Did you know the Sooke Region Museum has a wonderful collection of bound newspapers available for use in research?
Issues from this very paper make up the bulk of our newspaper collection, however, we also have many papers and clippings from neighbouring or global regions.
Sooke News Mirror newspapers are not available online for years prior to 2012, and there is an unfortunate reason for that. In July of 2013, a fire broke out at Evergreen Mall, destroying the 1970s building that housed the Sooke News Mirror office.
Since the fire, the Sooke Region Museum has held the largest collection of Mirror newspapers, dating back to 1959, when the Mirror, then “The Grapevine”, had just begun. Our hope is to eventually fill in the missing pieces of the digital collection that the Mirror has started.
Recently, we had two very similar requests to view a newspaper article from our collection from two separate families. They both recalled seeing a possible front-page article in the Mirror, featuring a large picture of people enjoying the Sooke Potholes Park, around the 1980-90’s. Interested parties came in to find the article, unfortunately to no avail; however, they enjoyed looking into these pieces of the past.
While newspapers can be highly useful for research, there are a few things to keep in mind. Newspaper stories are created with the intention of informing readers, but also grabbing the reader’s attention, in addition to selling newspapers or ad space. In well-rounded research, you should have multiple sources of information in addition to newspapers.
The level of coverage a story was given in the paper can also show the value placed on certain topics of the day. Earlier papers in our collection reported on the more personal aspects of community members not seen in today’s paper, such as marriage announcements, new jobs or endeavors, homemaker’s advice, or residents being accepted into university.
Our newspaper collection can be used for genealogical research, as we have extensive clippings of obituaries from a variety of sources.
You might also find a more human take on the socio-politics of the time, with published opinion pieces.
Popular advertisements and prices of the time are often remarked on when researchers are flipping through the papers. It is always a shock to see past grocery and gas prices!
