Guides: Canadian History: Find Primary Sources

Primary Sources

What are primary sources?

Primary sources are original documents and objects created at the time being studied, such as diaries, newspaper accounts, letters, governmental records, or drawings. Any record that documents a past event can be considered a primary source.

Where can I find primary sources?

You can find primary sources in libraries, museums, and archives, including McGill's Rare Books and Special Collections Library (located on the 4th floor of the McLennan Library building). You can also find digitized primary sources online in library databases, such as those linked below, as well as in digitized collections, such as McGill's Digital Exhibitions & Collections, some of which are linked below.

You can also find primary sources in print and eBooks through the library. Historians and other scholars often bring together (and, when necessary, translate) primary sources in collections called sourcebooks (sometimes spelled source books), readers, or anthologies. You can systematically search for these in the Library Catalogue by using subject headings. Try combining keywords on your topic with the word sources (which demarcate primary sources) in a subject heading search. For example:

su: Manitoba history sources
su: Fur trade Northwest Canadian history sources
su: World War, 1939-1945 Canada sources

Newspapers

Local newspapers provide insight into the social and cultural life of their communities. A selection of historic Canadian newspapers available online are included below. More Canadian newspapers can be found on the Newspapers Subject Guide.

Quebec

Gazette (1857-2010); Montreal.
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Archive page content of the Gazette, precursor to the Montreal Gazette.

Quebec Historical Newspapers (from Bibliothèque et archives nationales du québec)
Magazines and newspapers held by the BAnQ. Interface in French, content in French and English.

Canada (nationwide)

Proquest Historical Newspapers: The Globe and Mail (ProQuest)
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Coverage 1844-2018
Paper of Record
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Searchable archive of historical newspapers from Europe, Australia, and the Americas. Coverage varies, from the mid-1800s to 2000s.
2 simultaneous users.

Google News Archive
Contains historical issues of several Canadian newspapers, such as the Montreal Gazette.
Ad*Access
Over 7,000 U.S. and Canadian advertisements covering five product categories - Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II propaganda - dated between 1911 and 1955.

Other Provinces

British Columbia Historical Newspapers
The BC Historical Newspapers project features digitized versions of historical papers from around the province. The titles, which range from the Abbotsford Post to the Ymir Mirror, date from 1859 to 1995.
Manitoba Historical Newspapers
The Manitobia Project of the University of Manitoba includes a digital collection of 27 newspapers.
Prairie Newspapers
The University of Alberta offers dozens of digitized newspapers from the Prairie Provinces from 1871 to 2013.
New Brunswick Historical Newspapers
A collaborative project at UNB Libraries between Archives and Special Collections, Microforms, the Imaging Centre and Library Systems to build a portal to every known newspaper published in or directly related to New Brunswick regardless of available format.

Toronto Star (ProQuest)
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Articles and full page reproductions of the complete Toronto Star newspaper from 1894; does not include the last three years.

Multicultural Canadian Newspapers

SFU Digitized Newspapers
A resource for digitized immigrant and foreign-language papers. By Simon Fraser University. Sample titles include: Canadian Jewish News (1960-93); The New Canadian (1939-85); and Messenger (1978-84).
Connecting Canadians
Collection of multicultural Canadian newspapers documenting the earliest years of immigrant experience in Canada. Includes Croatian, Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Polish, Serbian, Ukrainian, Serbo-Croatian, Latvian, and Lithuanian newspapers.

Government Sources

Canadian Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), 1901-2019 via LiPaD
Digitized transcripts of Canadian Parliamentary Debates ("Hansard"), 1901-2019, available via the Linked Parliamentary Data Project at the University of Toronto.
Canadian Parliamentary Historical Resources
Free searchable database of digitized versions of parliamentary publications from the 1st Session of the 1st Parliament (1867) until coverage at ourcommons.ca and sencanada.ca begins.

House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (ProQuest)
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U.K. parliamentary papers.
HeinOnline - Law Journal Library
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Canadian and American legal journals covering 2,700 periodicals .

Indian Affairs Annual Reports, 1864-1990
This database contains references to be found in more than 40,700 digitized pages of the original annual reports for the Indian Affairs portfolio for the years 1864 to 1966 and the complete annual reports for the department of Indian Affairs from 1967 to 1990.
Canada Declassified
Canada Declassified is a digital repository of government records declassified under the Canadian Access to Information Act. Our holdings span from the Second World War through the Global War on Terror, with the bulk of our records from the cold War era. The records maintained on this website are open-access and fully available to students and scholars around the world.

