Talk:List of Canadian Victoria Cross recipients

Canadians won more VC's per capita

The last line states that "According to historian Arthur Bishop, between the inception of the Victoria Cross in 1856 until the end of the Second World War in 1945 Canadians won more VC's per capita than any other nationality in the British Empire." The claim of 94 Canadian recipients (only 78 of whom were members of the Canadian forces and one from Newfoundland) is nearly equal to the 92 Australian recipients until 1945 (of whom 87 were members of the Australian forces). Since Canada’s population has always been well in excess of 5% higher than the Australian population that negates the contention. I am not suggesting the Australian won more VCs per capita just that it was awarded more per capita than Canada.

The 94 figure is approprate in Canada but this is an international project. If I am writing in Australia I say 96 Australians were awarded the VC including five Australians serving with South African and British forces. If I am writing for an international audience I say 91 members of the Australian forces were awarded the VC but that Australia also counts as Australian five others who served with South African and British forces. Anthony Staunton (talk) 11:17, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

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Anthony, qualifying the statement detailed above:

Bishop's criteria for inclusion as 'Canadian VC Recipients' are: "

1. Was the individual a member of the Canadian forces at the time of the deed meriting the VC"
2. Was the person born in Canada?
3. Did the person reside in Canada at the outbreak of war?
4. If not born in Canada, did the person establish a permanent residence in Canada?"

by these standards he counts 95 'Canadian' VC winners between 1854 & 1945

Whiskymack (talk) 22:55, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

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Anthony was referring to the statement "Canadians won more VC's per capita than any other nationality in the British Empire" as being inaccurate. I agree with him. I doubt Bishop's criteria would have made much difference if we were wholly referring to per capita of population? The figures below are not precise, but help reinforce his comment. New Zealand Population 1900: 800,000 New Zealand Population 1918: 1,150,000 New Zealand Population 1945: 1,727,800 NZ VC’S: 25 Australian Population 1900: 3,849,368 Australian Population 1918: 5,029,403 Australian Population 1945: 7,391,692 AUS VC’S: 92 Canadian Population 1900: 5,310,000 Canadian Population 1918: 8,148,000 Canadian Population 1945: 12,072,000 CAN VC’S: 96 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bcpalin (talk • contribs) 06:50, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

I've removed that line.

See population data from Wolfram Alpha: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+australia+vs+canada — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.194.167.183 (talk) 02:50, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Best not to guess - get refs - I think it should be back ,,easily references - per capita does not mean the most awarded!

• • Doug Lennox (30 August 2009). Now You Know Canada's Heroes. Dundurn Press Ltd. p. 19. ISBN 978-1-55488-444-5.

I think that book is just wrong. I know there is no original research rule that we might be pushing here but if we just go by 1945 populations

Canada 95 VCs for 12.07 million = 7.85 VCs per million.

Australia 87 VCs for 7.3 million = 11.77 VCs per million

That 87 is for Australians in Australian armed forces (91 minus 4 for those received in Vietnam). The 95 for Canada is his figure in the book. This article states 94 I believe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Ricketts isn't included in this article. A similar calculation using other population figures would probably bring out a similar result (judging by that wolfram alpha graph).

I can't see how the author came to the conclusion, it isn't supported in by the numbers and it shouldn't be included in this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shniken (talk • contribs) 03:14, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Province of Origin

So I started a province of origin bracket because I thought it was necessary and informative to break up the V.C. winner's by province. However this list is somewhat difficult to breakup in this way as many of the winners were British citizens who moved to Canada or immigrants from yet another country. In addition many of the winners moved from province to province and didn't have one fixed province. So I came up with some quick arbitrary standards which are open to discussion. The reason I chose to list only one instead of multiple provinces was primarily for the purpose of sorting. Anyways here were the guidelines that I followed.

1. The first and easiest was were the born in Canada? If so list the province of birth, however the exception here was that if they moved to another province at an early age I listed the longest province of residence prior to enlistment.

2. Did they move here from another country? Similar to above I tried to pick the province with the longest listed residence prior to enlistment

3. Were they a citizen who moved here from another country solely to join and fight in the wars, but moved back to their home countries after the war? I listed them as n/a

Anything that shows blank was somewhere that there simply wasn't enough information I kind find to make a definitive statement on their "home" province.

Hope this helps, these still need to get referenced which I will try to work on but will last as a longer project. One of the other options I had other then to list all of the original provinces here was to make separate lists that listed all Canadian, V.C. winners by province of any residence whatsoever. I though that could be even more arbitrary so I have gone with this for now.

~Cheers Krazytea(talk) 04:42, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Following your own argument above, it is very hard to distinguish what defines the "province of origin." There is something of an arbitrary standard in defining these in this list and there are still unexplained gaps. Take Roland Bourke for example, he was born in London emigrated to British Columbia, was rejected by Canadian forces so moved back to England to join the reserves. How do you describe his province of origin, at the time of his VC, as British Columbia? On a personal level, I don't see the particular usefulness of this in the list given its arbitrary nature.

Ignoring my doubts about whether they should be included or not, on a different note, this list is a featured list which means it meets certain standards surrounding the content and the format of that content and it needs to maintain these.

• All of the references need to be properly formatted including all of the pertinent information, such as publisher, date, retrieval date, title, link.
• They also need to be "high-quality" sources so self-published and non-reliable sources are out eg. gocruickshanks.com. The best option to sort this out would be to link the VAC or the national defence site for each individual :*The refs should go in the notes column, not in the Province column.

This should have really been organised and developed beforehand in a sandbox and refined there before bringing into the mainspace. I appreciate the effort, I really do, and I truly understand how much effort goes into gathering and introducing this data but there are a few shortcomings that need to be dealt with and should have been dealt with before "going live." Regards,Woody (talk) 11:24, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

96 awards on list but official record counts 99

According to veterans Canada: http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/medals-decorations/orders-decorations/canadian-victoria-cross-recipients There were 99 awards of the Victoria Cross prior to its replacement with the Canadian Victoria Cross and none after. Therefore why are only 96 listed on this page?

As an example prior to 1900 there is only four listed here but five in the official tecord, thus excluding ( DE MONTMORENCY, Raymond Harvey Lodge Joseph ) which adds the 5th, I leave it as an excecise of the observant to spot the other missing two. Ramriot (talk) 15:12, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps Timothy O'Hea who won the VC in Canada although he was not Canadian

Perhaps the Newfoundlander(s) that were consciously left out (although un-necessarily) due to their province's late joining the Confederation. I say un-necessarily because Douglas is included, and he won the VC prior to Confederation, as are the receipients for Crimean War activity although there was not the Dominion of Canada at that time - their VCs were won prior to Confederation, same as the Newfoundlanders'. History books of Canada seldom start on July 1, 1867, usually they encompass earlier history of the place that would be Canada, thus Newfoundland pre-1949 is part of Canadian history and those of them who won the VCs should be recognized as Canadian recipients of the VC.