If you happen to reside in Toronto and miss your weekly Metroland group newspaper, the Toronto Public Library system is one place the place you’ll be able to have a look at its outdated points.
Usually.
A cyberattack has left newspaper collections inaccessible for months and there’s no agency date for reopening them.
Within the coming 12 months, the general public library system is predicted to regain use of its microfilm readers, opening collections for research of newspapers from Scarborough, North York, Etobicoke and different neighbourhoods the place Metroland’s journalists chronicled native life till this fall or, in some instances, throughout years earlier than the pandemic.
Workers on the Toronto Reference Library (TRL) downtown hope to reopen the Toronto Star Newspaper Room in its basement by the spring and shortly to begin copying its microfilms of newspapers there — that are on acetate and thus weak to decay from “vinegar syndrome” — onto polyester, which ought to final for hundreds of years.
Finally, the newspapers at TRL and others within the system could also be transformed into digital type if sources permit.
On the North York Central Library this month, historical past librarian Andrew Lowe confirmed the constructing’s new native historical past room has boxed microfilm of the North York Mirror from 1957 to 2015, in addition to scrapbooks from the Seventies and Nineteen Eighties, which can include Mirror articles.
“Something North York-related is right here in our constructing,” Lowe mentioned.
The library put collectively a working record in 2022 to maintain monitor of Metroland publications it has.
That record says the TRL’s assortment of the Etobicoke Guardian (which began because the Lakeshore Advertiser and celebrated 100 years of native journalism with a 56-page particular difficulty in October 2017) begins in 1952 and ends in 2020.
The Richview department in Etobicoke has a group of the Guardian spanning from 1952 and March 2009.
The Scarborough Mirror could be discovered on the TRL too, from its first difficulty in 1962 to December 2020. Microfilms on the Cedarbrae department in Scarborough are incomplete, however go from 1962 to 2016.
Printed copies of the Scarborough Mirror from 1972 to 2023 are saved within the Scarborough Archives.
Individuals in search of the Scarborough Mirror have a bonus: the Scarborough Historic Society stored years of its native Metroland weekly collectively and the Scarborough Archives, a former basic retailer, shops 78 containers of the Mirror upstairs.
Archivist Rick Schofield estimates the containers maintain 25,000 printed pages from the Seventies up by the newspaper’s remaining difficulty on Sept. 14, 2023.
The constructing additionally has microform copies of earlier Scarborough Mirrors, although not a user-friendly reader, and sure volumes from 1985 by 1987.
TRL additionally has microfilm rolls of the North York Mirror from 1957 to 1976 (Don Mills version) and from 1987 to December 2020 (Willowdale version).
Metroland Media newspapers revealed earlier than September 2023 — together with the North York and Scarborough Mirrors and the Etobicoke Guardian — are saved within the Toronto Reference Library and in numerous branches throughout town corresponding to these microfiche on the North York Library.
Metroland shaped by a 1981 merger of Metrospan Neighborhood Newspapers and the Inland Publishing Co.
Sure different Metroland weeklies in Toronto stopped publishing years earlier than the corporate’s determination in September to cease printing group newspapers. In some instances, these weeklies can be discovered within the library system.
Problems with the Bloor West Villager (later the Bloor West-Parkdale Villager) way back to 1981 are on the Runnymede department operating, although incomplete, by 2013.
There are East York Mirrors on the Leaside department from 2012 to 2018, by which era the paper had change into the Seashore-East York Neighbourhood Voice.
The York Guardian from 1998 to March 2018 is on the TRL, as are microfilms of the Metropolis Centre Mirror from June 2009 to August 2012; by 2018, these two weeklies had change into the York-Metropolis Centre Neighbourhood Voice.
The Etobicoke Historic Society (EHS) didn’t gather Guardians, however its earlier historian Denise Harris wrote a column for the paper from 2013 to 2018 titled “Historical past Nook,” which have been reproduced with permission and can be found on the group’s web site.
EHS president Neil Park mentioned he was unhappy to see the top of the Guardian and different group papers. “There actually isn’t any substitute for an area newspaper in giving a voice to small group teams and native companies in reaching a large viewers,” he wrote this month.
A sure quantity of the Willowdale (North York) Mirror from 1985 is stored within the Scarborough Archives.
The Guardian, and North York and Scarborough Mirrors as soon as revealed thrice every week.
For its tenth anniversary in 1972, the Scarborough paper introduced bigger presses had let the Mirror increase its entrance part, add a second for sports activities and a 3rd, Matters, “20 pages of options probing many points of suburban life.”
Readers or researchers who look by the containers of microfilm — maybe in search of out the work of native columnists or photographers corresponding to Ian Kelso, Irv Mintz and Dan Pearce, all of whom lined town for many years — will get a view of Toronto’s neighbourhoods and what occurred in them, usually out of the main media spotlights.