Newspapers - British Columbia

Online

Surrey Libraries has the BC Historical Newspapers database, searchable, containing full coverage for the Vancouver Sun (1912 to 2010), Province (1898 to 2010), and Victoria Times Colonist (1894 to 2010).  

• British Columbia Historical Newspapers 1859-1995. The site is hosted by UBC and contains many smaller newspapers from all across BC. 
• Victoria Times Colonist / British Colonist Newspaper: The University of Victoria has British Colonist Newspaper, which can be searched online by keyword and browsed by date. The university’s website now contains all the issues of the British Colonist (also called The Daily British Colonist, the Daily Colonist, and other variants) from its first issue in 1858 to 1980.
• Ancestor Hunt newspapers
• The British Columbia Regional Digitized History website has digitized Okanagan region historical newspapers from several Okanagan communities. 
• Canadiana.ca provides a searchable collection of digitized historical newspapers for all provinces:  
• Library and Archives Canada provides a geographical list of newspapers by province and then by city/town names.  Some of the titles have links to digitized copies of the newspapers: (Under Filter options: Region, select British Columbia)   
• This is a good resource for determining the name of the newspaper in the research location of interest. If the newspaper of interest does not provide a link to a digitized copy, it may be available by searching for it on Canadiana.ca. 
• The Google News Archive has a large collection of historical newspapers.  Researchers will need to know the name of the newspaper. This resource is not keyword-searchable.  
• Native Voice, the Official Organ of the Native Brotherhood of British Columbia, has archived newspapers 1947-1955 that focus on the Indigenous community. 

Smaller communities may have their own online archives of their local newspapers. Contact the newspaper, local archive/museum, or local public library in your area of interest to inquire or ask our staff for assistance. Many local newspapers are now part of the Newspapers.com subscription database, which requires a paid subscription. 

Print

While the Family History Department does not hold any print copies of historical newspapers, however we do have some print resources to assist you if you do not know the name of the newspapers that were in publication in the period and place of your area of interest.

Microfilm

The Family History department has microfilm holdings for the following newspapers:

• Vancouver Sun            1979 to 2019
• Vancouver Province     1993 to 2019
• Surrey Leader              1929 to 2005; Apr – Sept 2006
• Surrey Now                  1984 to 1989; 1994 to 2009
• Surrey Times                1895 (incomplete)
• Surrey Gazette             1917 to 1929 (incomplete)

Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey Campus, Special Collections, also has a microfilm collection.