The British Columbia Digital Library

Digital Library Collections By Subject: Canadian Texts

Includes fiction, drama, poetry, essays, and unpublished archival records.

See also under Law; Literature: General Works; literature time periods; and Women.

• Aboriginal Digital Collections (Industry Canada and others).
• An Acadian Parish Remembered: The Registers of St. Jean-Baptiste, Annapolis Royal, 1702-1755 = Une paroisse acadienne rappelée: Les registres de St. Jean-Baptiste, Annapolis Royal, 1702-1755. Halifax: Public Archives of Nova Scotia. Searchable database by names or dates with digital facsimiles of parish registers containing baptism, marriage and burial information for the parish of St. Jean-Baptiste, Port Royal (Annapolis Royal), in the French colony of Acadia (Acadie), "a territory which included what is now Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, plus parts of New Brunswick and Maine." The digital facsimiles are viewed with the Viewpoint ZoomView tool. Date accessed: 2003-08-06. Date added: 2003-08-06.
• American Native Press Archives, Digital Library. University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Collection of non-fiction and fiction writings by Native writers that are transcribed and edited by students for consultation as HTML documents. Date accessed: 2004-02-24. Date added: 2004-02-24.
• ArchiviaNet: On-line Research Tool. Ottawa, ON: Library and Archives Canada. Thousands of digitized documents, along with photographs and documentary artwork, are available through various databases. Examples of the textual records are attestation papers for soldiers who joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force in World War One, a joint Canada-France program to digitize documents relating to the administration of New France (today's Quebec), the entire 1901 census of Canada, the entire special census of Prairie Provinces for 1906, and records relating to Canadian soldiers and personnel in the South African War (1899-1902). Date accessed: 2002-06-01. Date added: 2002-06-01. Date updated: 2004-04-21.
• Aurore! The Mystery of the Martyred Child. Part of: Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History. Developed by Peter Gossage and Carolyne Blanchard, Université de Sherbrooke, Quebec; hosted by the University of Victoria. Presents transcriptions in HTML format of historic documents and publications relating to the suspicious death of  Aurore Gagnon in February 1920 in Quebec. Date accessed: 2004-05-27. Date added: 2004-05-27.
• The Barren Lands: J.B. Tyrrell's Expeditions for the Geological Survey of Canada, 1892-1894. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Libraries, Digital Collections. Full-text online archives of geologist Joseph Burr Tyrrell and his brother James W. Tyrrell's exploration of the Canadian Barren Lands.
• The bp Nicol Project (Coach House Books). This Web site documents the life and works of Barrie Phillip Nicol (1944-1988) who was born in Vancouver, BC, and became widely known for his concerete poety while living there in the 1960s.
• British Columbia City Directories, 1860-1901. Vancouver: Vancouver Public Library, 2007-2008. A collection of digitized city directories covering BC, various individual BC cities and parts of the US Pacific Northwest. Date accessed: 2008-08-06. Date added: 008-08-06.
• British Columbia Reports. Vancouver, BC: UBC Library and British Columbia Courthouse Library Society, 2006. Date accessed: 2006-01-27. Date added: 2006-01-27.
• Canada's Digital Collections (Industry Canada and others).
• The Canadian Encyclopedia Online (McClelland & Stewart). Online edition sponsored by Histor!ca). Searchable full-text electronic edition of the hardcopy/CD-ROM title first published by Hurtig Publishers in 1985.
• Canadian Mail Order Catalogues = Catalogues de vente par correspondance du Canada. Ottawa, ON: Library and Archives Canada. Browse or search the contents of digitial facsimiles of selected Canadian mail order catalogues dating between 1887 and 1975. Date accessed: 2003-12-15. Date added: 2003-12-15. Date updated: 2004-04-20.
• Canadian Pamphlets and Broadsides. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Libraries, Digital Collections. Summary: "This site provides access to the pre-1930 Canadian pamphlet and broadside holdings of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library by supplying both page images in full colour, and full searchability of the contents of each item. To date the site consists of 596 broadsides (single sheets, printed on one or both sides) and 594 pamphlet titles which amounts to 21638 page images. Additional titles will be added on a regular basis. The collection includes items printed in Canada, by Canadian authors, or about Canadian subjects, mainly of a non-literary nature." Date accessed: 2004-12-21. Date added: 2004-12-21.