Citing Canadian Government Documents

The Chicago Manual of Style offers only limited guidance on citing Canadian Government Documents. Refer instead to the excellent guide from the SFU Library linked below.

Guide to Citing Canadian Government Documents

General & Thematic Collections

General collections

Library and Archives Canada
Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is a key resource for all Canadians who wish to gain a better understanding of who they are, individually and collectively. LAC acquires, processes, preserves and provides access to our documentary heritage and serves as the continuing memory of the Government of Canada and its institutions.

Canadiana
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Virtual library of full-text historical content about Canada, including books, magazines and government documents.

Canadiana Monograph Collection
Collection of digitized resources from the University of Alberta including publications dating back to the early 17th century that are about Canada, or written and published by Canadians, scanned from microfiche.

Thematic collections

Sabin Americana 1500-1926 (Gale)
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Based on the original Bibliotheca Americana bibliography of works by Joseph Sabin, this online collection contains books, pamphlets, serials and other works about all aspects of North American history and culture.
Empire Online (Adam Matthew)
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Brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials from the past 500 years for the study of 'Empire' and its theories, practices and consequences.
Confidential Print: North America, 1824-1961 (Adam Matthew)
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The Confidential Print series, issued by the British Government between c. 1820 and 1970, is a fundamental building block for political, social and economic research. This collection consists of the Confidential Print for the United States, Canada and the English-speaking Caribbean, with some coverage of Central and South America, and covers such topics as slavery, Prohibition, the First and Second World Wars, racial segregation, territorial disputes, the League of Nations, McCarthyism and the nuclear bomb. The bulk of the material covers the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century.
China, America and the Pacific (Adam Matthew)
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Explore an extensive range of archival material connected to the trading and cultural relationships that emerged between China and the Pacific region between the 18th and early 20th centuries. Canadian content includes a focus on the fur trade in Canada, including the beginnings of the fur trade in New France during the French Colonial period; westward expansion by the North West Company and British merchants of Montreal, and the monopoly over Western Canada and British Columbia by the Hudson’s Bay Company. There are additionally documents concerning the sealing industry in the late nineteenth century, as well as materials related to the history of Chinese immigration and settlement in Canada, the history of early British Columbia and the Canadian Pacific Railway Company.
Global commodities (Adam Matthew)
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Contains manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of the global commodities in world history that helped transform societies, global trading operations, habits of consumption and social practices. For Canadian content, includes items from the Glenbow on the history of wheat and oil, and items from the Hudson's Bay Company Archives which document the history of one of Canada’s greatest trading enterprises. Includes original manuscript journals of Pierre Radisson and James Isham; correspondence between Forts and Trading Posts and the Company in London; trading records; records of fur prices; and detailed accounts of interaction with the First Nations peoples.

Society, Culture & Politics in Canada: Canadiana Pamphlets, 1818-1929
This collection of pamphlets at McMaster University Library deal with many aspects of Canadian history, literature, social and political conditions. Included are pamphlets on religion and churches, all levels of government, elections, peace movements and war service, Communism, local communities and labor organizations to name but a few of the topics covered. From Archives Unbound.

Canada's Early Women Writers
Canada's Early Women Writers (CEWW) is a bio-bibliographical database of Canadian English-language women writers who first published in or before 1950.
1980s Culture and Society (Adam Matthew)
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An eclectic and multi-faceted resource compiled from archived zines, newspapers and ephemera, to oral histories, films and photographs, to showcase the key social, cultural, and political concerns of the decade.

Maps

Find more maps and geospatial data on the Maps & Geospatial Guide.

W.H. Pugsley Collection of Early Canadian Maps
Donated by William Howard Pugsley, this collection contains 50 digitized early maps of Canada and North America, with a focus on Eastern Canada and New France.
Map Collection, BAnQ
Over 40,000 digitized maps held by the BAnQ. To identify maps from a specific historical period, use the Date filter on the righthand side; consider also the Lieu representé filter.
Map Collection, John Carter Brown Library
Includes online maps from the 16th to the 19th centuries including Canada, New France, New England, and more.

Black History in Canada

For more on Black Canadian history, including primary sources, please see the Black Canadian Studies Guide.

