New Brunswick Ancestors: The New Brunswick Irish Portal

When one thinks of the people who settled New Brunswick, there are three main groups that come to mind: The Acadians, The Loyalists, and the New England Planters. But there's a good chance that within your New Brunswick ancestors are another group that tend to be forgotten about: The Irish. Even my own maternal tree, which is 98 percent Acadian, has the odd Irish name in there.

https://archives.gnb.ca/Irish/databases_en.html

The Provincial Archives of New Brunswick (PANB) created a web portal dedicated to the Irish immigrant experience in the province. They have several different categories of records you can look at, most of them containing digitized original records.

Saint John Almshouse Records

This section provides images of admission registers from two collections

• Saint John City Almshouse fonds , Admittance Registers 1843-1897
• Graeme Somerville collection, Saint John Alms House Records, 1843 - 1884

The digitized microfilms can be browsed page by page, or you can search. There is also a name index that can be accessed. Before you start, make sure you look at the pdf About the Records. 

Brennan Funeral Home Records

This section contains transcriptions of the confirmed Irish in Brenan's records. If ireland was not mentioned in the entry, they are not included. However, they will be in the main database on the PANB's website. There is a 50 year restriction on access to the records. Right now, you can access records from 1901-1971. Records for 1972 will be available after Jan 1 2022. You can search the indexes by

• Surname of deceased
• Surname of spouse
• Surname of mother
• Surname of father
• Occupation
• Cause of death

Even though these are not original images, the indexes do contain a lot of information. Here's an example for a Mr. John Robinson, who passed away in 1937

Fitzwilliam Estate Emigration Books 1847-1856

This section is a database of 295 names of people that emigrated from the Fitzwilliam Estate in County Wicklow. When you click on the database, it automatically sorts by surname. Howver, by clicking on one the headings, you can resort the names however you wish. I clicked on reference number, as this would sort by family groups. In reference 1, I got this family group

As you can see, Pat and Rose Waddock are now included with the Balance family. You now have a possible maiden name for John Balance's wife Anty, as well as her mother and brother's name. We also have their Townland and Civil Parish in Ireland. Anyone who has tried to research in Ireland knows these are very important pieces of information.

RS555 Provincial Secretary: Immigration Administration Records

This interesting section gives insight into immigration through new Brunswick's ports as a whole. Click on the finding aid, and then scroll to the table of contents to access individual documents of interest. These are digitized images. Though the majority is correspondence, there are some other gems. Here's a page from the 35 page set of documents called  List of Patients at Emigrants Hospital in Saint John; 1847-1849 (includes name of patient, age, county of birth, date of death or discharge, name of ship, point of sailing, when arrived)

Immigrant Letters

I think this might be my favourite section. In here are digitized letters from and to immigrants here and their family and friends all over the world. Along with the images are transcriptions. They are indexed by subject, place, and by the fonds these letters come from. You can also do a full text search. here is a snippet of a letter from John Jackson of Monaghan, Ireland to Lawrence Hughes of Saint John, New Brunswick

  "...Sir I received your letter of the 12th of December which gives us a great comfort to hear that you and

your wife and children are all in Good Health. Thank God we are all in the same. Tho this country is somuch afflicted with Disorders, thank God we all got free yet if God was pleased to visit the Old Man and

Michael Armstrong with sickness we had the pleasure of our neighbors about us. Michael Armstrong

died by alcoholic in 2 days illness. A sore leg with age was the Old Man’s complaint. You may let Rosey

know that her sister Catron husband is dead. That is Patt [Conoley]. Indeed she will not be very sorry for

that. Nor neather are we for her and her 4 children is far better wanting him but you may guess my

situation with the Old Woman and Margaret and her 3 children, Catron and her 4 children all depending

on me for to give them [seporte] you may guess yourself how I am ins there is no one I feel for so much

as the Olde Woman for at the Old Man’s death the(y) prompt him up to leave but very little in her

power. She is the one iye think of moste and will do all I can for her...."

