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William Ashbury Buchanan

Life dates: not recorded

Pending reviewLiving-person review: Not reviewed — this check has not been runCTF-P-PLI-62FAEA8D4E34

Biography

The record holds two affiliation changes for William Ashbury Buchanan, in the House of Commons. In 1917 the recorded affiliation changes from the Liberal Party of Canada to the Unionist Party. On September 5, 1925 the recorded affiliation changes from the Unionist Party to the Liberal Party of Canada. One of them is recorded as a leg of a group event. One of the two event records carries a citation. The other one is a legacy lead with no source cited. These entries record the affiliations and their dates. They do not record why the changes were made, and nothing here should be read as a statement of motive. The record holds no riding, no year of birth and no election result for William Ashbury Buchanan. This paragraph was assembled by machine from the rows named in it, and is pending review.

Affiliation changes on record

Every event this person is recorded as taking part in, oldest first. Each links to the full record with its sources.

~17 Liberal-Unionist MPs (Conscription Crisis) (1917)
UnverifiedLegacy leadEvidence: UnverifiedNobody has stood behind this record with a citation. It was inherited, or entered from a lead, and it has not been checked against a source.What you may rely onTreat as a lead, not as a finding. Usable to know where to look; not usable as the basis of a published statement. Expect year-precision dates and unconfirmed party labels.Editorial status: Legacy leadThe label is a warning, not a formality. Legacy leads are the part of the record most likely to carry a wrong year, a collapsed episode, or a party label that did not exist under that name at the time.This record does NOT pass the publication gate and is not publishable as verified fact.
1917year only
Liberal Party of CanadaToUnionist PartyTo another partyWhere the seat went: The seat was carried to another partyBoth sides of the change are parties, and they are different parties. The member sat with one caucus and then sat with another, without the seat being returned to voters in between.What you may rely onThat a party gained a seat it did not win. It says nothing about why: the record separates where a member went from whether they chose to go.How it countsThe direction the floor-crossing total is drawn from, but not the total itself. A small number of legs whose labels read party-to-a-different-party are ruled election-time relabelling, and count toward nothing.Read from the two affiliation labels this record carries, by the same rule the database applies. It states the direction of the move, not the editorial ruling on how the leg counts.
William Ashbury Buchanan (1925)
Single sourcePending reviewEvidence: Single sourceOne source supports the record, with a locator, and it has been read. No second source has confirmed it independently.What you may rely onUsable with the source named in your own copy. Where the single source is a news report, the risk is that the report itself was the origin of a later chain of repetition.Editorial status: Pending reviewRead the attached sources yourself. What is pending is our judgement, not necessarily the evidence.This record does NOT pass the publication gate and is not publishable as verified fact.
September 5, 1925
Unionist PartyToLiberal Party of CanadaTo another partyWhere the seat went: The seat was carried to another partyBoth sides of the change are parties, and they are different parties. The member sat with one caucus and then sat with another, without the seat being returned to voters in between.What you may rely onThat a party gained a seat it did not win. It says nothing about why: the record separates where a member went from whether they chose to go.How it countsThe direction the floor-crossing total is drawn from, but not the total itself. A small number of legs whose labels read party-to-a-different-party are ruled election-time relabelling, and count toward nothing.Read from the two affiliation labels this record carries, by the same rule the database applies. It states the direction of the move, not the editorial ruling on how the leg counts.

Where they sat

Compiled affiliation spans — “sat as X from then to then”.

No affiliation spans have been compiled for this person yet. That means the compilation has not been done — it does not mean they never sat with a party.

Claims and the sources cited for them

Every statement this record makes is stored as a separate claim with its own review state and its own citations. A claim with no citation is shown as such rather than omitted.

