Business History: Primary Sources

A scholarly research site, which illustrates and documents, in part, the heroic age of the fur trade in Canada by examining the exploits of the North West Company and other Montreal-based fur trading companies at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. The story of the North West Company is closely tied to the evolving economic, geographic and political history of Canada and Quebec, especially after France seceded Quebec to Great Britain in 1763.

Provides access to the Economist online as a fully searchable digital collection from 1843-2010. Articles etc. are provided in PDF format, i.e. as they appear in the print version. Includes news, analysis, commentary, editorials, statistics, demographics, letters to the editor, obituaries, and historical photograph, as well as special surveys and supplements on countries and industries.

Provides full text-access to Globe and Mail articles from 1844 to 2010.

Covering 1894-2011, this resource is a full-page searchable archive of the Toronto Star.

"Funded by the Duke Endowment "Library 2000" Fund, presents images and database information for over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 & 1955. It concentrates on five main subject areas: Radio, Television, Transportation, Beauty and Hygiene, and World War II, providing a coherent view of a number of major campaigns and companies through images preserved in one particular advertising collection available at Duke University."

This site provides an opportunity to delve into catalogues from a number of different stores, both English and French, from the 1880s to the 1970s.

Library and Archives Canada website that tells the story of how Canada came to be, from the original four provinces in 1867 to the present. Historical essays showcase documents, articles and photographs of the people, places and events that have shaped our country. The site features material from the collection of Library and Archives Canada, including a number of rare items that would otherwise be difficult to access.

Canadian Illustrated News was published in Montreal, Quebec by George Desbarats from 1869 to 1883.

Contains basic descriptions and images of each poster, an artist index, and an essay about Canadian War Posters. Clicking on "Menu" will provide lists of specific categories of posters, i.e. recruiting, for each of the Wars. Thumbnail images and descriptions are provided within each category. Each description includes the following information: the poster ID number and title or lead text; the date, artist, and publisher, when known; size, and appropriate notes.

Eighty-three volumes relating to exploration and discovery over a span of three centuries of Canadian history.

During the Second World War, the staff of the century-old Hamilton Spectator newspaper kept its own monumental record of the war. This collection of more than 144,000 newspaper articles, manually clipped, stamped with the date, and arranged by subject, includes news stories and editorials from newspapers, mostly Canadian, documenting every aspect of the war.

This Web site contains comprehensive bibliographic, geographic, and biographic data about Canada's print culture from its beginnings in the sixteenth century to the twenty-first century.

A digital library of primary sources from Canada's early heritage. It covers the time period from the first European settlers to the early 20th century and includes government reports, letters, diaries newspapers, magazines and church documents.

Government and company documents regarding English and French interests.
(18th - 19th centuries; searchable facsimiles).

"... more than 4,700 publications from continental Europe, the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand, dating from 1543-1945. ... The broad scope of the collection allows scholars to trace the evolution of feminism within a single country, as well as the impact of one country's movement on those of the others. In many cases, it also provides easy access to primary sources otherwise available only in a few rare book rooms." [Publisher]

Provides word, title, author and subject access to material published in a number of Canadian periodicals of historical significance, including Maclean's Magazine, The Financial Post, The Monetary Times of Canada, Massey's Magazine, The Canadian Bookman, The Canadian Magazine, Saturday Night and The University Magazine. For students, researchers and the general public, the database is nothing less than a window into the social and cultural life of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Includes an extensive range of Collections, the majority in a language other than English. The geographic coverage is wide, from Franco-Ontarien newspapers to the organizational records of Victoria’s Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association. Material types include audio files, published text such as books and newspapers, unpublished text such as manuscript documents, photographs, and ephemeral items such as identity cards.

Provides a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada. Our goal is to include more than 100,000 pages of personal narratives including letters, diaries, pamphlets, autobiographies, and oral histories, providing a rich source for scholars in a wide range of disciplines. Much of the material is previously unpublished. Several thousand pages of Ellis Island Oral History interviews, indexed and searchable for the first time, are included.

Searchable full-text access to rare books and primary sources describing many aspects of Canadian history including the spread of religion, war, economic development, slavery, political affairs, aboriginal history, &c.