To commemorate the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, the Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan will begin to release the first digitized copies of the province’s community newspapers from 1939 to 1945 on the Saskatchewan Historic Newspapers Online website.

Researchers interested in family history, military history and community engagement in the Second World War will soon be able to read online reports from Saskatchewan’s towns and cities.

Insight into what was happening in Saskatchewan during this period via newspapers has been key to understanding our Provinces history.

Curt Campbell Manager of the Record Processing and Preservation unit talks about how the project came about.

"It started back when we were commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the first world war. So back in 2014 and what we had wanted to do was to digitize the holdings of our weekly newspapers. The extent of the papers that we have runs from 1878 through to the modern period. In terms of pages, we are probably talking about ten million pages of newsprint. How we decided to tackle the project was to break it up into thematic chunks."

Campbell says they have so far covered the first world war and a period from 1878 to 1914, with the remainder of Saskatchewan’s community newspapers from this WW2 period becoming available by the end of 2020. 

When completed, the digital content will encompass approximately 560,000 pages of newsprint from nearly 160 community publications across the province.

"Where to go is to the Saskatchewan Historical newspapers online. Do a google search on that Saskatchewan Historical papers online. And you'll be able to go through the search boxes and you can find records based off-year or community or the name of the paper and do browsing however you want to approach the records. So it's a great little tool I think a lot of genealogists have been enjoying using it and other researchers as well."

Campbell says they next look to cover the roaring 1920s as well as the great depression.

Click here for the site.