Talk:Canadian totem

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. Track your hook after promotion. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Darth Stabro (talk) 12:00, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

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Canadian totem pole

• ... that one of the original carvers of a totem pole (detail pictured) described efforts to restore it as akin to "sending a carpenter to repaint the Mona Lisa"?

• Source: Smart, Amy (2014-04-06). "High anxiety: Totem angst, from Victoria to Mexico City". Times Colonist. Archived from the original on 2026-05-19. Retrieved 2026-05-19. “It’s total disrespect. Not just to me, but to my grandfather, who was one of the greatest artists of his time,” he said. “It’s like sending a carpenter to repaint the Mona Lisa.”

• • ALT1: ... that the one of the last major projects carver Mungo Martin worked on before his death is in a Mexican park? Source: ibid,
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Sarah Fischer (soprano)
  • Comment: ... okay, so I know in my heart that ALT1 fails WP:DYKINT for a general audience, but it's cool! Re:image, Mexico has freedom of panorama for works in public places. This totem pole is in a public park.

Moved to mainspace by GreenLipstickLesbian (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 16 past nominations.

GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 06:13, 20 May 2026 (UTC).

• I can review this! :D (Spectacular name btw) Finnfrog99 (talk) 20:44, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Looks good to go! You should explain what Cedar Man is, but I wont hold this up over that. I do agree that ALT1 is uninteresting, only passing ALT0, sorry. Finnfrog99 (talk) 20:51, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

• • • (Aww, thanks!!) No worries about Alt1, no need to apologize! Adding an explanation does seem a good idea. Kwakwakaʼwakw culture isn't my area especially, but Cedar Man is a spirit/personification of cedar trees that often appears in PNW coast art, though I think the exact significance varies from group to group... none of the sources go into that much detail about what Cedar Man meant for Martin, specifically. I add an efn though, I think, with Richard Hunt (artist), another relation of Martin's, explaining the meaning of the Cedar Man in his & Martin's other works, though. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 01:39, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

GA review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Canadian totem/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: GreenLipstickLesbian (talk · contribs) 08:48, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

Reviewer: NovaHyperion (talk · contribs) 08:28, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

Hi there @GreenLipstickLesbian:, I'm interested in taking on this review! I've read through the article and see nothing that would require a WP:QF, so expect a full review in the coming days. NovaHyperion^{talk/contribs} 08:28, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

Darn, beat me to it. ¡Feliz Día de la Independencia! Yue🌙 (talk) 01:53, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

Thank you! Looking forward to any and all criticism :) GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 06:46, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

@Yue: Sorry, I didn't mean to scoop anything 😅 Please forgive me if I've committed a social faux pas here!

As to the article itself, very interesting! Thank you for writing this, I enjoyed reading this one.

Spotcheck

I'll begin by spotchecking 5 sources. If the spotcheck turns up issues I will check more. I'll also make more TSI checks as I go through, and if those turn up issues, I will do another spotcheck; if they don't it will probably go unremarked upon.

Numbers picked with RNG and taken from this revision

• 4 - Y Supports the location
• 6 - Y Supports what the totem pole depicts
• 8 - Y Supports that the diplomat said that
• 9 - Y Supports its various uses for who worked on the totem pole and the financing of it
• 11 - Y Supports the timing of presentation and who was there

Criteria 6 (illustrated)

• ? Images are relevant and captioned, there are quite a few for this short an article but given that the topic is a visual work it makes sense and doesn't impact readability. The images are hosted on Commons with appropriate licensing attached to them and in agreement with how they were posted on Flickr.
• However, the GAC were recently updated to require the presence of alt text, which is missing from most of the pictures. Please add that.

Criteria 5 (stable)

• Y No content disputes or edit wars visible in the history or on the talk page.

Criteria 3-4 (broad & neutral)

• Broad - Y While this is a short article, the physical description of the totem pole and its history are covered. I did some additional Googling and searching of TWL, and did not find any sources that would indicate this article leaves out any major elements of the story.
• Neutral - Y Again, I did not find any information that would lead me to believe this was being covered in a manner that contravenes NPOV, and the article is written neutrally.

Criteria 2 (verifiable)

• Y References are present, and cited in line, and I see no dodgy sources being used. My spotcheck did not turn up evidence of OR or copyvios, and Earwig's highest score is 11% for proper nouns and quotes.

Criteria 1 (well-written)

MOS:

• Fiction, list incorporation, & table accessibility - Y Not relevant
• Layout - Y All seems to be in order
• Words to watch - Y I don't find any in this article
• Lead - ? See notes below

Prose suggestions:

Description and location

• It is located in the first section of Chapultepec park... I don't believe "Chapultepec park" is the most common construction, it's just called Chapultepec

History

• Irwin spoke at the ceremonies... There is a later reference to "ceremony" in the singular, which is confusing. I'd change this to "ceremony", [2] seems to support that this was the same ceremony.

Lead

• The first sentence feels a bit overloaded with geographical information, and the lead is pretty short and without any physical description of the totem pole at all. I would personally write it as something along the lines of The Canadian totem (Spanish: Tótem canadiense) is a totem pole in Chapultepec in Mexico City. It stands 11 meters tall and depicts four figures. It was designed... and move the description of what Chapultepec is to the history section. Either way, I think some physical description would be good for the lead.

@GreenLipstickLesbian: I don't have much to say about this article! I think it's well done as is, and reviewing against the GA criteria does not turn up all that many issues I feel should be addressed. The biggest things for me are the alt text issue and the lead, but I hope those are quick fixes. If you think any of my feedback is unfair or out of scope, please feel free to push back! NovaHyperion^{talk/contribs} 04:46, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

No, thank you for the prompt review! I'll deal with the lead tomorrow (your comments seem very reasonable, and I admit, leads are far from something I view myself as skilled at writing), but I've had a go at the prose tweaks adding alt text to the images that were missing. I'm not experienced with writing Wikipedia alt text (I grew up on Tumblr and Instagram, which had different customs), but, well, they're better than what was there before, I hope. Again, thank you for the review! GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 08:44, 21 September 2026 (UTC)