Newspapers are a favourite resource for family historians. Researchers can find invaluable leads in birth, marriage and death notices, social columns, reports on crime and court proceedings, and business advertisements.
And increasingly, newspapers are being digitized and made available online. Digital versions of historical issues of two major Toronto dailies, the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail, can be accessed free of charge through the public library system and various academic institutions. But don’t overlook the smaller papers—you’ll find unexpected treasures in them too.
Ontario Community Newspapers, hosted by OurDigitalWorld, and part of the OurOntario.ca portal, is a collection of free newspaper resources: indexes, clippings and full digitized issues. You’ll find an excellent set of papers from the Toronto neighbourhood of Weston, digitized in cooperation with the Weston Historical Society, including the Times & Guide, with issues back to 1900, and the Weston Times, with issues back to 1890.
Look for papers from surrounding municipalities too, as they often picked up Toronto news. Other contributors to Ontario Community Newspapers include the Newmarket Public Library, the Whitchurch-Stouffville Public Library and the Clarington Public Library.
For more on Toronto-area newspapers and how to find them, check out our Newspapers page.
