July 10, 2025: CRKN has been informed of problems with the search capabilities of the Chinese Times collection. At this time, the system only supports full-text search using a single Chinese character at a time. We understand that this significantly limits the usability of the collection.
Our team is currently developing a plan to improve the quality of the optical character recognition (OCR) processing for this collection, which will increase the effectiveness of full-text searches. However, the quality of OCR will ultimately be dependent on when a particular newspaper issue was published (newer issues tend to have clearer type than older issues), the quality of the original newsprint, and the quality of the microfilm copy. Updates will be shared here as they become available.
CRKN would like to thank the researchers who alerted us to this problem and shared information with us. For any questions, please contact us at info@crkn.ca.
The Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) and the Simon Fraser University Library (SFU) have collaborated to migrate digitized editions of the Chinese Times newspaper from the SFU Digitized Newspapers collection to Canadiana. This move has been made as part of SFU’s digital collections updates and results in the entire run of the Chinese Times from 1914 to 1992 being transferred to Canadiana.
The Chinese Times was a Chinese-language daily newspaper published in Vancouver, BC, which covered local events as well as news from China and across Asia. Published by the Chinese Freemasons Society of Canada, it was the longest-running newspaper in Canada’s largest Chinese community and continues to be a critical source of information for researchers studying Chinese history in Canada. The Chinese Times represents the first significant addition of Chinese content to Canadiana, and joins Canadiana’s growing newspaper collection, which currently includes newspapers in ten languages.
The Chinese Times has been processed with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software, allowing researchers to search the newspaper with Traditional Chinese characters on Canadiana. Additionally, a research guide developed by archivist June Chow is available to assist researchers in exploring the newspaper. (Please note that at the time of publication, a small portion of the collection does not yet have OCR data. See the research guide for more information).
This collection is part of CRKN’s ongoing efforts to diversify the Canadiana collections and represent the full breadth of experiences of people who have lived in the lands now known as Canada. CRKN thanks staff at the SFU Library and the University of British Columbia Library, as well as the Chinese Freemasons Society of Canada and June Chow for their support and assistance in transferring the Chinese Times to Canadiana. For questions or more information about this collection, please contact Francesca Brzezicki, Heritage Engagement Officer, at fbrzezicki@crkn.ca.