Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper, 1844-2017, is now searchable on Newspapers.com.
During the past couple of weeks, the ability to search all of the issues of this publication has improved immensely. For example, at first, a search of “war” produced 24 results and only from 1844 to 1867. A few days ago, the same search produced 235,803 results from 1844 to 1977. By yesterday, all of the years appeared to be searchable and (sadly) “war” came up more than 413,000 times.
For more than 100 years, The Globe and Mail has been referred to as Canada’s national newspaper and one of the top sources of news for business people. You won’t find as much social news as in other newspapers about who was visiting whom from out of town, but you will be surprised at what you do uncover. I’ve been most successful with my searches for relatives who owned a business, but I’ve also found several other gems.
Still, I’m not sure the search feature is complete. For example, a search for “James Patterson” in 1902 produced zero results, although his name appears in an April 12 headline and is quite legible in the Globe. This suggests that the updating of this newspaper may be ongoing for a wee bit longer. If that’s the case, it should only be a matter of days before The Globe is entirely searchable.
On an historical note, the predecessor to The Globe and Mail was called The Globe. It was founded in 1844 by Scottish immigrant George Brown, who became a Father of Confederation.
