History

Now more than ever is the time to consider the realities of Canadian-Black communities. Explore our collection of films by distinguished Black filmmakers, creators, and allies. We’ve selected a group of NFB films that portray the multi-layered lives of Canada’s diverse Black communities.

The Canadian Commission for UNESCO (CCUNESCO) helps Canadians share knowledge locally and globally in order to create better societies and build peace in the minds of men and women. To do so, the Commission facilitates cooperation in the fields of education, science, culture, communication and information to address some of the most complex challenges facing the world today. With its initiatives and networks, CCUNESCO supports the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and other UNESCO priorities. The Commission operates under the authority of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Project 1917 is a series of events that took place a hundred years ago as described by those involved. It is composed only of diaries, letters, memoirs, newspapers and other documents

Books, manuscripts and other items from across our collections that are especially significant. Many of them have been displayed in Library exhibitions in the past – now they can be accessed at any time, from anywhere in the world, and browsed cover to cover.

Canadian War Museum Site

Heritage Minutes

The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library has extensive holdings of Canadian pamphlets and broadsides in a great diversity of subject areas from agriculture and land settlement to politics and government to education, temperance, transportation, natural resources, and the arts. The collection encompasses examples from the earliest period of printing in Canada, such as the 1763 prospectus for the Quebec Gazette, to a 1930 price list of officer's uniforms issued by the Montreal firm of W. Scully.

The collection contains 101 of the Champlain Society's volumes (almost 50,000 printed pages) dealing with exploration and discovery over three centuries. It includes first-hand accounts of Samuel de Champlain's voyages in New France as well as the diary from Sir John Franklin's first land expedition to the Arctic, 1819-22.

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
From 1774 to present

Primary source collections exploring topics in history, literature, and culture developed by educators.

The project is working to publish both digital and print editions of Eleanor Roosevelt's political papers.

Online Sources for European History
Selected Transcriptions, Facsimiles and Translations
Organized by Country

The Europe Portal
Europe History Interactive Map: See important events against the backdrop of an interactive map, complete with mouseover buttons for more information on each event. Toggle back and forth between major time periods.

Detailed European History Timeline: Significant events throughout European history, laid out in chronological order. Includes several maps.

The Formation of European Nations: How each "nation" of people (nationality), and nation-state (country)

This website offers virtual access to a premier collection of historic depictions amassed by Rodolfo Lanciani (1845–1929). Archaeologist, professor of topography, and secretary of the Archaeological Commission, Lanciani was a pioneer in the systematic, modern study of the city of Rome. Beginning in the latter part of the nineteenth century and continuing into the first three decades of the twentieth century, his work profoundly influenced our understanding of the ancient city.

This site features links to online exhibitions that have been created by libraries, archives, and historical societies, as well as to museum online exhibitions with a significant focus on library and archival materials. The scope is international and multi-lingual.

The Manuscriptorium project is creating a virtual research environment providing access to all existing digital documents in the sphere of historic book resources (manuscripts, incunabula, early printed books, maps, charters and other types of documents). These historical resources, otherwise scattered in various digital libraries around the world, are now available under a single digital library interface. The service provides seamless access to more than 5 million digital images.

The late James McKegney, Professor of Spanish at the University of Waterloo for more than thirty years, passed away in 1981 and left to his heirs one of the most important research collections pertaining to the independence movement in Mexico, 1789-1828. The research materials, compiled between 1965 and 1980, consist of a bibliographic database of more than 11,000 citations and over 1,150 photocopies of pamphlets listed in the database. This database and the accompanying documents are one of the most important archival sources in the world for the study of the political, social and cultural aspects of the independence movement in Mexico.

The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives.

In partnership with the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory, the Google Cultural Institute has helped to bring Nelson Mandela's archive online. The multimedia archive includes Mr Mandela’s correspondence with family, comrades and friends, diaries written during his 27 years of imprisonment, and notes he made while leading the negotiations that ended apartheid in South Africa. The archive also include the earliest-known photos of Mr Mandela and never-before seen drafts of Mr Mandela's material for his book "Conversations with Myself,” the sequel to his autobiography "Long Walk to Freedom.”

This collection is a pilot project to digitize backfiles of community newspapers in Ontario

This site has biographies of women who contributed to our culture in many different ways. There are writers, educators, scientists, heads of state, politicians, civil rights crusaders, artists, entertainers, and others. Some were alive hundreds of years ago and some are living today.

Last year, the National Archives’ Commemoration Programme marked significant events of 1921, culminating in the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. A major exhibition, The Treaty, 1921: Records from the Archives, previewed in the British Academy in London on 11 October and opened in Dublin Castle on 6 December.