on the rules these days as I have not been an active editor in a long time.  Furthermore it's unclear if the conspiracy theory even has much currency as a rumour, I've certainly never heard it before prior to this article so I'm not even sure it's worthy of treatment as trivia.
In summary, I propose that this section either be removed completely or, if somebody can show that this theory has some currency, significantly reworking it and reducing to a single sentence or two mentioning this as trivia.  Gabe (talk) 03:22, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I concur, and I've removed the section. Any mention as trivia would of course need to cite verifiable reliable sources. - BilCat (talk) 13:55, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

text: Reverted and edited for cultural/historical significance with the 1968 disbanding of the RCN for the Canadian Forces.  The cite link is still good, not sure why you are having a problem with it, it is the Naval Officers Association of Canadia though archived on archive.org.  from the Wikipedia Forrestall page: "Forrestall was first elected to the Canadian House of Commons in the 1965 federal election as the Progressive Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Halifax, Nova Scotia. He was elected the MP for Dartmouth—Halifax East in the 1968 election, and remained in the House for a total of twenty-three years.Forrestall was first elected to the Canadian House of Commons in the 1965 federal election as the Progressive Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Halifax, Nova Scotia. He was elected the MP for Dartmouth—Halifax East in the 1968 election, and remained in the House for a total of twenty-three years."79.182.20.133 (talk) 17:52, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed it again. You need to read and understand WP:RS. Simply repeating the bios of the MP and Senator prove nothing to back up the reliability of the source or the veracity of the rumor, or prove that they even participated in the claimed incidents. The Naval Officers Association of Canada site was simply repeating a rumor, and the fact that the page is now gone from that site probably says something about it's significance and veracity. If it's significant to the history of the carrier, then find a published reliable source such as mainstream newspaper that says it's an important legend. Even the original Halifax Herald article by reporter Mike Bembridge, assuming there was such an article, would be a good start. - BilCat (talk) 18:45, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I did a quick double paste, it is a talk page not for production, please don't get hung up on that.  The NOAC, an association with a royal charter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_organizations_with_royal_patronage has split web presence to separate provincial websites so the obviously fictional story(I don't think anyone seriously believes this rumor) showing the cultural impact of the disbanding of the RCN is no longer up and must be retrieved from archive, these cites from are to back up that there was a survival rumor not a real swap.79.182.20.133 (talk) 06:21, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: This is more or less an appeal to authority though, the NOAC itself is more of a social group than a historical society.  I agree that nobody believed the story, but I think to qualify as a bona fide rumour worthy of an encyclopedia article we need to have more than one sketchy article.  There are rumours of all kinds of wacky things that really don't deserve mention here, even if they are "real" rumours.  I suggested the deletion in the first place, not so much because the rumour wasn't interesting but because WP seems to be a bit of a collecting ground for wacky conspiracy theories in some of its less popular articles (my personal favourite was the article on Japan's atomic weapons programme where at one point there was an editor claiming that there had been a cover-up and that Japan had actually detonated a small bomb or at least a dirty bomb near the end of WWII).  There was even a book published (I think), but it didn't deserve much coverage in an encyclopedia unless the topic of the article was about the conspiracy theories themselves.  The point of this digression is just that the article itself is the beginning of a good one and HMCS Bonaventure is certainly significant in the history of the RCN as well as the history of naval air power and its relationship to NATO's control of the North Atlantic during the Cold War and the effects of politics and budgets on these requirements.  I'd hate to see the rest of the article cast into doubt because of very poorly sourced trivia.  So for those reasons I really think it would be better for the overall article if it was left out. Gabe (talk) 02:24, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, not to mention the unlikeliness of such a switch happening with or without witnesses or anyone noticing that the Indian carrier suddenly had a lot of weird changes from one year to the next. NiD.29 (talk) 06:38, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Propose deletion