This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time.
Coverage: 1844 - 2020
This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time.
Coverage: 1894 - 2021
This database offers access to the full text of several Canadian newspapers from Canada's leading publishers. This full text database includes the complete available electronic backfile for most newspapers, providing full access to the articles, columns, editorials and features published in each. Some backfiles date as far back as the late 1970s.
There are numerous initiatives to digitize the text of local newspapers as well as the photographs and negatives of newspapers and news agencies. Additionally, the amount of indexing of historic newspapers continues to increase.Some relevant initiatives follow:
General
Ontario
The Google News Archive was live from 2006-2011. The addition of new content and access to the home page was discontinued in August 2011 according to an entry in Wikipedia. You can still browse the content of the Google News Archive but the search function is far from ideal.
See also Carol Singer's extensive guide from Bowling Green State University Library: Historical Canadian Newspapers Online
TMU LibraryMaps
Toronto's 187th Birthday. Drawings of Toronto from 1854-1856 ... from the Album of Drawings and Sketches of Toronto and Surroundings. Digitized images posted to the library's Flickr site.
Toronto in the Camera: O. Thompson's Photographs of Historic Toronto. Photographs of 48 buildings taken by Octavius Thompson between 1864 and 1868.
Ontario in the Spotlight: Early Photographs of Toronto, Niagara, and Belleville. A collection of 38 photographs, chiefly "cartes de visite" collected by Henry Scadding in the last half of the nineteenth century.
Archives at the local, provincial and national level may be custodians of important primary sources, particularly photographs, registers, legal documents etcetera. Some university archives also contain unpublished theses and dissertations that are not available in digital or microformat.
Archives and Special Collections LibGuide -- Toronto Metropolitan University
Archival Research Tutorial -- York University Libraries
York University holds the Toronto Telegram Fonds featuring photographic from 1930-1971 when the paper closed plus some material to 1978
Using the Archive webpage -- City of Toronto Archives. [The staff at this archive is extremely helpful to inexperienced archive users. Groups of 10-30 can book a tour and orientation to the archive.]
City of Toronto Archives
The City of Toronto Archives houses the Globe and Mail Fonds featuring photographic negatives from 1922-1953
MHSO Multicultural History Society of Ontario
Sounds Like Toronto. A project of the Virtual Museum of Canada and Heritage Toronto.
The Toronto Public Library has a large digital collection of vintage Toronto postcards, many of which are in the public domain. Images may be protected by copyright legislation. For further guidance, consult the TMU Library Copyright guide.