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John Catliff

Canadian soccer player

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 1, 2026
Entity authorityQ3809145
Source-derived summary

John Terence Catliff (born 8 January 1965) is a Canadian former professional soccer player, who played as a striker. He retired ranked second all-time on the Canadian national team with 18 international "A" goals between 1984 and 1994.

In 2012 as part of the Canadian Soccer Association's centennial celebration, he was named to the all-time Canada XI men's team.

Club career

Catliff was selected to the All-Ivy League First team as a forward in 1983, 1984, and 1986 while playing for the Harvard Crimson. He was also named to the All-American First Team in 1986. Catliff ended his college career with the Crimson with a total of 34 goals and 15 assists.

Catliff was a Canadian Soccer League star, scoring the second most goals of anyone in the League's six-year history with 69 goals in total. He was a league season scoring champion in 1988 with 22 goals and in 1990 with 19 goals. He began his CSL career in 1987 playing for the League's inaugural champions, the Calgary Kickers. He then spent the next six seasons with the Vancouver 86ers, who became the CSL champions in four consecutive seasons from 1988 through 1991.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “John Catliff” is canadian soccer player. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through John, Catliff and Canadian, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1965, 1984, 1994, 2012—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1965-01-08. For this dossier, John, Catliff and Canadian is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “canadian soccer player” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3809145. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1965, 1984, 1994 and 2012.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “John Catliff”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow John Catliff primary sources, John Catliff archive and John research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “John Catliff”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from John Catliff” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.