GBC archives celebrate 50 years by releasing an online database of all student newspapers 

The George Brown College (GBC) archives has recently announced the release of a database of all its student newspapers, dating back 50 years to the start of the college’s history in 1967.

There have been several student and campus life newspapers published at GBC  including The Mosaic, Full Moon, George Brown’s Body, The Globe, City College News and of course, The Dialog.

“The aim of the project is to give free access, on the internet, to everything that the college originally had published for the public,” said Clay Thibodeau, archivist at GBC. 

“You can get images of the pages. You can read every issue just as if you could get back issues that were printed,” Thibodeau explained. 

The issues can be searched by each year and can be downloaded by anyone for personal use. 

Every printed issue can now be accessed online with a total of three missing editions, the archivist indicated.

According to Thibodeau, in the early years of GBC, each campus tried to have their own newspaper. However, when one is targeting such a small audience the content can be limited.

By doing some digging into each decade of the college’s history, one may find the progression, not just of GBC, but multiple eras, each rich with culture.

This resource is invaluable for learning more about the history of GBC. In the ‘90s, the college was rethinking their education model; gaining internet access forstudents and focusing on course outcomes.

Now that technology is so readily available, it can be easy to forget that once upon a time schools did not have course management tools like Blackboard! 

However, this database is here to take you back in time. It also provides the perfect medium for research relating to the college and campus life. 

Although the George Brown’s Body, student newspaper of 1974, only ran for five issues, it covered topics that one might not come across in today’s edition.

“There was really only the three of us,” said Victor Liboiron, assistant editor at the time. He recalls that writing at the college boosted his confidence and he got to meet people he would not have otherwise.

“I tried to get people to think, put it that way,” said Liboiron.

The GBC archives are housed at Casa Loma campus, room F-103 and can be accessed online at archive.org/details/georgebrownarchives