LAC: Black History in Canada
In addition to a short background on Black History in Canada, this page includes a selection of primary sources available at Library and Archives Canada as well as the bibliographic information for many published sources and links to other institutions and repositories.
African Nova Scotians in the Age of Slavery and Abolition
A database from the Nova Scotia Archives including descriptions of African Nova Scotians from 1749 to 1955 including some digitized primary sources.
Black Loyalists Digital Collection
Digital collection from the Black Loyalist Heritage Center (Nova Scotia), including personal accounts, letters, and official documents.
Bills of Sale for Enslaved People: Quebec (1778-88)
Transcribed and made available by Dr. Charmaine A. Nelson (NSCAD University).
Slavery, Abolition, Emancipation, and Freedom: Primary Sources from Houghton Library
Slavery, Abolition, Emancipation, and Freedom: Primary Sources from Houghton Library (SAEF) is a growing digital collection highlighting materials related to Black history and culture from Harvard University's Houghton Library. These materials were hand-selected to provide freely accessible digitized primary sources for scholars of all sorts. A handful of this sources are related to Black history in Canada; the link leads to a collection-wide search for "canad*".

Voice of the Fugitive by Henry Bibb
Publication Date: 1851-52
Newspaper that circulated in Canada promoting the anti-slavery movement.

Accessible Archives: African American Newspaper Collection
This collection of primarily American newspapers includes two Canadian publications by and for Black Canadians and Americans: Provincial Freeman (Chatham, Canada West), 1854-1857; and The Canadian Observer (Toronto), 1914-1919;.
Freedom on the Move
Freedom on the Move is a database of fugitives from North American slavery focused on newspaper "runaway ads".
Black Film Archive: Canada
Black Film Archive is a living register of Black films. In its current iteration, it showcases Black films made from 1898 to 1989 currently streaming. This link leads to Canadian films.
The Canada Black Music Archives
The CBMA's mission is to research, preserve and celebrate various music genres, created, influenced and inspired by primarily Black Canadian musicians. The site can be searched by artist name, genre, region, and decade, and includes artist biographies, photographs, and playlists.

Indigenous Voices and Encounters

For more from Indigenous voices, please see the Indigenous Studies Subject Guide.

Two-Spirit Archives
The Two-Spirit Archives at the University of Winnipeg makes Two-Spirit people visible in our documentary heritage. It is guided in its development by the Two-Spirit Archives Advisory Council, which ensures Two-Spirit people are central to preserving the history of their contributions to society and in strengthening their community. Currently includes a small digital collection, and links to other projects including the Two-Spirited People of Manitoba Oral History project.
First Nations Digital Document Source
The First Nations Digital Document Source (FNDDS) is a collection of electronic documents used primarily for research in land claims and First Nations issues. Documents include court decisions, legislation, treaties, claims policies, privy council orders, research guides, and instructional resources related to land claims and Aboriginal title, particularly in the Canadian context.

Indigenous Histories and Cultures in North America (Adam Matthew)
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Explore manuscripts, artwork and rare printed books dating from the earliest contact with European settlers right up to photographs and newspapers from the mid-twentieth century. Browse through a wide range of rare and original documents from treaties, speeches and diaries, to historic maps and travel journals.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Indigenous Peoples of North America (Gale)
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Digital collection of primary sources containing manuscripts, monographs, newspapers, photographs, motion pictures, and artwork exploring the impact of invasion and colonization on Indigenous Peoples in North America, as well as the intersection of Indigenous and European histories and systems of knowledge.
North American Indian Thought and Culture (Alexander Street)
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Integrates autobiographies, biographies, Native American and Canadian First Peoples publications, oral histories, personal writings, photographs, drawings, and audio files.
Frontier Life : Borderlands, Settlement & Colonial Encounters (Adam Matthew)
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Contains primary source documents around life on the edges of the anglophone world from 1650-1920, covering European and colonial frontier regions of North America, Africa and Australasia. Documents reveal the lives of settlers and indigenous peoples in these areas.
Sabin Americana 1500-1926 (Gale)
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Based on the original Bibliotheca Americana bibliography of works by Joseph Sabin, this online collection contains books, pamphlets, serials and other works about all aspects of North American history and culture. It touches upon the political and religious life in North America and at times South America and the Caribbean. It features American and European views of the colonization of the Americas.

McCord Museum - Indigenous Cultures Collection
The Indigenous Cultures collection is composed of over 16,000 archaeological and historical objects covering nearly 12,000 years of history; over 6,000 are available in the online collection.

