Guides: HIST 334: History of New France: Home

Getting Started

Canadian History
by Kristen Howard Last Updated Sep 26, 2025 2106 views this year
Indigenous Studies
by Nikki Tummon Last Updated Sep 24, 2025 1670 views this year

Dictionary of Canadian Biography / Dictionnaire biographique du Canada
An excellent research to familiarize yourself with important people in the history of Canada.

Collections Centre

Check on the progress of the move of the McLennan-Library circulating collection at the Collections Centre website.

Find Secondary Sources

Find books

Library Catalogue

Find peer-reviewed articles

America: History and Life (EBSCO)
Provides historical coverage of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Includes information abstracted from over 2,000 journals published worldwide.
CBCA (Canadian Business & Current Affairs Database) (ProQuest)
A longstanding, comprehensive Canadian periodical collection covering multiple subjects and topics, with millions of full-text records. Accessible to readers and researchers at every level, it features a diversified mix of publications, including scholarly journals, trade publications, magazines, reports, radio and television transcripts, news, and dissertations. - Library can facilitate negotiating text-mining rights for this database for McGill faculty and students wishing to acquire the rights with their own research funds. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Erudit
Multidisciplinary social science and humanities publications containing journals and e-book collections from Quebec University Presses including: Presses de l'Université de Montréal, Presses de l'Université Laval, Publications du CRIR. Erudit Cultural Magazines collection is not included in McGill's subscription.
Repère
Repère is an index to articles from the most widely read French-language periodicals distributed in Quebec.

Find dissertations/theses

ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global
Full-text of dissertations from McGill University as well as 3,100 worldwide universities. Full-text PDFs available for all non-embargoed dissertations and theses from 1997 – forward, with select full text available prior to 1997.
Theses Canada / Thèses Canada
Theses Canada, launched in 1965 at the request of the deans of Canadian graduate schools, is a collaborative program between Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and Canadian universities. It strives to:
- acquire and preserve theses and dissertations from participating universities
- provide free access to Canadian digital theses and dissertations in the collection
- facilitate access to non-digital theses and dissertations in the collection

Find Primary Sources

French and Canadian Archival Documents

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.
Library and Archives Canada (LAC)
Access Canada's documentary heritage.

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

BAnQ Numérique
Digitized resources from the BAnQ; try filtering by year.
French Archives Nationales d'Outre Mer
Service à compétence nationale installé à Aix-en-Provence depuis 1966, les Archives nationales d’outre-mer (ANOM) ont pour mission la conservation, la communication et la collecte des archives de l’expansion coloniale française.
Gallica de la BnF
Gallica est la bibliothèque numérique de la Bibliothèque nationale de France. En libre accès, elle regroupe des livres numérisés, des cartulaires, des revues, des photos et une collection d'enluminures.

Digital Collections

France in America
This online collection presents digitized items from the Library of Congress collection that explore the history of the French presence in North America from the first decades of the 16th century to the end of the 19th century.

Frontier Life : Borderlands, Settlement & Colonial Encounters (Adam Matthew)
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.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
North American Women's Letters and Diaries (Alexander Street)
A collection of letters and diaries written by over 1,300 women who lived in North America from the 17th to the 20th century.
Early Encounters in North America (Alexander Street)
Contains published and unpublished items by 1,482 authors including letters, diaries, memoirs and accounts of early encounters with North American indigenous peoples.
Indigenous Peoples of North America (Gale Primary Sources)
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.
The content of this database is available for text-mining through Gale Digital Scholar Lab

Select Books and eBooks

The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents by Reuben Gold Thwaites (ed.)
Publication Date: 1896-1901
Customs of the American Indians compared with the customs of primitive times by Joseph François Lafitau
Publication Date: 1974-77
La vie et les moeurs des sauvages ameriquains, comparées aux moeurs des premiers tems. by Joseph François Lafitau
Publication Date: 1732
The description and natural history of the coasts of North America (Acadia) by Nicolas Denys
Publication Date: 1908
Histoire naturelle des peuples, des animaux, des arbres & plantes de l'Amerique septentrionale... by Nicolas Denys
Publication Date: 1672
Mémoire sur les moeurs, coustumes et relligion des sauvages de l'Amérique septentrionale by Nicolas Perrot
Publication Date: 1864
Codex Canadensis and the Writings of Louis Nicolas by François-Marc Gagnon (Editor)
ISBN: 9780773587236

Publication Date: 2011

Citations

History as a discipline uses the Chicago Manual of Style (18th edition) for citations, and usually the Notes-Bibliography form. This requires creating properly formatted footnotes footnotes and a Bibliography for your assignments. Resources to understand the Chicago style of citations are included below.

Note: Chicago Manual of Style updated to the 18th edition in September 2024.

HCS Guide to the Chicago Manual of Style
A guide to the Chicago Manual of Style developed for students in History and Classics (18th edition).

The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Edition
Publication Date: 2024
A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Ninth Edition by Kate L. Turabian
Call Number: LB2369 T8 2018

Publication Date: 2018

A guide to Chicago Manual of Style with more information on hard-to-cite or unusual sources than the original manual. Note that this manual has not yet been updated to reflect the changes in the 18th edition of Chicago.

Guides

Chicago Manual of Style Citation Quick Guide
McGill Library Citation Subject Guide
Under "citation styles by subject", select "History" for more resources on Chicago style.

Library Support

Chicago Workshops
McGill Librarians offer virtual Chicago Citation Style workshops every term. Follow this link to find and register for upcoming workshops!
Citation Management
Attend a workshop to learn how to use Zotero or EndNote, useful citation management systems. Zotero is highly recommended for History students!

Liaison Librarian

Kristen Howard

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