Many historical newspapers have been digitized and placed online. Thanks to this wonderful new technology, we can read the New York Times back to 1851. The Times of London can be read back to 1785, at least if you have a subscription, as can the Economist, the Toronto Globe and Mail, the Financial Times, and many other newspapers. Chronicling America allows internet users to read and do keyword searches of a vast number of 19th century US newspapers. Trove offers a similar service in Australia.
Alas, Montreal, which used to be Canada’s commercial capital, has been poorly served by this technology. It is very easy to search the New York Times for, say, 1865 but it much harder to use the Montreal Gazette for that year. Montreal Gazette after 1878 is available in in Google News, but it isn’t keyword searchable, which limits its usefulness to researchers. The Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec has digitized a number of historical newspapers and put them online. However,its collection doesn’t include the Gazette and isn’t keyword searchable for this period, which makes is a major problem.
Do any of my readers know whether a keyword searchable archive of the Montreal Gazette has been created or is in the process of being created?
The Past Speaks 
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