History
Start your history research with our excellent resources. These resources cover a broad range of historical time periods and events.
- Last updated: March 11, 2025
LIBRARY DATABASES
Access these resources using your WVML card.
Find articles from scholarly journals in nearly every academic discipline. Excellent for students and researchers.
Access Information: Licensed for West Vancouver residents, students, and business owners only.
Search a comprehensive and credible source of information for students, readers, and scholars. This encyclopedia includes articles, biographies, timelines and more on Canadian people, places and events.
Read most major Canadian newspapers, including The Vancouver Sun, The Province and The Globe & Mail. You can also find local papers such as the North Shore News.
Access Information: Licensed for West Vancouver residents, students, and business owners only.
Know BC is home to the Encyclopedia of British Columbia, an authoritative resource on BC past and present that features more than 4,000 articles and 1,500 accompanying photographs, maps, charts and tables, as well as sound and video clips.
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An online version of the 1999 reference work that covers over 115 different peoples/ethnic groups that make up Canada’s population.
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Points to the Past provides access to primary source material dating from 1450 to 2008. This includes over half a million books, digitized newspapers (The Economist, Financial Times, and more), 6.5 million manuscript pages, maps, photos, pamphlets, sermons and poems.
Available in the library and at home within BC.
Articles, biographies, diaries, speeches and more from World War I, the Great Depression, World War II and the Cold War. A great place to start for social studies and history assignments.
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Articles, biographies, diaries, speeches and more from the First World War. A great place to start for World War I school assignments.
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Articles, biographies, diaries, speeches and more from the Second World War. A great place to start for World War II school assignments.
Access Information: Licensed for West Vancouver residents, students, and business owners only.
Includes information on over 190 countries, covering topics such as banking and securities, climate, government data, demographic statistics, languages, religion, government and flags. Also includes biographical essays on national leaders and a special section on the United Nations.
Access Information: Licensed for West Vancouver residents, students, and business owners only.
ON THE SHELF
Check these out the next time you’re in the Library.
Explore our collection of materials about a wide-range of topics in Canadian history.
Understand the political system in Canada.
Find out what the integration of economic, cultural, political, and social institutions means for the world.
on the web
These recommended websites are free and easily accessible! All you need is an internet connection.
Search the digital collections of libraries, archives and museums from across Canada, as well as access 60 million pages of Canadian digital documentary heritage.
Explore writing and multimedia from Weider History Group, the world's largest publisher of history magazines. This website focuses on American history.
Explore a continually growing set of resources that explore the historical context of settler colonialism in Canada and foundational themes relating to the history of the Indian Residential School System, Indigenous histories, contemporary realities, and futures.
Search the full-text digital edition of Canadian Geographic's 2018 Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada. It includes information about Indigenous lands, languages, communities, treaties, and cultures, and topics such as the Canadian Indian residential school system, racism, and cultural appropriation.
Examine an online archive of the Canadian war experience, from any war, as told through the letters and images of Canadians themselves.
multimedia
Photos, videos, and more that you can access online for free.
Search through Library and Archives Canada's historical photos collection.
Listen and watch recordings of original CBC broadcasts dating back to its creation in 1936.
The Indigenous Heritage Portal of LAC provides a window to vast collections of resources created by or about Indigenous peoples in Canada, and reflects their significant contributions to this country’s political, social, economic and cultural development. The site features numerous e-collections, databases, virtual exhibitions, Indigenous genealogy, and tools to help locate materials.