Selected Digital Primary Sources for Canada
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American Indian histories and cultures Sourced from the Edward E. Ayer Collection at the Newberry Library. Coverage spans 400 years, and includes topics such as early encounters between American Indians and Europeans; American Indians and colonial powers, and later, the US government; the indigenous peoples of Mexico; conflict, wars and military contact; the fur trade and Indian traders; education and American Indian boarding schools, and the civil rights movement and political activism. Cross-searchable with American West.
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American West Sourced from the Everett D. Graff Collection of Western Americana at the Newberry Library, Chicago. Consists of original manuscripts, maps, ephemeral materials (e.g., wanted posters, claim certificates, news-sheets, etc.), records of key railroad companies, and papers of early pioneers, explorers, and hunters. Canada and the Pacific Northwest are well-documented; coverage includes accounts of the Gold Rush and of the landscape. Cross-searchable with American Indian Histories and Cultures.
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Archives Canada: Canadian archival information network From the website: "Archives Canada is a gateway to archival resources found in over 800 repositories across Canada." Supported by the Canadian Council of Archives, the Provincial and Territorial Networks, their member institutions, and the Department of Canadian Heritage.
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Canada in the Making Narrates the history of Canada through the words of the men and women who shaped the nation. Built around the Government Documents collection in Early Canadiana Online. Integrates narrative text with links to primary source texts. Of particular interest to researchers of Canadian Studies, History, and Law.
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Canadian Letters and Images Project A permanent archive of the Canadian war experience, from any war, as told through the wartime correspondence, photographs, and other personal materials from the battlefront and from the home front. A partnership between Department of History at Malaspina University College, and the History Department at Western University.
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Canadiana online Offers full text online collection of books and pamphlets documenting Canadian history from the first European contact to the late 19th century. Particularly strong in literature, women's history, native studies, travel and exploration, and the history of French Canada. Includes 32 million pages of content. Canadiana Online is the only electronic resource that offers full-text searching across the entire corpus of CIHM fiche.
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Colonial State Papers Provides access to thousands of papers concerning British activity in the American, Canadian, and West Indian colonies between the 16th and 18th centuries. Integrates two important research tools into a single search engine: National Archives' Privy Council and Related Bodies (America and West Indies, Colonial Papers), and the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial: North America and the West Indies, 1574-1739.
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Confidential Print. North America: 1824-1961 Issued by Britain's Foreign Office (FO) and Colonial Office (CO). Documents range from 1-page letters or telegrams to large volumes or texts of treaties. All were printed and circulated to leading officials in the FO, the Cabinet, and Heads of British missions abroad. Includes the entire classes: CO 880/1-32 North America, 1839-1914; CO 884/1-38 West Indies, 1826-1961; FO 414/1-278 North America 1824-1941; FO 461/1-13 America, 1942-1956; FO 462/1-10 USA, 1947-1956.
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Defining Gender, 1450-1910 Provides a gendered perspective and online access to a vast body of original British source material useful for researchers in history, literature, sociology and education. Includes contextual essays by leading scholars from Australia, Canada, the UK and the USA; the essays introduce the major themes of the project and provide direct hypertext links to the sources. Sources include ephemera, pamphlets, commonplace books, diaries, periodicals, letters, ledgers, manuscript journals, poetry, receipt books and conduct and advice literature.
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Early Encounters in North America Subtitle: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment. Assembled from hundreds of sources, the collection documents the relationships among peoples in North America from 1534 to 1850. Focuses on personal accounts, and provides unique perspectives from traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, native peoples, and officials, both male and female. Document types includes published and unpublished accounts, including narratives, diaries, journals, and letters.
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Empire Online Spans five centuries, from 1492 to 1969, and charts the rise and fall of empires around the world. Sections include: Cultural Contacts (1492-1969); Empire Writing & the Literature of Empire; The Visible Empire; Religion and Empire; and Race, Class, and Colonialism (c1789-1969). Provides original documents and contextual essays to enable exploration of colonial history, politics, culture and society. Cross-searchable with Global Commodities: Trade, Exploration, and Cultural Exchange.
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First World War Features a wealth of primary source materials for the study of the Great War, complemented by a range of contextual secondary sources. Includes 3 modules: 1. Personal Experiences (with letters, photographs, diaries, postcards, sheet music, etc). 2. Propaganda and Recruitment (with aerial leaflets, atrocity propaganda, international posters, cartoons, etc). 3. Visual Perspectives and Narratives (with material from the Imperial War Museum, including artwork, museum objects, film clips, etc).
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Gerritsen collection of Aletta H. Jacobs Largest single source for the study of women's history in the world, containing materials dated 1543 to 1945, written in 15 languages from Continental Europe, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand. Digitized contents include books, pamphlets and periodicals reflecting the evolution of feminist consciousness and the movement for women's rights.
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Global Commodities: Trade, Exploration and Cultural Exchange Focuses on 15 commodities with intertwined histories: chocolate; coffee; cotton; fur; oil; opium; porcelain; silver and gold; spices; sugar; tea; timber; tobacco; wheat; wine and & spirits. Commodities documented by a range of primary materials, including maps, photographs, objects, and rare books. Facilitates research by themes of exploration and discovery; imperialism and monopoly; trade wars; economic geography; slavery; mass production; luxury; and evolution of global branding.
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Libris Canadiana Provides keyword, title, author, and subject access to material published in a number of historically important Canadian periodicals, including: Maclean's Magazine; Financial Post; Monetary Times of Canada; Massey's Magazine; Canadian Bookman; Canadian Magazine; Saturday Night, and University Magazine. Indexing for most publications begins in the late 19th or early 20th century, and extends until the mid-20th century.
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North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories (DFG Nationallizenzen) Provides a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to Canada and America. Contains over 100,000 pages of personal narratives, including letters, diaries, pamphlets, autobiographies, and oral histories. Much of the material is previously unpublished. Coverage begins around around 1840 and extends to the present, focusing heavily on the period from 1890 to 1920.
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North American Indian Thought and Culture Essential resource for serious scholarly research into the history of American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Canada's First Nations. Contains over 100,000 pages of text, much of which is previously unpublished, rare, or hard to find. Integrates autobiographies, biographies, Indian publications, oral histories, personal writings, photographs, drawings, and audio files.
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North American Women's Letters and Diaries Largest digital collection of women’s diaries and correspondence ever assembled. Contains approximately 150,000 pages of letters and diaries from colonial times to 1950, including 7,000 pages of previously unpublished manuscripts. Draws on over 1,000 sources, including journal articles, pamphlets, newsletters, monographs, and conference proceedings. More than 1,500 biographies enhance the use of the database. Complements British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries.
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Trench journals and unit magazines of the First World War Contains over 1,500 trench journal titles sourced from leading archives around the world, including those of the Imperial War Museums and The British Library. Written by servicemen and women from every type of unit from every combatant nation. Most journals from units based on the Western Front in France and Belgium; also includes magazines from units serving on the Eastern Front, in Gallipoli, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, Britain and America.
