More than 110 years of Maclean’s magazine issues are now available online. That’s more than 100,000 stories from about 3,400 issues going back to 1905.
Maclean’s editor-in-chief Mark Stevenson said, “This is the first archive of its kind in Canada. It chronicles our coverage of every major issue in the past century: war, political upheaval, massive social change. You won’t find a better way to explore your country’s past and better understand its present.”
Access to this archival collection is free for the first month. After that, it is $3.99 a month.
Maclean’s, June 15, 1927, Volume XL, No. 12, Toronto, Ontario.
Searchable database
There is a searchable database to all past issues. You can explore it by year, author, or subject. The archive is described as easy to navigate, whether you want to explore the extensive coverage of the Great War or are looking for a specific story.
The archive collection is a trove of Canadiana. There are the historic covers, including some by Group of Seven members A.J. Casson, Arthur Lismer and J.E.H. MacDonald, and a celebrated cast of contributors, including Margaret Atwood, Farley Mowat, Joseph Boyden, Mordecai Richler, and Lucy Maud Montgomery. It’s a Canadian who’s who of journalists who graced the pages of the national news magazine, including Ralph Allen, Peter C. Newman, Christina McCall, Barbara Moon, Peter Gzowski, Trent Frayne, and June Callwood.
Free trial
You can sign up for a free 30-day trial here. Without signing up, you can also sample it from inside select stories of Maclean’s Canada’s Stories project, which collects a story for every year of Maclean’s long history.
Selection available on Internet Archive
You can also view for free a selection of early issues of Maclean’s, from 1913 to 1922, on Internet Archive. The first article in the September 1913 issue, for example, is about the Molsons of Montreal.
While this online collection may not help you find your ancestors or break through a brick wall, it will help you learn about the social history during a specific period and you can read the news that may have interested members of your family.
I phoned the MacLeans’s 1 -888 number, and am still wary, as the customer service contact says you must give your credit card number when contacting MacLeans, but she is ‘sure’ you could cancel the $3.99 charge (plus tax) after the 30 day period. I am not so ‘sure’ and this may be an unacceptable hook. Too many people have experienced difficulties getting ‘off’ 30-day free genealogical sites. Think of Ancestry.com, .ca, .uk.
Always suspicious here.
Gail B in St. C.
Do you know if they are offering any institutional members for libraries or genealogy organisations?
Good question. Let’s hope they do offer it to institutions.