Newspapers

This section runs a close second for being my favourite. It gives a great insight into the attitudes of the day regarding the big influx of immigrants in the province. You can search by subject, or by newspaper. You can also do a full text search. Along with the digital images are transcriptions of the articles. Here's an article about the 1847 quarantine of the passengers of the Eliza Liddell in Shippegan, where many generations of my maternal line lived, and still live.

Passenger Lists

This section is the bread and butter part of research into your immigrant ancestor. Even with over 10,000 entries, it is still only a fraction of the immigration numbers into the province. Look at this table they've included of the immigration numbers as a whole

You can search by vessel or by name. Each result give you an extract of the passenger, as well as the image of the passenger list they appeared on. I found ships that sailed from England among the list, as well as Ireland.

Teachers Petition Database

There's a good chance there's a teacher among your Irish immigrants. This section has images of the petitions, licenses, and/or certificates of these teachers. There are 509 records in the index. It comes up alphabetically by surname, but you can also sort the index in various ways by clicking on the headers. Here's part of the 1840 petition for Mr. Daniel O'Keefe. He taught in Caraquet, Gloucester.

Irish Immigrants in the New Brunswick Census of 1851 and 1861

This last section has extracted those of Irish birth from the 1851 and 1861 Census. If you search by name, you will get extracted information from both Census. If you click on other indexes, you also have the ability to search either Census by

• County
• Religion
• Where from
• Year Landed

Now keep in mind this information is only as good as what is available. It has been a source of frustration for me for over a decade that the 1851 Census for Gloucester County no longer survives. Anything pre 1861 for me has to rely on parish records.

As a final note, don't forget to look at the brief historical overviews in some of the sections. They give you a good basic understanding of the overall history. They are a good read by themselves, so I've included the individual links here:

• Social Welfare in New Brunswick, 1784-1900 - St John Almshouse Records
  

• The Surplus People - Fitzwilliam Estate Emigration Records 1947-1856
  

• New Brunswick as a Home for Immigrants - RS555 Provincial Secretary: Immigration Administration Records 

• The Impact of the Irish on New Brunswick Schools - Teachers Petition Database
  

• The Irish of New Brunswick at Mid Century: The 1851 Census -  Irish Immigrants in the New Brunswick Census of 1851 and 1861

BC Ancestors: The Bill Silver Digital Archive

Free online newspaper sites are always a good thing. If your ancestors lived in and around Vanderhoof, British Columbia, you'll want to explore The Bill Silver Digital Archive. Provided free of charge, it is hosted on the Vanderhoof Public Library website.

Bill Silver was a local historian who built a collection from 3 local newspapers

• The Vanderhoof Herald
• Nechako Chronicle
• Omineca Express

After his death, his wife Edith continued the collection until her death in 2003. The collection of weekly newspapers runs from 1917 to 2007. It is the result of a collaboration between the Vanderhoof Public Library and the Vanderhoof Heritage Museum. Simply enter in a search term and you get digital images of the newspaper pages. Just click on the link on the top of the page to get to the search screen.

https://www.vanderhooflibrary.com/my-lists/explore/the-bill-silver-digital-newspaper-archive/

Just type in your search term and hit enter. As you can see below, you can do a more targeted search by paper. You can also adjust your searching method to stemming, fuzzy and/or phonic searching.

 

http://archive.vanderhooflibrary.com/

I used "mcdonald", and got 1140 hits on a general search.  I then tried a phonic search and got over 4000 hits. The search results can be sorted by relevance, newest date or oldest date. You can also print your search results. Just use the tabs on the top right. now, I did find that it sorts by paper first, then year if you're doing a newest or oldest filter. Which means the oldest issues, which are from The Vamderhoof Chronicle, will show up last. My suggestion is to search each paper separately.

http://archive.vanderhooflibrary.com/archive/dtSearch/dtisapi6.dll

Next just click on the link to a particular page and a digital image will open in a new window. That's handy, as you don't lose your results list. The page opens as a PDF that you can download and/or print.

