Local History and Genealogy

Our Brodie location houses our collection of the Henderson Directories that span between 1884-2004. The Henderson Directories are like phone books but include additional information about the residents of a house, like occupation.  This collection is only available for in-branch use at Brodie. 

Our friendly Reference Staff would be happy to help you research your family tree! Visit the Ask Us page for more information. 

An index is what we use to find articles in our collections. Indexes list key information about an article like the paper it appeared, the page number, the headline, and the date as well as subject listings. You can think of it as the basic information for search engines. Our staff currently index newspaper articles into our database, the Gateway to Northwestern Ontario History. 

Indexing newspaper articles goes all the way back to the 1920s when staff at the Fort William Public Library (now the Brodie Library) started indexing local newspaper articles. 

Microfilm are long strips of film that have either negatives or positives of documents, typically newspaper collections. The Thunder Bay Public Library, has microfilm copies of newspapers from Thunder Bay, Port Arthur, and Fort William from the late 1800s to the mid 2010s. All of our microfilms are available at our Brodie Location. Newer editions of newspapers are available at Brodie in PDF format. 

To view microfilm, you have to use a machine called a microfilm reader. Brodie has two microfilm readers attached to computers that allows you to export pdf versions of articles or print them out. If you'd like a demonstration on how to use our microfilm readers, please contact our staff by emailing research@tbpl.ca. For more information on how are staff can help you with your research you can also visit our Ask Us page.