• Canadian Poetry (University of Toronto English Library). Information about and selected examples from the works of 19th century and later Canadian poets. Extensive set of links to poetry in Canada.
• Canadian Poetry Archive (Library and Archives Canada, formerly National Library of Canada). Searchable/browsable collection of selected public domain poetry in HTML form found in the National Library's collection. Includes biographical data and poetry anthology or book cover images. Date updated: 2004-04-20.
• Canadian Printer and Publisher. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Libraries, Digital Collections. Summary: "The initial phase of a larger project to digitize Canadian periodicals, this site will present the first 20 years of the most significant Canadian trade journal documenting the history of the printing and publishing industry." Date accessed: 2004-12-21. Date added: 2004-12-21.
• Coach House Books (Toronto, ON). This innovative publisher makes many of its books available online.
• The Colonial Despatches of Vancouver Island and British Columbia, 1846-1871. Victoria: Humanities Computing and Media Centre, University of Victoria, 2007-. The site was officially launched on November 3, 2008. Date accessed: 2008-04-05. Date added: 2008-04-05. Date updated: 2008-11-04.
• Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Launched on October 24, 2003, this Web-based version of the hardcopy reference work is a collaboration between the University of Toronto, who originally and continue to publish this multivolume work, Université Laval, the Department of Canadian Heritage, and Library and Archives Canada.. Date accessed: 2003-11-20. Date added: 2003-11-21.
• Dictionary of Newfoundland English Online. Edited by G.M. Story, W.J. Kirwin and J.D.A. Widdowson. 2nd ed. (University of Toronto Press, 1990). Online edition hosted by Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage Web Site Project. Text is searchable.
• The Discovery and Early Development of Insulin, 1920-1925. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Libraries, Digital Collections. Summary: "This site documents the initial period of the discovery and development of insulin, 1920-1925, by presenting over seven thousand page images reproducing original documents ranging from laboratory notebooks and charts, correspondence, writings, and published papers to photographs, awards, clippings, scrapbooks, printed ephemera and artifacts." Date accessed: 2004-12-21. Date added: 2004-12-21. Date updated: 2005-02-27.
• The Earle Birney Web Site (University College of the Cariboo and Canada's Digital Collections) is a posthumous tribute to this British Columbia author.
• Emma Crosby Letters. Vancouver, BC: Rare Books and Special Collections, University of BC Library, 2007?. Summary: "Emma Crosby (1849-1926) was the wife of Thomas Crosby, a prominent Methodist missionary on the north coast of British Columbia. UBC Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections holds 87 letters written by Emma Crosby between 1874 and 1926. The majority of these letters were written from Fort Simpson B.C., to her family in Ontario between 1874 and 1892. Thanks to Drs. Jan Hare and Jean Barman for their transcriptions of the 1874-1892 letters. . Date accessed: 2007-12-30. Date added: 2007-12-30.
• FirstVoices Aboriginal Language Resource (First Peoples' Cultural Foundation, Victoria) is a Web-based language training tool featured multimedia content contained within phrasebooks for various languages. Date accessed: 2002-05-15. Date added: 2002-05-15.
• Gilmour and Rankin Collection, MG H4. Fredericton, NB: University of New Brunswick, Harriet Irving Library, Archives and Special Collections. Gilmour and Rankin Company was a shipbuilding and sawmill operation in the first half of the 19th century in New Brunswick. Digital facsimiles of most of the collection and transcriptions of selected documents. Date accessed: 2002-05-15. Date added: 2002-05-15.
• The Great Canadian Tunebook (Compiled by Barry Taylor, Victoria, BC).
• Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History. National project based at the University of Victoria to create a series of Web sites geared to the teaching and study of Canadian history through the use of digitized and transcribed archival records. Contents: Aurore! The Mystery of the Martyred Child (Université de Sherbrooke, Quebec). -- We Do Not Know His Name: Klatsassin and the Chilcotin War (University of Victoria). -- Who Killed William Robinson? Race, Justice and Settling the Land (University of Victoria). Date accessed: 2004-05-27. Date added: 2004-05-27.