As with any paper on a local level, you can find lots of little tidbits that you don't see in newspapers that are published for a larger audience. Here's some examples of what I found:

Here's some "Local Happenings" from March of 1918

Here's some birth announcements from October 1962 

Here's some items covered during recent Vanderhoof Council meetings in June 2001 

W C Young got into some trouble in December 1934 for shooting game out of season

As a last example, here's an article on the accidental death of Ralph Andros from March 1956

Some tips for using the site:

• The search capability appears to be OCR technology. Anyone who's dealt with OCR on older newspapers knows it is far from fool proof. So make sure you try all the search options 
• There is no highlighted boxes for your search words. This means you will have to read the whole page. But that's part of the fun.
• Because the saving is to PDF, you won't be able to crop like you can with a picture. One suggestion is to make a transcription for yourself if you're printing. Another option is to zoom in on the article in the PDF and then take a photo of the screen with your phone or tablet. Alternately, you can zoom in on the article, and then use a snipping tool to take a screen shot. 
• Some of the search terms I tried would not give me results in the year ranges I was looking for. But, I found putting in a year, such as "1928" gave me results in the 1920's and 1930's

The searching is a little clunky, compared to other sites. It's still worth looking at in your research though. One improvement to the collection I would like to see is the ability to browse issues. If there is a way to do that I could not find it.

There were several donors involved in getting the collection up and running. You can thank the following for this collection:

• The Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
• Vanderhoof Co-op Association
• Friends of the Library
• The Bill Silver Family
• Nechako Valley Historical Society
• Black Press
• Rosemary Boyd

Newfoundland Ancestors: Newspapers and Magazines on Canadiana

One of the downsides to having Newfoundland ancestors is the lack of original sources online. If you have to research from a distance, it can be more challenging than some of the other provinces. Again, Canadiana comes to the rescue. On their site are several newspapers and magazines.

The problem with Canadiana is that there is so much there, it can be hard to find what you want. This week I'm providing links to the newspapers and magazines available. Canadiana gives you the ability to zoom in and out, and download individual pages to your computer. The pages download as PDFs. Alternately, by right clicking on the image and saving, it will save the whole page as a JPEG. Then you can use your photo software to crop in on individual articles.


The Star and Newfoundland Advocate: Available issues: 2

The available issues is a bit of a misnomer. It is 2 microfilms. One microfilm covers from 14 November 1840 to 28 December 1843. The second covers from 11 January 1844 to 14 January 1847.

A Protestant conservative leaning newspaper, it featured both local and foreign news. It was geared towards businessmen. Among the images you'll find news on shipping, government, and agriculture. It was also heavy on advertisements and notices. Here's one about the new packet boat, The Edmund Phelan

The Newfoundland magazine: Available issues: 5

The five issues cover the year 1900. It was filled with both fictional stories and memories of Newfoundland life. The ads are a treat to look at as well.

Newfoundland monthly messenger: Available issues: 36

A religious newspaper, there are 12 issues each for the years 1876-1878. It consists mainly of articles of religious instruction. No publication can exist without advertisers, so of course there are advertisements as well. But here and there are news items and obituaries. Here are ones for Mrs. George Cook, and Miss. Mary Langmead from 1876.

The collegian: Available issues: 5

Covering the year 1897, this publication was aimed at Methodist schools. It is interesting in that it lists faculty and students in the publication. Here's a list of the 10 best exam remarks in various classes. It even shows the score for some. A nice little insight into your ancestor's academic achievements!

