Community History made Accessible

Thanks to a grant from the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, the Coast News/Sunshine Coast News is available online and freely accessible to the public. The digitized newspapers are searchable and browsable; single pages can be downloaded in the JPEG format, while entire issues are downloadable as PDF’s.  For this first phase of the project, we focused on issues of the Coast News in most urgent need of preservation (1945-1976, 1983-1987, 1989). Future phases of the project will see the remainder of the Coast News, along with other local papers, added to the database.

The archived Coast News collection provides a valuable historical reference for understanding individual lives as well as broader community issues on the Sunshine Coast. The collection spans 37 years of community history during a period of tremendous growth and development.  Stories about individual lives and specific events, including births, deaths, business, real estate and planning, provide valuable information that is not recorded in more formal historical accounts.  Editorials and articles provide perspective on opinions and views of the times. Few other sources of historical information are as prolific and as wide-ranging, or offer such a detailed lens into our community’s past.

With the ability to search by date or keyword, teachers, students, researchers, and the general public are just a click away from a wealth of free information. By providing easy access to the newspaper archives, we encourage public education and lifelong learning.

For more information and a live demonstration on the website features, please join us for our Open House to celebrate the Launch of the Newspaper Digitization Project, Saturday, August 11th, from 1 pm to 3 pm.

The very first issue of the Coast News, published July 11, 1945 in Halfmoon Bay.