The record holds two affiliation changes for William Ashbury Buchanan, in the House of Commons. In 1917 the recorded affiliation changes from the Liberal Party of Canada to the Unionist Party. On September 5, 1925 the recorded affiliation changes from the Unionist Party to the Liberal Party of Canada. One of them is recorded as a leg of a group event. One of the two event records carries a citation. The other one is a legacy lead with no source cited. These entries record the affiliations and their dates. They do not record why the changes were made, and nothing here should be read as a statement of motive. The record holds no riding, no year of birth and no election result for William Ashbury Buchanan. This paragraph was assembled by machine from the rows named in it, and is pending review.
Pending review
Field:
biography
Confidence:
Medium
Signed by:
Official-source deterministic verifier
Assumptions: Machine-assembled from this database’s own rows and from no other source. The text restates, as sentences, the participant rows attached to this record: the affiliation recorded on either side of each change, the date at the precision that row carries, the jurisdiction and chamber, whether the change is filed under a group event, and whether the event record behind it carries a citation. No date is printed finer than the row’s date_precision, so a year-precision row yields a year and never a day. Both languages are composed from the same rows rather than translated from one another. No motive, benefit, causation or characterisation of a person appears, and none may be added under this claim.
Counterarguments: Two limits, stated rather than glossed. First, the prose is only as sound as the rows beneath it: where a party link is wrong the wrong party name is printed, and where an event is a legacy lead the sentence repeats an unverified lead — saying so, but repeating it. Second, restating a thin record fluently can make it read as established; the pending status on this claim, and the sentence inside the text naming the evidence state, are the only things that say otherwise. Four label-to-party mappings were deliberately not printed, because the party row’s name did not exist on the date of the event; the underlying links were left untouched and are still visible on the record.
- PARLINFO — Changes in Political Affiliation (Library of Parliament)
  Library of Parliament / Bibliothèque du Parlement · record CTF-E-PLI-19250905-8B547963 — William Ashbury Buchanan | 1925-09-05 | Unionist -> Liberal Party of Canada — research/parlinfo-2026-08-31/transitions.csv line 114 · MUL
  Cited here because it is the source already attached to the affiliation event this paragraph restates. It supports the literal affiliation and date only.
  Archived copy — September 1, 2026
  CTF-S-PLI-DATASET-B36D7418 · Reliability tier: primary official · Rights: link only · Accessed: September 1, 2026

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Biography

Affiliation changes on record

Every event this person is recorded as taking part in, oldest first. Each links to the full record with its sources.

~17 Liberal-Unionist MPs (Conscription Crisis) (1917)

UnverifiedLegacy lead

1917year only

Liberal Party of CanadaToUnionist PartyTo another partyWhere the seat went: The seat was carried to another partyBoth sides of the change are parties, and they are different parties. The member sat with one caucus and then sat with another, without the seat being returned to voters in between.What you may rely onThat a party gained a seat it did not win. It says nothing about why: the record separates where a member went from whether they chose to go.How it countsThe direction the floor-crossing total is drawn from, but not the total itself. A small number of legs whose labels read party-to-a-different-party are ruled election-time relabelling, and count toward nothing.Read from the two affiliation labels this record carries, by the same rule the database applies. It states the direction of the move, not the editorial ruling on how the leg counts.

William Ashbury Buchanan (1925)

Single sourcePending review

September 5, 1925

Unionist PartyToLiberal Party of CanadaTo another partyWhere the seat went: The seat was carried to another partyBoth sides of the change are parties, and they are different parties. The member sat with one caucus and then sat with another, without the seat being returned to voters in between.What you may rely onThat a party gained a seat it did not win. It says nothing about why: the record separates where a member went from whether they chose to go.How it countsThe direction the floor-crossing total is drawn from, but not the total itself. A small number of legs whose labels read party-to-a-different-party are ruled election-time relabelling, and count toward nothing.Read from the two affiliation labels this record carries, by the same rule the database applies. It states the direction of the move, not the editorial ruling on how the leg counts.

Claims and the sources cited for them

Every statement this record makes is stored as a separate claim with its own review state and its own citations. A claim with no citation is shown as such rather than omitted.

Pending review

Field:: biography
Confidence:: Medium
Signed by:: Official-source deterministic verifier

Assumptions: Machine-assembled from this database’s own rows and from no other source. The text restates, as sentences, the participant rows attached to this record: the affiliation recorded on either side of each change, the date at the precision that row carries, the jurisdiction and chamber, whether the change is filed under a group event, and whether the event record behind it carries a citation. No date is printed finer than the row’s date_precision, so a year-precision row yields a year and never a day. Both languages are composed from the same rows rather than translated from one another. No motive, benefit, causation or characterisation of a person appears, and none may be added under this claim.

Counterarguments: Two limits, stated rather than glossed. First, the prose is only as sound as the rows beneath it: where a party link is wrong the wrong party name is printed, and where an event is a legacy lead the sentence repeats an unverified lead — saying so, but repeating it. Second, restating a thin record fluently can make it read as established; the pending status on this claim, and the sentence inside the text naming the evidence state, are the only things that say otherwise. Four label-to-party mappings were deliberately not printed, because the party row’s name did not exist on the date of the event; the underlying links were left untouched and are still visible on the record.

PARLINFO — Changes in Political Affiliation (Library of Parliament)
Library of Parliament / Bibliothèque du Parlement · record CTF-E-PLI-19250905-8B547963 — William Ashbury Buchanan | 1925-09-05 | Unionist -> Liberal Party of Canada — research/parlinfo-2026-08-31/transitions.csv line 114 · MUL
Cited here because it is the source already attached to the affiliation event this paragraph restates. It supports the literal affiliation and date only.
Archived copy — September 1, 2026
CTF-S-PLI-DATASET-B36D7418 · Reliability tier: primary official · Rights: link only · Accessed: September 1, 2026