Newspaper project preserves language, history

Walking down the street 100 years ago in Edmonton, you'd be far more likely to hear "Ceci de dernière minute!" than "Extra, extra read all about it!"

Until around 1914, English was the fourth most common language spoken in Edmonton, after French, Cree and Gaelic. The French had been drawn to the area through the fur trade prior to colonization and were a tremendous presence in the area. Because of the strong French influence in the area, francophone newspapers of the day reveal a great deal about the history of the region.

"These papers are very important documents," said Dr. Frank McMahon, a University of Alberta professor emeritus who has led a five-year project to digitize Alberta's French language newspapers.

"It had become impossible to access them easily because the hard copies were falling apart; so many people were using them too much... And working from microfiche is much more difficult, a lot harder to work with."

The project involved both digitizing and making the digitized documents searchable.

The end result is "very, very useful as a tool for historians to get more data about various things they're interested in," said McMahon, from the U of A's Campus Saint-Jean, the only French-language faculty west of Manitoba.

A time-consuming endeavour, the project cost more than $100,000 and was largely funded by the Francophone Secretariat branch of the Alberta government.

The project, which involved University of Alberta Libraries, is coming to a close as the few remaining newspapers are being tracked down and digitized. The accumulated body of knowledge now allows scholars, students and history buffs to learn more about the Edmonton community as it existed as long ago as 1898.

Since the influx of immigrants into the western provinces between 1910 and 1914, the French population of Alberta became "an important minority until the 1920s," said McMahon, and French culture has remained an important part of the province's multicultural tapestry.

Francophone newspapers continue to thrive. La Survivance, which began in 1928, has evolved into the present-day paper Le Franco, which serves the francophone community across Alberta.

According to Le Franco's current editor, Étienne Alary, the paper has played a critical role is preserving francophone culture in Alberta. "With assimilation…it's so easy to be involved in the Anglophone community. For the francophone community, Le Franco has helped them keep their language."

The newspaper collection is available online at www.peel.library.ualberta.ca