Early copies of the St. Albert Gazette are now available online, thanks to the collective efforts of the St. Albert Public Library, the Musée Héritage Museum, the University of Alberta Bruce Peel Special Collections Library and the St. Albert Community Foundation.
The project was a way of preserving the original materials themselves while making them accessible for free to the general public.
St. Albert Public Library director Peter Bailey explained that these old newspapers take up lots of space and often fall to the ravages of time.
“A lot of our Gazettes are stored off site, obviously because we have problems with space. It’s not optimal storage conditions for old newspapers. It’s not climate-controlled.”
Even the legislative library had to get rid of all of its old print copies of all major community newspapers across the province, simply because of a lack of proper storage space.
“We said, ‘Don’t discard them. We’ll take them back.’ That meant we had tons and tons of Gazettes over at the storage place. We wanted some way of making them more accessible. A lot of libraries and other groups have been digitizing local materials. We did a lot of research and looked around, saying, ‘How do they do this?’”
That search took them to the U of A and the University of Calgary, two institutions that each undertook massive digitization projects a few years ago. At the U of A, this resulted in Peel’s Prairie Provinces, an online treasure trove of old archived newspapers compiled through the Bruce Peel Special Collections Library.
The online archives is a veritable treasure trove of information and history, including materials from more than 100 different titles going back to 1871, with newspapers including the St. Albert Gazette, even when it was known simply as The Gazette and later as the St. Albert/Sturgeon Gazette. There is also the St. Albert Star/Ă©toile de St. Albert and Le Courrier de l’Ouest, at one time the only French language newspaper in Western Canada. That newspaper was famous for the involvement of former St. Albert resident Raymond Brutinel, an industrious industrialist who would eventually become an important figure in the country’s military efforts during the First World War.
A project like this didn’t just require the physical of microfilm copies of the Gazette.
“The U of A said, ‘The copyright holder is the key in all this,’” Bailey continued. “Right from the get-go, Duff [Jamison] was on board ... for making it a community resource. He was really excited about the prospect.”
Jamison is not only the publisher of the Gazette and numerous other newspapers under the Great West Newspapers brand, he is also involved with the St. Albert Community Foundation. The group administers funds – including the Jamison Family Fund – that are donated annually to various worthy community causes.
He said that digitizing these old newspapers was a win-win situation all around.
“Up to this point, historians visiting the Gazette offices or the library sorted through hard copies and microfilm page-by-page to find the information they now can search for with the click of a mouse. And they can do it from the convenience of their home or office.”
“I also would add that a tour through the past can be a lot of fun for the casual reader as well. Remind yourself of our many active citizens from the past or the price of groceries, shoes and cars. If nostalgia is your thing, you're going to enjoy this.”
There are some gaps in various newspaper editions, something that organizers intend to rectify with an ongoing effort. Bailey suggested that anyone who has any old copies of the Gazette should bring the material to the library’s attention in order to fill out those gaps.
The library is hosting a launch event on Nov. 12 from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. People are encouraged to confirm their attendance first by sending an email to [email protected].
Peel’s Prairie Provinces can be found at peel.library.ualberta.ca/newspapers.
