More than 90 years of Canada’s History Archive, featuring The Beaver magazine, are now available for browsing online for free.
In time for Canada’s 150th anniversary, the entire catalogue of back issues of the country’s top history magazine, The Beaver, is being made available online.
The Beaver was launched in 1920 as an in-house newsletter of the Hudson’s Bay Company. It is the second-oldest continuously published magazine in Canada and was renamed Canada’s History magazine in 2010.
In addition to The Beaver, the Archive will feature issues of Canada’s History magazine as well as Kayak: Canada’s History Magazine for Kids. This sesquicentennial project was made possible thanks to a generous contribution from the Hudson’s Bay Company History Foundation.
About 70 percent of The Beaver’s content has been uploaded to the Canada’s History Archive. The remainder — consisting of rare and fragile early issues of the magazine — is currently being processed and will be available for access in the fall of 2017.
The Archive contains nearly 250 issues of The Beaver, as well as Canada’s History and Kayak magazines. More issues are being added daily to the Archive at www.CanadasHistory.ca/Archive.
Ability to search in the fall
When the search functionality launches in the fall, the archives should be a terrific resource for family historians who research their Canadian ancestry, as well as educators, archivists, historians and history enthusiasts.
Browse only
Users can browse past issues now.
At first, on both my laptop and smartphone, I could only find a 1920 issue online. It was only after some persistence on my laptop that I clicked on the words, “Canada’s History Archive featuring The Beaver,” in the top-left corner of the screen and a pop-up window appeared with all the digitized issues. That’s when the fun began. Start browsing here.
If you can figure out to browse all issues on my smartphone, please post a comment below. I could not do so.
