103 years of Maclean’s magazine digitized and free to search

Maclean’s magazine announced in an online article that they have digitized and made available 3,400 issues of the Canadian publication, from 1905 to 2008.

In the sub-title of the article, Maclean’s says that every issue during the 103-year period before 2009 is free. Once on the website, however, the words, “FOR A LIMITED TIME ENJOY FREE ACCESS FROM 1905 TO 2008,” appear across the top. Nowhere is it indicated how long the free offer will last.

Maclean’s describes this digitization project as “the first archive of its kind in Canada.” It chronicles the magazines coverage of every major issue in the past century: war, political upheaval, massive social change.

The collection of magazines is relatively easy to search and browse.

Search strategies
Researchers should not expect the magazine to be a resource for learning about specific ancestors. Unlike a daily newspaper, the names of most of our ancestors probably didn’t appear in Maclean’s. If your ancestors, however, were well known, you may have better luck.

Genealogists should instead use this digital collection as a resource for gaining a better understanding of the social and political history of a particular time and place. For example, I looked at the issues published the month my father enlisted in the Second World War.

Searching this collection requires more creative techniques and thinking than entering keywords, such as family names. You may be one of the lucky ones who finds an ancestor’s name, but most people will come up empty. Rather than searching only for surnames, think about where your ancestor lived, worked, and served in the military.

Tip: When searching for a first and last name, put the names within quotation marks.

If you do not find anything relevant in your surname search, then think about where they lived or spent time. For example, I was unable to find any Devers related to me, so I looked for mentions of Picton, a small town in Ontario where some of my family once lived.

Where I hit the jackpot was when I searched for “Leonard Young,” my ancestor who performed in the popular vaudeville troupe, The Dumbells. (You can read about him in my blog post, My cousin was a Dumbell during the First World War.) I found three excellent articles and two photos of Leonard that I had never seen before.

How to find keywords in an article
My initial challenge was finding my search term in a lengthy article. When I tried CTRL+F (or Command+F on a Mac) to find a word in the image of the original magazine, the word did not appear highlighted.

After clicking around, I discovered how to see a clean, digitized version of the text, and this text was searchable using CTRL+F.

Here’s how to find the digitized version of the searchable text.

1. Once you have found your article and it is on your screen, click on the permalink icon  in the top-right corner of the screen. (See illustration below.)
2. The permalink icon takes you to a screen where you can scroll down the page to see the text. This text is searchable, using CTRL+F.

Print, save, share
Printing an article is easy. Just click on the printer icon in the top-right corner of the screen and print as you usually do.

You can save a page as a JPG by right clicking on the article.

It is also possible to share articles on social media and by email.

The Maclean’s Historical Digitization Project was made possible with support from the Ontario Media Development Corporation.