Indigenous Newspapers in North America (Adam Matthew)
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Contains historic pressings and contemporary periodicals, this collection explores nearly 200 years of Indigenous print journalism from the US and Canada, with newspapers representing various publishers, audiences and eras. Highlights how events were reported by and for Indigenous communities.
This resource has been developed with, and has only been made possible by, the permission and contribution of the newspaper publishers and Tribal Councils concerned.
Includes newspapers published in:
-Flat Bay, Newfoundland (The Caribou)
-Hagersville, Ontario (The Indian)
-Kamloops, British Columbia (Kamloops Wawa, Secwepemc News)
-Metlakatla, British Columbia (Ashigiamuk)
-Nepean, Ontario (Caribou News)

Shingwauk Narratives: Sharing Residential School History
An open-access online book from the Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre (SRSC), which hold letter books of two principals of the Shingwauk Residential School (Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario) dating from 1875-1904 and include a wealth of information about the early history of Shingwauk and Wawanosh.

Atiku : Le portail des connaissances sur le Nord et l’Arctique
Publication produced by the Institut nordique du Québec (INQ), a group of Quebec experts in the field of northern and Arctic research. The collection First Peoples of the North includes Indigenous language dictionaries, information from StatsCan, scholarship, and more.

Settler and Immigrant Experiences

Migration to New Worlds
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From the century of immigration, through to the modern era, Migration to New Worlds charts the emigration experience of millions across 200 years of turbulent history. Canadian content includes oral histories from the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 from war brides, political refugees and displaced persons; and homestead experiences in Canada from manuscript diaries and letter collections from Glenbow Museum and The National Archives (UK).
Frontier Life : Borderlands, Settlement & Colonial Encounters (Adam Matthew)
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Contains primary source documents around life on the edges of the anglophone world from 1650-1920, covering European and colonial frontier regions of North America, Africa and Australasia. Documents reveal the lives of settlers and indigenous peoples in these areas.
Early Encounters in North America (Alexander Street)
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Contains published and unpublished items by 1,482 authors including letters, diaries, memoirs and accounts of early encounters with North American indigenous peoples.
North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories. (Alexander Street)
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This collection includes letters, diaries, oral histories, interviews, and other personal narratives of over 2,000 authors providing a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada between 1800 and 1950.
North American Women's Letters and Diaries (Alexander Street)
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A collection of letters and diaries written by over 1,300 women who lived in North America from the 17th to the 20th century.

Gender and Sexuality

Gender: Identity and Social Change (Adam Matthew)
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Essential primary sources documenting the changing representations and lived experiences of gender roles and relations from the nineteenth century to the present. This expansive collection offers sources for the study of women's suffrage, the feminist movement, the men’s movement, employment, education, the body, the family, and government and politics. Includes items from the Glenbow, one of the largest museums in Western Canada.
Women in the National Archives (Adam Matthew)
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Reproduces original documents covering the campaign for women's suffrage in Britain, 1903-1928 and the granting of women's suffrage in colonial territories, 1930-1962, including Canada.

The Alberta Women's Memory Project
Includes profiles of Alberta women, memoirs, and digitized archival collections relevant to the lives of women in Alberta during the 20th century.
Chatelaine (1928-2005)
English-language Canadian women's magazine which covers topics from food, style and home décor to politics, health and relationships.
Rise Up! Feminist Archive
The Rise Up! project aims to create a digital archive of original publications, documents, flyers, posters, and many other materials representing feminist activism from the 1970s to 1990s across Canada and Quebec.
The ArQuives
The ArQuives is one of the largest independent LGBTQ2+ archives in the world and the only archive in Canada with a mandate to collect at a national level. Its mandate is to safeguard the LGBTQ2+ history of Canada. The ArQuives preserves a wide range of material including personal and organizational papers, books, monographs, photographs, moving images, sound recordings, periodicals, artifacts (like buttons, board games, t-shirts, and banners), and other reference material.
Tip: try browsing the digital exhibits.
Edmonton Queer History Collection
This collection features 2SLGBTQ+ community magazines, newsletters, and items of historical significance. Material has been digitized in support of the Edmonton Queer History Project an innovate university-community project designed to help celebrate the people, places, and moments that have helped to build Edmonton’s 2SLGBTQ+ community.
Transgender Archives (University of Victoria)
The Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria is committed to the preservation of the history of pioneering activists, community leaders, and researchers who have contributed to the betterment of Trans+ and other gender-diverse people.

