Talk:Harry Bruce (writer)

Question

@GabrielMABruce The article mentions that Harry Bruce interviewed Max Aitken. I take it this is to do with the TV program Beaverbrook: Life and Times of Max Aitken as seen here: [1] but the Globe and Mail article cited doesn't say anything about Aitken. Where is this information from? Seems like something that could be expanded on. MediaKyle (talk) 16:17, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

It says "Lord Beaverbrook" right after "Frank Sobey" in the Globe article, right near the end. More detail is probably in Characters Along the Road. GabrielMABruce (talk) 16:37, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

My apologies, I realized I misread what you wrote. I will look at Characters Along the Road tonight to see if there’s a chapter on Harry meeting Lord Beaverbrook. It could also be in one of his other recent autobiographical works, but less likely. GabrielMABruce (talk) 18:51, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

I looked through the books I got at the library, didn't see anything. Unfortunately I don't think they had Characters Along the Road, I'll have to see if I can find it elsewhere. Let me know if it says anything. MediaKyle (talk) 19:12, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Okay, I found the chapter in Characters Along the Road. Harry did not interview Lord Beaverbrook, he only met him (as far as I can tell). Lord Beaverbrook was the sponsor of the scholarship that Harry and other Atlantic Canadian students won to go to the London School of Economics. An impromptu dinner was held in honour of the students and Lord Beaverbrook. Essentially he does a brief critical biography of Lord Beaverbrook and recounts their very awkward meeting at this dinner, with Harry failing to make conversation. Probably not worth expanding on in the article. GabrielMABruce (talk) 23:31, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Final Steps

@MediaKyle I've finished all the additions I wanted to make before moving the article to the mainspace, I think it's quite well developed. I'd like to know your thoughts on the article as it is presently passing a Good Article review.

I am going to go through our photos of Harry in the near future. A photo of him in action writing/typing would be nice, as well as something from his younger years. I'm 99% sure we have a photo of him in naval uniform. I'm also going to take a photo of 6088 Coburg Road in Halifax, which was the building where Atlantic Insight first operated from. My mum and grandma both remember visiting him at work at that building while he was editor of the magazine. Would be useful for both this article and our future article on Atlantic Insight.

I've sent the biographical portion off to my mum, mostly as a courtesy. I don't think there's anything amiss after all the research and verification. She's going to read it tomorrow and give me any feedback she has. She had a long career in communications as a copy editor and speech writer so she'll probably have input on structure or any grammatical errors. GabrielMABruce (talk) 05:05, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

You're right, the article is looking quite nice, I'm really happy with what we've managed to come up with. We've essentially created the ultimate reference guide to Harry Bruce. I think it will need some more development to the prose before it will pass a GA review though, and the lead will likely need to be expanded per MOS:LEAD. When we do have it to a point where we think it meets the criteria, we can do a co-nomination and I'll reach out to some folks to see if we can get a faster review. Otherwise they tend to sit in the backlog for awhile. After that, we can submit it for peer review, and if no big glaring issues come up in the peer review we'll nominate it for FA. I think it would be cool to nominate this for did you know as soon as we move it to mainspace too, that way the article will at some point get to the main page.

Images will definitely be a big one, although you have to be a bit careful - copyright belongs to the person who took the image, not to the person photographed, in most cases. The most ideal photos to use would be ones that were taken by your family and you can thus release the copyright. Others might be okay depending on the age and whether or not the photographer is known. Might be worth reading over some of the copyright help pages over at the commons for more details. I was particularly hoping for a photo of Harry and Frank Sobey as I mentioned before so that it can be used across multiple articles, any photos of him with others would be a bonus really. Cheers, MediaKyle (talk) 12:59, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

I agree about more work on the prose. I’ll have a look at MOS:LEAD and try and improve the lead section. What facts from the article do you think would be good for DYK? I can’t think of any off the top of my head but I can look through and find something. Any images I upload will be photos taken be family members or that we have the originals of, I don't want an unclear copyright situation that might prevent a pass in a future FA review.

The photo I uploaded a week ago of Charles Tory Bruce on his page, I marked as my own work. In hindsight, knowing what I know now, I wouldn't have done that. I didn't know for sure where the photo was from. After some digging it was most likely taken by a family member in the 40’s/50's at the Bruce homestead, the full photo shows part of the house, which matches an earlier family photo. My grandfather permitted it for use in a 1985 book of Charles's poetry. However, then it was accredited to the NS Public Archives in another work in 1988. I'm going to make a post about this on the talk page for that article. I'll try and get this cleared up.

I’ll let you know if I’ll find one of him with Frank Sobey, or any other notable people. GabrielMABruce (talk) 22:19, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Don't sweat it about the Charles Tory Bruce photo, I just fixed the authorship for you. Due to the age of the photo it shouldn't be a problem, but if you want to get more information the best place would be the copyright village pump I linked earlier. As for DYK, not sure just yet, but we have up to 7 days after publishing to decide. MediaKyle (talk) 23:18, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Sorry about the delay in providing an update. I heard back from my mum regarding the article, she said it was great annd couldn’t find any stand out factual errors. She commented on the lack of information on the almost a decade he and Penny lived in Port Shoreham (besides the mention that Down Home was written there), and that he moved to New Brunswick for about 5 years while editor of the Atlantic Salmon journal. She said she will provide a paper copy with copyedits sometime tonight or tomorrow.

