Newspaper Hansard, also called Scrapbook Hansard, is a collection of newspaper articles literally clipped from various newspapers reporting on the goings-on in the Legislature from 1841 to 1953 (no official Hansard was produced before 1944).
While the Scrapbook Hansard has been microfilmed, access was limited – as is the case with most collections only available on microfilm. If you needed to reference these materials, you would have to go into the library, select the reel from the date range you are researching and physically feed the reel through a microfilm reader/printer to review the content. It is almost always time consuming and labour intensive.
However! Scrapbook Hansard has been digitized by the Legislative Assembly of Ontario and made available online to many a researcher’s delight:
Ontario Scrapbook Hansard, 1867-1946.
The collection includes approximately 10,000-15,000 newspaper clippings that are full-text searchable and have had metadata added to enhance discovery. Check out the Advanced Search to learn more!
Tip: While the digitized Scrapbook Hansard includes date range searching (by year), it helps to consult the Journals of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to find the date(s) when a topic or bill was debated.
Know How 