The Conception-Bay man: Available issues: 100

Covering from 1856-1859, this publication was the liberal leaning counterpart to The Star and Newfoundland Advocate. It's content was also geared towards the merchant class. Here's a rather interesting notice. It seems someone had been going around racking up debts in this man's name

Mail and Advocate: Available issues: 1

Only 1 microfilm covering December 1916.This publication was the "Official Organ of the Fishermen's Protective Union of Newfoundland". As to be expected from the date, it is mainly filled with news about World War I. I did find a notice of Contributions to the Cot Fund from Herring Neck

Evening Advocate: Avaliable Issues:29

Covering from 1917-1924, this newspaper was a sister paper of the Mail and Advocate. One of the more interesting notices I found was about unclaimed mail at the post office. It gives an alphabetical listing of all mail not yet claimed. You can definitely tell that this was in a time before concerns of privacy and identity theft!

The Daily Mail: Available issues: 90

Another great newspaper find. The issues run from January to April 1914. Rather than a trade newspaper, this publication had something for everyone. One of the interesting things I found was this list of crew from the Sealer Newfoundland. A huge storm took the fishing fleet unawares. The entire front page of this issue was devoted to the men and ships feared lost.

These publications are just a sampling of what I found in a quick search. There were many, many more publications in the results.

Newfoundland Ancestors: Online Newspapers at Memorial University of Newfoundland

I'm always on the lookout for online newspaper sites. Especially free ones. Recently while doing some housekeeping on my internet bookmarks, I found one from Memorial University of Newfoundland of their online collection of newspapers.

http://collections.mun.ca/cdm/landingpage/collection/cns_news

This collection is part of their Digital Archives Initiative. The site claims that this only comprises of a small part of their off line collection. Here's hoping they will add to it. Right now, they have the following titiles:

Banner of Temperance Jan. 18, 1851 - Dec. 6, 1851 (12 issues)

