Genealogy à la carte

The Appartenance Mauricie Regional Historical Society, located in the Mauricie region between Montreal and Quebec City, officially launched on June 23 its online publication of 30,000 historical photographs from the Le Nouvelliste newspaper’s archives. 

The digitization project was completed over a two-year period with the support of Library and Archives Canada’s Documentary Heritage Communities Program. It represents an investment of $99,832 to preserve, disseminate and enhance regional archives.

The newspaper’s archives cover the entire Mauricie territory and document major events and the daily lives of citizens. It appears that most of the recently digitized photos are from the newspaper’s Shawinigan archives.

All photographs can be viewed free of charge and their reproduction is permitted for personal use. 

For Frédéric Grunet, an archivist who worked on the project, the strength of this collection lies in its ability to bring back personal memories.

Mr. Grunet said (in French), “We already have photos that were online. Many people are doing research on them. It can be for master’s theses, for genealogy. Or just nostalgic people who want to see photos from the past.”

He added, “Many people also sometimes share them on history Facebook groups. This enhances the photo because it’s people who can comment, who say: ‘Ah yes, I remember that, it’s in that location, it was such and such a business.’”

The digitization work is far from complete. Appartenance Mauricie indicates that the Le Nouvelliste collection contains approximately 500,000 photographs in total. With the 40,000 images already published and the 30,000 new ones added online, approximately 70,000 will now be accessible to the public. 

These photographs can be viewed on the website in the Banque photographique (Photo Bank) section.

When searching for generic subjects, such as school and church, use the French words, école and église.