How We Source
The sourcing standard every story on this site is held to, published in full.
This page is the contract. Every story on Tales of Canada is held to the standard below, and any reader can hold us to it in return.
Sources on the page, every time
Every story ends with a visible Sources section naming what it was built from: Library and Archives Canada, the Canadian Encyclopedia, provincial and territorial archives, the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, published histories from university and reputable trade presses, official inquiries and commissions, and contemporary records. No source list, no publish.
A two source floor
Dates, death tolls, quotations, and any fact a story’s argument rests on must be confirmed in at least two reputable sources. Where only one source exists, the story says so in the text. Where historians dispute a number, the story gives the dispute, with the range and who holds which end of it.
Primary voices where they exist
Diaries, letters, Hansard, inquiry testimony, oral histories, and survivor statements are quoted briefly and in context rather than paraphrased away. The past’s own words are usually the best writing in the story anyway.
Contested history, honestly
Multiple perspectives are named and attributed to the people and communities who hold them, never floated as an anonymous “some say.” Naming perspectives is not false balance. Where the documentary record settles a fact, the record is stated as fact, and perspectives attach to interpretation, memory, and remedy, not to whether it happened. Where Indigenous history intersects a story, authoritative Indigenous sources come first: the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, First Nations, Métis, and Inuit organizations and historians writing their own histories.
Legend versus record
Most famous Canadian stories arrive wrapped in a legend layer: a Heritage Minute scene, a stamp, a song, a school textbook sentence. Every story here carries a section separating the legend from the record, keeping what is true in the legend and retiring the rest, kindly but completely.
Images
Historical images are used only where their rights status is verified on the archive’s own record for that item. In Canada, an old photograph is not automatically free to use, and “found it online” is never a rights check. Art made for this site is original and is labelled as illustration, never presented as a historical photograph.
Corrections
Errors are corrected in the open. See the Corrections page for how, and the Contact page to report one. A correction from a reader that checks out is the best day this site can have.