• The Carbonear Herald and Outport Telephone - Carbonear Herald and Outport Telephone, May 22, 1879 - Feb. 17, 1882. (120 issues), Carbonear Herald and Railroad Journal, Mar. 17 - Aug. 26, 1882. (5 issues)
• The Conception-Bay Man Sep. 3, 1856 - Feb. 16, 1859 (100 issues)
• The Confederate Volumes 1..14 for Apr. 7 - July 16, 1948. (14 issues)
• The Daily Globe Daily (except Sunday), Dec. 16, 1924 - Apr. 26, 1926. Three times a week, Apr. 29 - June 5, 1926. (298 issues)
• The Daily Tribune - Daily Tribune Nov. 4, 1892 - Dec. 2, 1893; (272 issues), Tribune Dec. 6-30, 1893. (5 issues)
• The Enterprise Oct. 21, 1896 - Nov. 3, 1897 (103 issues)
• Fishermen's Advocate Published Coakerville, St. John's and Port Union N.L 1910-1980 (5 issues)
• The Independent Volumes 1..14 Mar. 22 - July 15, 1948 (14 issues)
• The Mercury And General Advertiser Feb. 3, 1846 - Oct. 15, 1846 (28 issues)
• Morning Advertiser and Shipping Gazette Sep. 21, 1844 - Apr. 26, 1845 (109 issues)
• Morning Despatch. Published St. John's N.L. Jul. 13, 1892 - Aug. 22, 1892 (32 issues)
• The Morning Herald Nov. 28, 1879 - Feb. 21, 1880 (54 issues)
• The Newfoundland Commercial Journal Jun. 22, 1881 - Dec. 8, 1855 (69 issues)
• Newfoundland Mercantile Journal Earliest issue located: Sept. 11, 1816 (no. 108). - Last issue located: June 7, 1827 (376 issues)
• The Newfoundland Vindicator Jan. 2, 1841 - May 14, 1842 (69 issues)
• The Newfoundland Weekly - Newfoundland Weekly, Began publication: Jul. 19, 1924. - Last issue located: Jan. 9, 1932, The Newfoundland Times, Began publication: Sep. 6, 1941. - Last issue located: Dec. 20, 1941, The Newfoundland Weekly, Began publication: Dec. 7, 1940. - Last issue located: Aug. 23, 1941.
• The Newfoundlander. Oct. 6, 1934 - Dec. 20, 1934 (10 issues)
• Our Country Aug. 25, 1883 - May 11, 1885 (152 Issues)
• The Plaindealer Published St. John's N.L. Jun. 1, 1907 - Aug. 16, 1921 (29 Issues)
• The Record Jan. 18, 1862 - Dec. 29, 1863 (94 Issues)
• The Register Sep. 17, 1880 - Dec. 16, 1880 (70 Issues)
• The Reporter Jan. 31, 1856 - Dec. 25, 1856 (47 Issues)
• Sentinel and Conception Bay Advertiser - Sentinel and Conception Bay Advertiser Oct 27, 1836 – Jul 20, 1837 and Dec 13, 1838 - Nov 19, 1844. (148 issues), The Carbonear Sentinel And Conception Bay Advertiser July 27, 1837 - Nov. 29, 1838. (26 issues), The Sentinel, Mar. 13, 1945 - Oct. 30, 1845. (12 Issues)
• The Star And Conception Bay Weekly Reporter Feb. 4, 1874 - May 6, 1875 (39 Issues)
• The Star And Newfoundland Advocate Nov. 14, 1840 - Jan. 14, 1847 (295 Issues)
• St. John’s Free Press and Semiweekly Advertiser - The St. John's Free Press And Daily Advertiser Apr. 9, 1877 - May 29, 1877 (37 Issues), The St. John's Free Press And Semi-Weekly Advertiser Jun. 11, 1877 - Jul. 22, 1878 (46 Issues)
• Terra Nova Advocate - St. John's Advertiser, May 5, 1875 - Apr. 29, 1876. (97 Issues), Terra Nova Advocate and Political Observer, May 4, 1876 - May 5, 1880. (377 Issues), Terra Nova Advocate, May 8, 1880 - Dec. 12, 1890. (786 Issues)
• The Vindicator And Brigus Reporter Earliest issue located: May 4, 1898 (v. 1, no. 2). Ceased publication: Oct. 28, 1903 (14 Issues)
• The Weekly Express Began publication: Jan. 6, 1858. - Latest issue located: Dec. 27, 1859 (102 Issues)
• The Weekly Herald And Conception-Bay General Advertiser Jan. 1, 1845 - Jun. 6, 1854. (483 issues)
• The Weekly News Began publication: Mar. 29, 1894 - Dec. 6, 1894 Ceased publication: June 1906. (36 Issues)

You can use the site by a few different ways

Browse the Collection
This will bring up digital images of every issue in the collection. There are over 5,000 issues.

http://collections.mun.ca/cdm/search/collection/cns_news

You can either click on the image of the issue or the issue title. This will take you into the image viewer. I'll explain the image viewer at the bottom of the post.

Search Boxes
Now, there are 2 search boxes on the site. If you use the large one at the top, it will search all the newspapers in the main list I provided above. If you use the smaller one, then not only will it search the newspaper titles featured, but also

• The Colonist
• The Daily News
• The Daily Star
• The Evening Advocate
• The Evening Herald
• The Harbor Grace Standard
• The Morning Courier
• The Patriot And Terra-Nova Herald 
• The St. John's Daily News
• The Telegram
• The Twillingate Sun
• The Western Star

Seems like a no brainer to use the smaller search box. I typed in Greening, which is a Newfoundland surname I'm familiar with. The search resulted in 1887 issues with that surname mentioned. On the results screen, you can filter the results by Relevance, Title, Subject, or Description. The default setting is by Title.

Now, the system isn't foolproof. Several issues I clicked on did not actually have Greening anywhere in the issue. But for those that did, the image viewer helpfully told me how many places and where.


By Newspaper
This function lets you click on a particular newspaper. Clicking on a newspaper title will take you to one of two screens. If you click on the main list of newspapers, then it will take you to the familiar results screen. Just pick an issue and it will take you to the image viewer. As you can see from the screen shot above, you can then narrow by date by using the menu on the far left sidebar. You can do a search within the image viewer of the issue, which I'll talk about in a minute.