• Historical Anthology of Canadian Music (Canadian Musical Heritage Society and Canada's Digital Collections).
• "History Project of Richmond Municipality" by Mary L. Thompson (1923). Created and hosted by the City of Richmond Archives, BC. Digital facsimiles with illustrations and transcriptions of an unpublished history of Richmond. Date updated: 2005-06-18.
• In Pursuit of Adventure: The Fur Trade in Canada and the North West Company (McGill University, Montreal, QC). Includes browsable/searchable digital facsimiles of manuscripts known as the Masson Papers (ca. 1790 –1820) preserved at McGill University, along with supporting research materials. Date updated: 2004-02-24.
• Index of Speeches. Toronto, ON: Empire Club of Canada. Based on the print volumes: The Empire Club of Canada Addresses; The Empire Club of Canada Speeches, 1903-1999. "Over the last year, the speeches published in the Empire Club Addresses have been digitized. The pages of each volume up to 1998-1999 have been scanned and processed through an optical character recognition (OCR) program. The Empire Club Foundation has underwritten this project and offers the full text of the speeches free of charge to individuals. Once you have searched for a particular speech, you may click on the "Full Text" link to view the entire speech. Please note that at the moment, the speeches have not all been fully proofread and corrected." Full-text format: HTML. Date accessed: 2003-02-07. Date added: 2003-02-07.
• Indian Affairs Documents, MG H54. Fredericton, NB: University of New Brunswick, Harriet Irving Library, Archives and Special Collections. Digital facsimiles and transcriptions of selected documents. Date accessed: 2002-05-15. Date added: 2002-05-15.
• The Letters of Dorothea Allison 1913-1922 (Edited by Duane Thomson and Carolyn Webb; hosted by Living Landscapes: Thompson-Okanagan).
• Manitobia, Life and Times. Manitoba Library Consortium and partners, 2005-. Summary: Launched on May 19, 2005, this multimedia exploration of the history of Manitoba includes a browsable selection of historical newspapers. Date accessed: 2005-06-19. Date added: 2005-08-02.
• McAlpine's Nova Scotia Directory 1907-08. Halifax: Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management. Digital facsimile of a Nova Scotia business (city) directory published in 1908. Browsable by page number, or by county, town, and letter of the alphabet representing a person's last name or a business name. Date accessed: 2004-02-22. Date added: 2004-02-22.
• Mi'kmaq Holdings Resource Guide. Halifax, NS: Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management. In addition to functioning as an online finding aid to archival and library holdings about the Mi'kmaq people of Nova Scotia, the site contains digital facsimiles of treaties with the Mi'kmaq people, along with photographs of artifacts, petroglyphs, audio and video records, and a large virtual exhibit about the Mi'kmaq. Date created: 2002-10-02. Date accessed: 2002-12-22. Date added: 2002-12-22.
• "My Darling Mary" (James Farquharson Macleod family fonds, Glenbow Archives, Calgary, AB). Searchable/browsable set of over 200 digital facsimiles and transcriptions of letters from Colonel James Macleod to his wife Mary written between 1874 and 1894.
• National Aboriginal Documents Database. Six Nations Geo Systems. Contains a range of full-text documents relating to Canadian Aboriginal land claims issues. The documents can be browsed by category or searched by keyword. Date accessed: 2004-01-24. Date added: 2004-01-24.
• New France, New Horizons: On French Soil in America = Nouvelle-France, Horizons Nouveaux: Histoire d'une terre française en Amérique. Ottawa: Library and Archives Canada; Paris: Archives de France, 2004-2005. A bilingual site that marks the 400th anniversary of France in North America (1604-2004), featured here are a virtual exhibit based on 350 archival documents that trace the history of New France, and a descriptive database linking to thousands of digitized documents from Canadian and French archives. System requirements: Adobe SVG Viewer for digitized documents. Date accessed: 2005-05-23. Date added: 2005-05-23.
• Ontario History Quest Digital Collections. Toronto, ON: Toronto Public Library, Archives of Ontario, City of Toronto Archives, 2004. Summary: "... brings together a variety of primary and secondary source materials from the collections of the Archives of Ontario, the City of Toronto Archives, and Toronto Public Library. About 3000 images have been digitally captured and indexed in order to support student learning in the Ontario History Quest website." Managed by the CONTENTdm software, the collections can be searched by date, or browsed by Ontario places, subjects, or content formats and genres. Date accessed: 2004-04-01. Date added: 2004-04-01.
