Transcripts of Letters & Photos from Canadians



Wouldn’t it be great to come across a letter written by a great grandfather that no one in the family had any idea existed? That is a possibility with the online site titled Canadian Letters and Images Project.

Through the donation of family members, researchers and even strangers who have come across orphan letters and photos, the project leaders has been able to scan the items, organize them and make it all available to the general public on the site.  Besides photos and letters, the collections have postcards, diaries, journals, poems or telegrams.  For each individual or family there can just one letter or literary hundreds of written letters and numerous photos. Some tell of a person’s travels, their war adventures, love letters to a sweetheart or just ordinary daily living.  Most of the collections are related to those Canadians who served in various military campaigns.


It is organized into categories.  First, there are pre-1914 events such as those who fought in the South Africa War, the American Civil War or the South-American War. Then follows collections during World War I (1914-1919), then World War II (1938-1945), Korean War (1950-1953) and then a Special Items section made up of newspaper articles, magazine stories or other publications relating to Canadian individuals.


The tab at the top has the Search box to research all the collections at once. Placing the surname ‘Johnson’ alone produced 81 results. For ‘Donaldson’ there were 18 results and for ‘Williams’ some 72 letters, diaries and photos were available. Each time a name appears,it does not mean that person wrote the letter or diary, but rather the name was written, or the person with that name was referred to. It can become quite thrilling to see if an ancestor can be located in the collections.


If you already have something; correspondence, postcards, photos, journals, etc. the Canadian Letters and Images Project would appreciate the opportunity to copy those items, scan them to necessary resolution and then return the originals to the family. The Project covers the costs of using a courier to pick up and return the items to the person donating the use of the objects.


The above image is an example with three World War II soldiers;  Ole, Richardson and Buck.

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