If however, you click on one of the titles in the second group of papers, you will be take to a different screen.

http://collections.mun.ca/cdm/landingpage/collection/daily_star

Here, you can browse by particular year and/or month. You can also use that large search box at the top to search keywords within the publication. In this case you don't want to use the small one, because it will search all newspaper titles.


Image Viewer
Ok, so I decided to make a section about the image viewer itself, because it's fantastic. As with most online viewers, you can zoom in and out. You can print the page, and you can also download it to your computer in 3 different sizes. But it also has some great tricks.

First of all, it has its own search box to search within an issue. Click on the Text Searxh tab and put your search word. Like I said, it isn't fool proof. It will miss mentions, mainly due to the fonts used. But it does highlight when it does find a result. It will also tell you what page and where. Here's an instance for searching for the word schooner in the Newfoundland Mercantile Journal, 1816-09-11, no. 108

Also in some issues, they have indexed article headings. If you click on that article, it opens in a new window by itself. You can then download or print the single article

Newfoundland Mercantile Journal
To finish off this post, one newspaper title I want to highlight in the collection is the Newfoundland Mercantile Journal. This newspaper can give you some more unusual tidbits on your ancestors than you would normally find. According to the collection description, it focused less on what we regularly find in newspapers such as local gossip and BMDs. It's focus was more business orientated, so there was shipping news, industry advertisements, legal notices, and articles from foreign press sources. Here's a few examples of what I found among its pages.

Alberta Ancestors: The Wainwright Public Library Newspaper Archives

Many public libraries across the country are in the process of digitizing newspapers. Not all of them offer access to non library card holders though. One exception is the Wrainwright Public Library. Wainwright, Alberta is located about 200 km southeast of Edmonton.

Google Image

The Wainright Public Library partnered with Wainwright Main Street Project, Battle River Historical Society (Wainwright Museum) and Buffalo National Park Interpretive Centre to digitize 110 years of the Wainright Star Chronicle. It is free to use for everyone, and they have done a good job of having nice clear images. On the main portal entry page, it lets you know the system requirements to be able to use the database. If you click on First -Time User Click Here, it gives you help on making sure your computer is set up properly

http://libraries.arcasearchdev.com/ca/wc/?paper=___

When you enter the portal, a new window will open. Another screen will also pop up that gives you excellent instructions on how to use the site. If it doesn't make sure you allow pop ups, then exit and re-enter the site and it should work. If you're still having problems, click here. This will bring them up for you.

So, enter your search term in the search bar. Out of curiosity, I used "spanish flu". Genealogists and Family Historians can't help but see the comparisons to our current circumstances 100 years later. I got 15 results. I also tried "spanish influenza", and got a further 25 hits.

Select the issue you want on the right, and click on it.This will put the particular page in full screen as a PDF. Now, the downside is that highlighted text won't show. You'll have to skim the page to find where your search term is. But, let's face it. Who doesn't end up looking at the whole page anyway? Besides, it's not like research time is short these days. Because of being in PDF, you can download the page, or print it. You can also zoom in and out. I would suggest if you don't want a full page to take screen shots. 

To go back to your results, just click on the Show Form button just below the search bar. This will take you back to your results page.

Because this is a newspaper that covers a less populated area, you're going to get more personal stories than you would in a large urban newspaper. For instance, in the screenshot above is the annual report of the Edgerton and District Church of England. Edward Haddocks just completed his first year as the minister, and he gave a report on how it went for him.

Here's some tidbits from a column they ran in 1938 that highlighted local residents' comings and goings from past issues. The ones listed here are from 1928.

Here's a third, that appeared on the same page as an influenza article in 1918. This one tells about how the local curling club is getting ready for a new season.

The Wainwright Public Library is allowing people to sponsor a publication year for $50. The sponsor would receive a receipt for tax purposes. If you are interested, they have contact information on their page here. It also lists what years have already been taken, and their sponsors.

