Launched: “Canada’s Year Without a Summer”

New Brunswick Royal Gazette, 11 May 1816.

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We are pleased to announce the launch of Canada’s Year Without a Summer, an online exhibit & teaching resource.

The site offers images & transcriptions of 120+ newspaper, diary, & government sources documenting how Canada experienced the wild weather of 1816 that followed the 1815 eruption of the Indonesian volcano Tambora, by far the largest eruption in recorded history. Canada’s Year Without a Summer is a story of weather & of climate, but it’s also a story of food, farming, poverty, & charity in early Canada.

And of historical sources & the ability today to locate, copy, & share them online. If in the course of your own research you come across 1816 or 1817 primary sources about the weather or Canadians’ response to it, share them with us, and we’ll post them too.

Alan MacEachern and Michael O’Hagan
Dept. of History, University of Western Ontario

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Alan MacEachern

Professor at Western University
I am the author of Becoming Green Gables & the companion website GreenGablesDiary.ca (2024), The Summer Trade (with Edward MacDonald, 2022), & The Miramichi Fire (2020). I'm also the editor of the print/open-access Canadian History & Environment series at University of Calgary Press. I was Director of NiCHE, 2004-15. Contact me at amaceach@uwo.ca.

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