The Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) is in the process of digitizing all years of the Quebec City daily newspaper, Le Soleil, starting from this century and going back to when the French-language publication was founded on December 28, 1896. So far, they have made available on the BAnQ website issues from the years 1972 to 2006.
BAnQ spokesperson Claire-Hélène Lengellé said digitization of previous years, from 1956 to 1971, is already underway, and once completed, they will begin digitizing earlier decades until they reach 1896. To ensure quality indexing and fast delivery, they are working with the original microfilms.
Last year, L’Électeur (1880-1896), Le Soleil‘s predecessor, was digitized and made available on the BAnQ website, along with two other daily newspapers published in Quebec City in the 19th century, Le Courrier du Canada (1857-1901) and Le Journal de Québec (1842-1889).
According to Wikipedia, “Le Soleil rose from the ashes of L’Électeur, the official newspaper of the Liberal Party of Canada, which shut down in December 1896. The first edition was published on December 28, 1896. one day after the disappearance of its predecessor, which shut down because the Catholic clergy had forbidden it to parishioners when the newspaper criticized the Church’s electoral interference.”
While these relatively recent issues of Le Soleil may be less interesting for genealogical research than those published in earlier years, they still drew my attention. I was a university student in Quebec City when the Parti Québécois won its first election on November 15, 1976. Seeing the digital image of the front page of Le Soleil, published the next day, brought back memories.