Teachers

We only hold a few records relating to teachers. Education is a provincial and territorial responsibility. You can find most records in institutions in each province and territory.

On this page

Before you start

Gather information such as

  • name
  • approximate year and place of birth
  • location
    • for school teachers, what province or territory the person taught in
    • for university and college teachers and professors, what institution they taught at

Places to look

Here are our records that include names of teachers:

  • Quebec, Lower Canada and Canada East: Civil Secretary, records relating to education (RG4-B30, volumes 17 to 82)
    • These school returns include the names of school masters, teachers and students, 1829 to 1840. The records are arranged alphabetically by district.
  • Provincial Secretary and Registrar (RG4-B26, volume 6)
    • Register of college officials, Lower Canada, 1853-1855
  • Diamond Jubilee of Confederation (RG6-D-3, volume 456)
    • List of New Brunswick teachers, 1927
  • A return of the common schools in the London District, 1832 (MG24-K12, volume 1)
    • This item is a list of schools in the London District (Ontario) by township. It includes the names of teachers and trustees.
  • Frontier College fonds (MG28-I124
    • Frontier College was founded in 1899. It made education available to the men who worked in remote or isolated mining, lumber and railway camps across Canada. Students were selected from Canadian and American universities and trained as instructors. They were then sent to the camps as "labourer-teachers" for the summer months. To learn more, read the section called “Biography/Administrative history” in the fonds description.
    • You can find applications for employment as labourer-teachers, 1905-1970, in volumes 113 to 119 and 219 to 222.
    • There are also registers kept by the labourer-teachers that contain monthly summaries of their work. Finding Aid 736 lists their names, where they worked and the volume numbers of those registers.

Other records

Information about teachers is sometimes found within other collections.

  • Go to Collection Search.
  • Select Advanced search.
  • In the All these words field, enter a person’s name plus one of the following keyterms:
    • teacher
    • teaching
    • instructor
    • professor

Here is an example from the records of the Department of Militia and Defence:

Access the records

For records that are not digitized, you'll need to see them in person. If you can't visit us in person, you can order copies or hire a researcher.

Related links

You can find most older records relating to teachers in provincial and territorial archives. You might also find records at:

  • local school boards
  • provincial and territorial departments of education
  • university and college archives (for staff who worked at those institutions)
  • religious archives (for teachers at faith-based schools)
  • local archives and museums