World Wars

First World War Portal (Adam Matthew)
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Four modules of primary sources for the study of the Great War. Containing personal collections and rare printed material to military files, artwork and audio-visual files, content highlights the experiences of soldiers, civilians and governments on both sides of the conflict.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Medical Services and Warfare (Adam Matthew)
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Explore multiple perspectives on the history of injury, treatment and disease on the front line. Chart scientific advances through hospital records, medical reports and first-hand accounts, and discover the evidence of how war shaped medical practice across the centuries. Canadian content from Library and Archives Canada focuses on the influenza epidemic of 1918 and subsequent outbreaks, from the cleaning and quarantine of freight ships to government reports and correspondence tackling the crisis.
World War Two Studies (Adam Matthew)
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Primary sources, offering insight into many aspects of the conflict, including government policy, the war in the Pacific, and the war in Europe. Sources include the records of the Special Operations Executive; and private papers of American General Robert L Eichelberger, from the Pacific war.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub

Canadian Newspapers and the Second World War (Canadian War Museum)
Collection of more than 140,000 clippings, arranged by subject and date, includes news stories and editorials from newspapers, mostly Canadian, documenting every aspect of the war. English articles are drawn from the Hamilton Spectator; French articles are drawn from Le Devoir.

Service Newspapers of World War Two (Adam Matthew)
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This digital resource reveals the story of war as told by the newspapers that brought information, entertainment and camaraderie to the forces at home and overseas. Explore over 300 titles from key nations across the globe that took part in the world-changing conflict.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub

Canadian Letters and Images Project
The Canadian Letters and Images Project is an online archive of the Canadian war experience, from any war, home front and battlefront, as told through the letters and images of Canadians themselves. Includes collections for WWI and WWII, as well as other conflicts.
Canadian War Poster Collection
The holdings of the Print Collection in the Rare Books and Special Collections Division include some 250 Canadian posters from the two World Wars.
Canadian Military Oral Histories (University of Victoria)
The Canadian Military Oral History Collection is composed of more than 300 interviews of veterans of WWI, WWII, the Korean War and the War in Afghanistan.

Statistics

Canada Year Book Historical Collection, 1867-1967
Discover Canada's social and economic past through the people, events and facts that have shaped this vast country. Includes historical data in Statistics Canada's annual Canada Year Book during the first century of Canada's history, from 1867 to 1967
Historical Statistics of Canada
A digitized version of the second edition of Historical Statistics of Canada, which contains over 1,000 statistical tables on the social, economic, and institutional conditions of Canada from the start of the Confederation in 1867 to the mid-1970s.
Canadian Census Analyser
The Census Analyser includes access to census data from 1961 to 2016, and outputs include HTML, plain text, CSV, SAS, and SPASS.
Odesi
Odesi provides researchers access to datasets from Statistics Canada, datafiles from Gallup Canada and other polling companies, public-domain files such as the Canadian National Election Surveys, and selected files from the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR).

McGill Rare Books & Special Collections

Canadiana
Follow this link to read more about all of the Canadiana collections at McGill's Rare Books & Special Collections.
W.H. Pugsley Collection of Early Canadian Maps
Donated by William Howard Pugsley, this collection contains 50 digitized early maps of Canada and North America, with a focus on Eastern Canada and New France.
Fur Trade Fonds
This collection of websites provides access to full text manuscripts related to the North American fur trade, including the Masson Papers (letters, diaries, travel narratives, and other textual documents relating to the North West Company and the colonial-era fur trade), the business papers of James McGill, and a collection of voyageur contracts. The papers represent a settler perspective of North American places and peoples.
Canadian County Atlas Digital Project
The County Atlas Digital Project is a searchable database of property owners' names which appear Canadian county atlases. Township maps, portraits and properties have been scanned, with links from the property owners' names in the database.
Canadian War Poster Collection
The holdings of the Print Collection in the Rare Books and Special Collections Division include some 250 Canadian posters from the two World Wars.
Canadian Corporate Reports
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Canadian Corporate Reports Project comprises historical annual reports from major Canadian corporations. The collection, which traces many companies back to the 19th Century, consists of annual reports of approximately 2,000 Canadian corporations in all business sectors.
John Bland Canadian Architecture Collection
Architectural archive of late 19th and early 20th century works forming a core of material relating to the built heritage of Montreal, both residential and institutional. The collection contains extensive material relating to several McGill campus buildings.

Liaison Librarian

Kristen Howard

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Subjects: Classical studies, History, Indigenous studies, Religious studies

Canadian History