Talk:Robert Armour

A fact from Robert Armour appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 2 August 2022 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Robert Armour was entrusted with his children's inheritance from his dead wife, but used it to buy the Montreal Gazette instead?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2022/August. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Robert Armour.

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Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 09:33, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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... that Robert Armour used his children's inheritance from his dead wife to buy the Montreal Gazette? Source: "Using money from the estate of his late wife which was to have been held in trust for their children, he purchased the languishing Montreal Gazette" [1]
- Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/R2K: The Concert

5x expanded by Z1720 (talk). Self-nominated at 02:22, 22 July 2022 (UTC).[reply]

5x expansion done close enough to nomination, QPQ done. The hook is a little confusing. Is the hooky fact that he misappropriated the money instead of holding it as a trustee should? I might say " ... that Robert Armour misappropriated his children's inheritance to buy the Montreal Gazette?" Although that could be a little WP:ORish - just want something that makes clear why this is interesting. I'm a little concerned about how much of the additional content comes from one entry in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography - are there no other good sources about Armour? Also, what is a "general merchants firm"? AleatoryPonderings (talk) 13:48, 23 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@AleatoryPonderings:, I think the source hints at the misappropriation of funds, but I agree that it might be OR to say that in the hook. I'll suggest a couple of hooks below, though other suggestions are welcome:

ALT1: ... that Robert Armour was entrusted with his children's inheritance from his dead wife, but used it to buy the Montreal Gazette instead?
ALT2: ... that Robert Armour bought the Montreal Gazette with his children's inheritance from his dead wife?
ALT3: ... that Robert Armour bought the Montreal Gazette with his children's inheritance from his dead wife, and transferred the newspaper's ownership to his children while he paid back the money?

Regarding the reliance of DCB: Canadian biographies (especially those from Quebec and francophone communities) can be difficult researching because of a lack of English sources. My French is OK, but I hesitate to use them too much because I don't trust my translation skills. I searched journals in WP:LIBRARY, JSTOR, and other sources through my local Canadian library system to find more, and what is in the article is what I found. I'll do a look through some articles (like Bank of Montreal and Montreal Gazette) to see if there's "History of" books that can add information. If anyone finds additional sources, I would appreciate it if you could share and I'll see if they can be added. Re "general merchants firm": the quote from the source is "was a partner in the firm Henderson, Armour and Company, general merchants." I didn't want to change the wording in case it changed the meaning, so that's what I came up with. Z1720 (talk) 16:31, 23 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I like alt1. The beginnings of the book trade in Canada looks like it could have some content; [2] has a brief mention (in French) and [3] has a bit more (in English). Piecing together the various Armours described here, it seems like Robert Sr was associated with at least two firms—R. Armour & Co and Robert Armour & Davis—while his son, Andrew, became one-half of Armour & Ramsay, which (in a serendipitous turn for my interests) published The Canadian Brothers. I think you could say something like "the merchant firm Henderson, Armour and Company"—it's the "general" that's tripping me up. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 16:49, 23 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I looked through the sources mentioned above, and added information where I could. Unfortunately, some of the sources are passing mentions and there is better information in other sources, so it was better not to use them. Thanks for finding these, though, and I've added them to my bank of sources for articles. I also removed "general" per your suggestion, as it was just causing confusion and wasn't worth keeping in. Z1720 (talk) 17:47, 23 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]