Alberta Ancestors: Issues of University of Alberta's " The Gateway" Online

 Was your ancestor connected to the University of Alberta? Then you absolutely should be looking at the campus publication The Gateway. Still in publication, it was founded in 1910. Best of all, all issues have been digitized and are available online for free!

The publication focuses on issues relevant to students. According to their website, their objective is

• To sponsor advancement of education of University of Alberta students through the various practices of journalism and the publication of the Gateway.
• To provide a fair, reliable, and clear source of information, focused mainly, but not exclusively, on issues which directly affect students, whether they are local, national, or international.

The University of Alberta have digitized every available issue from 1910 to present day. You can find them online at two sites.

Peel's Prairie Provinces

This must see website for Western Canada research has all available issues from 1910 to 2008. These are available in PDF form. You can access the main browse page here

http://peel.library.ualberta.ca/newspapers/GAT/

Keyword searching can be done either on the main page to search all issues, or you can keyword search inside a particular issue. Just click on a year, and then a particular issue. The initial pages shown are quite small. However, if you click on the page image, it will reload to a much more readable size. Once you're into the larger size, there is an option to print. 

http://peel.library.ualberta.ca/newspapers/GAT/1910/11/21/6/Ar00600.html

Internet Archive

If you're looking for digitized items, you should always look to see if it's been uploaded to Internet Archive. A search on their site revealed they have over 3500 issues uploaded. They run from 1910 right up to 2020! The link from my search to access all issues is here.

https://archive.org/search.php?query=gateway%20alberta&and[]=mediatype%3A%22texts%22&and[]=subject%3A%22gateway%22

Just click on an issue and you can explore page by page. You can zoom in and out quite easily. Right click on an image to save the whole page and then print. Saving the image allows you to crop on a specific article if needed. Keyword searching can be done in a particular issue.

What's Inside 

So what information can you find? The issues contained news pertaining to the university, and university life. It also included articles on a local, national, and international scale. Pictures are included as well. Even if your ancestor didn't make the publication by name, you'll still get an insight into their academic life. 

Here's a short blurb about a new Science Professor, Dr. Ernest Sheldon, from 1910

Here's and article from 1934 about an upcoming night of boxing matches between the University's Varsity team and Camrose Normal.

Here's some letters to the editor from an issue in 1924

Here's the recipients of academic awards in 1943

Here's some members of the Archery Club in 1956

Here are some ads from 1969 aimed at recruiting upcoming graduates

Here is some club notices and classified ads from 1977

If your ancestor had a business that catered to the needs of students and faculty, then be sure to look at the ads throughout each issue. You might find an ad they placed. For the final example, here are some ads from 1918

I lost a couple of hours looking through the issues just for this post. Set aside some time when you research your ancestor. I can guarantee you'll get sidetracked.