• Our Future, Our Past: the Alberta Heritage Digitization Project (University of Calgary Press). Searchable/browsable digital facsimiles of close to 300 local histories, along with browsable digital editions of various Alberta newspapers.
• Our Roots: Canada's Local History Online (Université Laval and University of Calgary). Date added: 2002-08-27. Date updated: 2004-04-21.
• Peel's Prairie Provinces. Edmonton, AB: University of Alberta Libraries. Date accessed: 2002-11-05. Date added: 2002-11-05.
• The Rufus Hathaway Collection of Canadian Literature (Electronic Text Centre, and Archives and Special Collections, University of New Brunswick Libraries). Searchable/browsable collection of selected digital facsimiles and SGML-encoded letters between 1907-1930 with supporting research materials. As of February 2001, the correspondents are Rufus Hathaway, Bliss Carman, Mitchell Kennerley, Nathan Van Patten and Frederic Fairchild Sherman.
• Saskatchewan Indian: A Collection of Selected Full-Text Articles, 1970-2002. Saskatoon, SK: Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations. A Canada's Digital Collections site, you can browse selected articles by year and title published in Saskatchewan Indian, or search an index to nearly two dozen periodicals by and about North American First Nations. Date accessed: 2003-02-15. Date added: 2003-02-15.
• Sheet Music from Canada's Past Ottawa, ON: Library and Archives Canada. Date updated: 2004-04-21.
• Sir Frederick Banting Digital Library. New Tecumseth, ON: New Tecumseth Public Library. Multimedia content about the Canadian scientist who discovered insulin. Date accessed: 2005-02-27. Date added: 2005-02-27.
• Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill (Library and Archives Canada, formerly National Library of Canada and National Archives of Canada Virtual Exhibit).
• Theses Canada Portal = Portail Thèses Canada. Ottawa: ON: Library and Archives Canada. Includes link to AMICUS, Canada's national online catalogue, for bibliographic searches of theses collected by the library component (National Library of Canada) since 1965, and free, full-text access to electronic theses for the years 1998 to 2002. Date accessed: 2004-02-01. Date added: 2004-02-01.
• Thomas Raddall Electronic Archive Project (University of Dalhousie Libraries). Project to digitize selected works by the Nova Scotia historian and author.
• University of Alberta, Faculté Saint-Jean, Bibliothèque virtuelle. This collection consists of transcriptions in Rich Text Format (RTF) files of various literary works by several French-Canadian authors.
• University of Alberta Digital Collections. Edmonton: SunSITE Alberta, 2003-. Multimedia collection sourced from various University of Alberta departments and offices, including the University of Alberta Archives. Date accessed: 2004-12-11. Date addsed: 2004-12-11.
• Victoria's Early History Digital Collection. Victoria, BC: Special Collections, McPherson Library, University of Victoria, 2008-. A collection of digitized manuscripts, ephemera, publications and images representative of Victoria's early history. The site uses the CONTENTdm software. Date accessed: 2008-04-19. Date added: 2008-04-19.
• We Do Not Know His Name: Klatsassin and the Chilcotin War. Originated by John Lutz; hosted by the University of Victoria. Part of: Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History. Presents transcriptions in HTML format of historic documents and publications relating to the Chilcotin War of 1864 and its aftermath which saw the execution of six Tsilhqot’in people for the deaths of road builders and settlers. Date accessed: 2004-05-27. Date added: 2004-05-27.
• Who Killed William Robinson?: Race, Justice and Settling the Land (Originated by Ruth Sandwell and John Lutz; hosted by the University of Victoria). Part of: Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History. An examination into the 1868 murder of a Black settler on Salt Spring Island. Transcriptions in HTML format of historic documents and publications relating to the murder and its aftermath, along with supporting research materials.

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Compiled by David Mattison, Victoria Telecommunity Network, BC. Copyright © 2000-2006 by the BC Community Network Association. This site may be freely linked to but not duplicated in any fashion without the consent of the BCCNA.