Thanks to a grant from Library and Archives Canada (LAC), a historical society in Shawinigan, Quebec has digitized more than 40,000 photos from the daily newspaper, Le nouvelliste, taken between 1940 and 1990, and they plan to digitize hundreds of thousands more.
More than 400,000 photos from Quebec newspaper, Le nouvelliste, are being digitized, thanks to funding from Library and Archives Canada and other partners. Source: Apparentance Mauricie website.
Mario Lachance, chairman of the Mauricie regional historical society, called Appartenance Mauricie (loosely translated as Belonging to Mauricie) told Le nouvelliste in French that the history of an entire community can be found in this collection.
“We want to educate people about the history of our region. We want to put people in touch with their past to better understand the evolution of society in the Mauricie region.”
Mr. Lachance added, “It’s not just to recall memories. The study of the past allows us to define ourselves, to know our identity. …We want to leave a legacy for future generations.”
LAC contributed $66,881 to the photo digitization project through its Documentary Heritage Communities Program. Other funding came from provincial and local levels.
Mauricie is a region between Montreal and Quebec City, north of the St. Lawrence River. Its largest municipalities are Shawinigan and Trois-Rivières.
The photos in the collection have been made available on the historical society’s website. They are in low resolution and free for personal use.
According to Mr. Lachance, it will take at least five or six years, if not longer, to digitize the entire collection.
Search and browse
The photos can be searched by keyword or name in the box that is labelled Recherches des images (Search for images). Unfortunately for genealogists and others, not many people have been identified. The historical society encourages visitors to the website, who recognize people in the online collection, to contact them.
Keywords such as ecole (school), usine (factory), maison (house), eglise (church), peche (fishing), and hockey produce a number of results. Accents are not required on the keywords.
To browse the collection, it would be better if the photos had been sorted into albums with themes, instead of making viewers look through thousands of photos or enter the appropriate keyword to will produce useful results.
Filters to select a timeframe would also benefit viewers. Perhaps going forward, the historical society will sort the images by category.
All in all, digitizing photos is always good for genealogists.