Alberta Ancestors: Early Alberta Newspapers Online

One of the downsides of Canadian research is the lack of a central repository for newspapers. If you have ancestors in Alberta in the early 1900's, you'll want to look at the University of Calgary's collection of early Alberta newspapers.

The website has a total collection of over 600 microfilms of various newspapers around the province:

• the calgary herald (57)
• the calgary daily herald (55)
• the morning albertan (51)
• edmonton bulletin (45)
• the nanton news (22)
• the camrose canadian (19)
• the olds gazette (18)
• the gazette (17)
• the morning bulletin (17)
• crag and canyon (15)
• the olds gazette and mountain view news (14)
• lethbridge herald (13)
• medicine hat news (13)
• the strathmore and bow valley standard (8)
• the albertan (6)
• the high river times (6)
• the lethbridge daily herald (6)
• lethbridge news (5)
• red deer advocate (5)
• strathmore standard (5)
• the daily herald (5)
• the macleod gazette (5)
• the plaindealer (5)
• edmonton daily bulletin (4)
• lethbridge daily herald (4)
• plaindealer (4)
• northern tribune (3)
• strathcona plaindealer (3)
• the delburne progress (3)
• the sylvan lake news (3)
• vegreville observer (3)
• claresholm review (2)
• edmonton journal (2)
• innisfail free lance (2)
• lloydminster times (2)
• stavely standard (2)
• the sedgewick sentinel (2)
• claresholm local press (1)
• herald tribune (1)
• medicine hat times (1)
• medicine hat weekly news (1)
• rocky mountain house paper (1)
• strathcona plaindealer special school edition (1)
• sylvan lake news (1)
• the bawlf banner (1)
• the bawlf sun (1)
• the claresholm local press (1)
• the guide (1)
• the pincher creek echo (1)
• the stavely advertiser (1)
• the sylvan lake world (1)

The years run the gamut from about 1908 to the early 1920s. However, I also found a couple of sets that had dates from the 1990s as well. Each microfilm holds multiple issues.

https://cdm22007.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/search/collection/p22007coll2!p22007coll18!p22007coll19!p22007coll24/order/title/ad/asc

There is an option to sort the issues by:

• Title Ascending
• Title Descending
• Date Ascending
• Date Descending
• Description Ascending
• Description Descending

It doesn't work perfectly, but it more or less sorts the way you want it to. On the left side bar, you can also filter by newspaper and/or date. To access a particular microfilm, just click on the one you want. I chose the Calgary Herald 1915-07-02 - 1915-08-28.

https://cdm22007.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p22007coll2/id/75286/rec/15

To be able to zoom in and out, just click on the little red box with the arrows in the right corner of the image. You'll then be able to zoom in and out. As well, you can make it a full screen image, rotate left, or rotate right.

Use the search bar to the right of the image to search for surnames or key words. But take some time to browse the issues as well, because you never know what you might find.The search engine may not always pick up your search words. 

So what kind of information can you find? Most beginners in newspaper research only look at the Births, Marriages and Deaths section. But you can find a lot more if you look at the other pages as well. For example, here's an interesting article about a boy who lied about his age to enter WWI in 1915 in Calgary Herald.

Here's another one, detailing a court case. It is from The Albertan in 1902:

And here's one from The Edmonton Bulletin in 1925. Some farmers were fined for making moonshine:

To go to the next image on the microfilm, you can click on the image in the right sidebar. You can alternately use the red bars on the right and left to go back and forth through the images. If you are in the zoom screen, there are right and left arrows at the top of the screen to go back and forth. They are a little hard to see, but just take your cursor and hover on the top right corner, and they will become highlighted.

Unfortunately, I could see no way to download images. You could however take a screen shot and save it as a JPEG or PNG image to your computer. There are several screen shot programs out there if you don't have one. 

For your source citation, scroll to the bottom of the page to Object Description to get the information you need.