Go way Back to School with historical yearbooks
Back to school is a very busy time for students and their families, with Labour Day marking the annual return to elementary school, high school, college or university. Often forgotten in the rush to start a new school year is the valuable family history and biographical information to be found in that standard year-end keepsake, the school yearbook.
North York Central’s Canadiana department on the 6th floor collects an extensive range of yearbooks from across Ontario, mainly from high schools and universities, plus some colleges. Over time these provide a remarkable record of education in Ontario, as well as detailed information about students and teachers.
Genealogists and local historians find very useful the photos, names, dates, club and team activities, awards and myriad other details these yearbooks offer. This kind of information about the school careers of family members, ancestors, or people who grew up to be well known can be very difficult to find in other sources.
Just for fun, I looked up a few famous Torontonians to see what can be found about them in Canadiana’s yearbook collection. Some of the results are below:
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A 17-year-old Tim Horton, long before his doughnut days, From: The Tower 1948, St. Michael’s College School, p.42-43
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Social activist June Callwood From: The Hello 1941, Brantford |
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Journalist Robert Fulford and From: The Muse 1946, Malvern |
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To date, projects to digitize Canadian school yearbooks and post them online have been scarce. Here are a couple of good examples:
- St. Michael’s College School (Toronto) – digitized from 1910-2009
- Internet Archive – schools include Ashbury College (Ottawa), Trinity College School (Port Hope), and Selwyn House School (Montreal)
If you are keen on family history, you may be surprised what yearbooks can reveal. Follow these links to see the range of titles held in Canadiana:
Canadiana staff welcome donations of yearbooks from any Ontario school and any year. So don’t worry about those embarrassing high school photos, dig out yearbooks you no longer want, and bring them to the 6th floor of North York Central. Family history researchers will thank you!
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