It should be okay to move the article to the mainspace now, I will make the recommended edits when I receive them. I will also try and find some source in his books that I can use to add the info she recommended.

I’m in the living room of the old Bruce homestead today. I pulled down my Charles’, and later Harry’s, 1930 Underwood 5 typewriter (had to do some google searches to find the model and date) from a top shelf where it has been sitting for the better part of 5 decades and dusted it off. It mostly still works, I think I’ll get it restored.

I’m currently looking through our bookshelves and finding some material connected to Harry and Charles that I’d never seen before. We have so much stuff here, I’ve just found a book printed before confederation. I’ll make note of anything relevant for both articles. GabrielMABruce (talk) 21:21, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

What a cool artifact! Do you think you might be able to take a nice picture of the typewriter? That would be a great image to attach to the articles, and since you took it there's no copyright shenanigans. I'll go ahead and move the article now. Cheers, MediaKyle (talk) 21:27, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I can absolutely take a photo of the typewriter, I’ll stage it a bit with Charles and Harry’s office stuff on his old desk. Another artifact I forgot I had: our families Kodak Brownie No.2 Model B, purchased sometime before 1914. It was used to take one of our oldest family photos, of Charles’ grandfather as an old man (he died 1914). The camera still works, an elementary school teacher of mine took some photos with it when I was in grade 4. GabrielMABruce (talk) 21:56, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

We're all set. If you want to do a DYK, we have 7 days to come up with something, although we will get another shot at sending it to DYK after it passes a GA review as well. Wikipedia:Did you know/Scripts and bots has a link to the script and some handy information if you want to try to give it a go. Cheers, MediaKyle (talk) 21:41, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, MediaKyle, on behalf of the Bruce family for mentoring me through this process, and putting so much of your own time into helping create this article. These past 9 months since he died we felt it was important to try and create a Wikipedia article for Harry, and now with your help we’ve finally achieved it. I look forward to working more with you on this and other articles in the future. GabrielMABruce (talk) 22:02, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

My pleasure, I'm happy to have been able to help you. I was surprised when I first noticed that Harry Bruce didn't already have an article - if you take a look at my idea board on my user page, long before this I noted next to Frank Sobey ...easily expanded using the book by Harry Bruce... it happens to be a favourite of mine, I have two copies, I just didn't make the connection at first. I think we can still improve the article quite a bit - I'm going to send it to a couple editors for feedback, and if you'd like maybe we can nominate it for GA soon. Cheers, MediaKyle (talk) 22:14, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Nominating for it for GA would be great after a bit of improvement, I’m interested to hear the recommendations of other editors.

I’ll start trying to think up something for DYK nomination, I’ll make a separate topic on it tonight. GabrielMABruce (talk) 22:26, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

One more thing

Looks like somewhere along the way we lost the citation for the statement "They had three children, Alec Bruce, Annabel Bruce, and Max Bruce.", do you recall which source that was from? MediaKyle (talk) 21:51, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

That’s mentioned in multiple sources, I’ll find one and add it in when I’m home tonight. GabrielMABruce (talk) 21:57, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

This has been added. GabrielMABruce (talk) 15:56, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Perfect, thanks. I forgot to mention that we are going to need to find the news articles to cite for the awards received for the essays and articles, I just put them on there because I know the information is accurate and sources do exist... They're listed on the Atlantic Insight archive page. At some point I'm going to shift the Publications section over to Draft:Harry Bruce bibliography anyways so it won't be a problem for this article after that either way. MediaKyle (talk) 16:02, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

DYK Ideas

@MediaKyle I think tomorrow (later today) is the last day we can submit the article for DYK nomination, so I came up with some ideas:

Did you know . . . that Nova Scotian author Harry Bruce ran a regular column in The Chronicle Herald for nearly 25 years?

Did you know . . . that Nova Scotian author Harry Bruce's final book was at the printer when he died?

Did you know . . . that Nova Scotian author Harry Bruce was the founding editor of Atlantic Insight?

Did you know . . . that Nova Scotian author Harry Bruce hosted a CBC Televsion talk show?

Let me know which you think might be best (or if you have another idea). Any tips you have on DYK nomination would be great. GabrielMABruce (talk) 03:48, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Whatever you think would be most interesting is good with me. There's relevant guidance located at WP:DYKINT. I've been using DYK helper for the nominations I submitted, it's quite handy. You can install it easily by going to Preferences → Gadgets, and selecting the "Install scripts without having to manually edit JavaScript files (documentation)" checkbox, and then an "install script" button will appear on the DYKhelper page. It opens a window with all the necessary fields for you to fill out. Just make sure you format your nomination like the others you see in the nomination pool, i.e...

... that Harry Bruce did something cool?

I've only participated in DYK minimally, if you want you could always try asking other editors there for more input. Cheers, MediaKyle (talk) 12:54, 13 May 2025 (UTC)