A retired librarian in Pennsylvania, who has collected and donated more than 800,000 postcards, said, “Postcards were mostly a communication tool used by the middle class.” Donald Brown went a step further to suggest these often colourful forms of short communication were “the tweets of the 20th century.”
For genealogists, postcards provide images of the cities and towns where our ancestors lived, the streets they may have strolled down, and the sights they may have seen.
The Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) acquired in 2017 a collection of more than 7,000 postcards depicting scenes of Montreal from the late 19th century to the 1960s. At the time the acquisition was announced, BAnQ said it planned to gradually process and digitize all of the postcards. Now, almost 1,200 have been posted online.
The postcards were donated by retired teacher Pierre Monette who began collecting them in the late 1980s.
Mr. Monette said postcards are like a witness to how a place is transformed. In the case of postcards featuring businesses, these are sometimes the only images that remain.
Although postcards are best known for promoting tourist attractions and architecture, the Pierre Monette collection is full of scenes of everyday life in Montreal. Images show firefighters extinguishing a fire, Mile-End garage owners proudly posing at their workplace, skiers on Mount Royal, young people relaxing at the pool, visitors in Dominion Park, Verdun campgrounds, soldiers on a train, and Dorval sailors sailing on the St. Lawrence River.
The digitized Pierre Monette collection can be searched by keyword on the BAnQ website or narrowed down by using the filters in the right margin: Subject (Sujet), Place (Lieu représenté), and Date.
When looking at the search results, click on the gray bar, Afficher plus de résultats, at the bottom of the screen to see more images.
With this acquisition, BAnQ now owns about 55,000 postcards that show scenes across the province of Quebec, and more than 32,000 are available to view online.
Permission to use
BAnQ allows the use of the contents of its web portal for educational, private study, or research purposes without specific authorization, provided the source is indicated. Any other use, notably for commercial purposes, in any form whatsoever, requires the prior authorization of BAnQ and, where applicable, of the beneficiaries when BAnQ does not own the rights.
