Links
Resources
British Columbia City Directories, 1860-1955
Digital editions of British Columbia (and Vancouver Island) directories from the Vancouver Public Library collections.
British Columbia Archives
Descriptions of government and non-government records and access to digital files of historical maps and photographs.
City of Victoria Archives
The online “Archives Reading Room” provides access to “descriptions of City government and community records, as well as digital photographs.” The City of Victoria Archives holds an index of burial records for Ross Bay Cemetery from 1872-1990. The index is available through the Ross Bay Cemetery Search page. The City of Victoria Archives holds an Index to Obituaries published c. 1901-1939 in the Victoria Daily Times, along with an Index of Marriage Notices from the same period and source.
Nanaimo Community Archives
The NCA is the “official repository of the archival records of the City of Nanaimo, Nanaimo District Museum and the Nanaimo Historical Society.” The NAC’s holdings “also include service club, community organization, fraternal club, family and a wide range of other community records.”
Saanich Archives
Provides access to digital images, with descriptive inventories of oral histories, maps, manuscripts and municipal records. Textual records include Saanich school board minutes (1878-1906).
The British Colonist online edition, 1858-1980
A searchable digital version of one of Victoria's leading daily newspapers, founded in the colonial period as the British Colonist and known in the modern era as the Victoria Daily Colonist.
Victoria Daily Times, 1884-1940
Digitized issues of the Victoria Daily Times, a newspaper published in Victoria, British Columbia. Issues published from 1884, when the newspaper was launched, to 1940 are available at this website. [The Victoria Daily Times and Daily Colonist merged in 1980 to create the present-day Times Colonist newspaper.]
Index to Historical Victoria Newspapers
General index to the Victoria newspapers, principally the Victoria Colonist, c. 1858 - 1935, compiled by Victoria heritage experts Leona Taylor and Dorothy Mindenhall.
UVic Libraries Special Collections
Includes early British Columbia and Vancouver Island maps, books, pamphlets and ephemera, and Victoria City fire insurance plans, c. 1885 - 1916.
1901 census of Victoria City & southern Vancouver Island
Transcript by Hugh Armstrong, Victoria Genealogical Society, of census records for Victoria City and nearby districts (Esquimalt, Colwood, Langford, Oak Bay, etc.), 1901, with maps of census sub-districts.
References
The History of Work Information System
Amsterdam-based scholars created the Historical International Classification
of Occupations [HISCO] system, used to encode historical census data on viHistory.
Related material
The Homeroom
British Columbia's history of education website, with pages on Vancouver Island schools, teachers and administrators.
Victoria's Victoria
Largely the work of undergraduate History students at the University of Victoria, featuring their research on local historical topics..