About this archive

What this is

This is a news archive: a record of what seven sources printed and published about search and rescue in the Sooke and Juan de Fuca region of Vancouver Island, from 1948 to 2026. It holds 158 articles, catalogued one by one from the scans, with the scan, the machine-read text and a citation attached to every entry.

It is a record, not a narrative. Every statement on an article page comes from that article. Where something is cross-referenced, compared or doubted, it is set apart in an archivist's note so it can never be mistaken for what the newspaper said.

How the text was made

Every page was re-scanned with Tesseract rather than trusting text that came with the files. This machine-read text is used to power full-text search across the archive, and underlies each article's page scan and citation — but it is not published on article pages. Old newsprint scans produce too many misreadings to present as if it were a transcription; read a quotation off the page image instead.

Where it falls short

• Old scans are poor. The source images are roughly 90 pixels per inch for a full broadsheet. 14 articles score below 0.6 out of 1 for legibility, which limits how well search can find them.
• Columns bleed. On a full newspaper page, neighbouring stories run into the article's text, which can surface unrelated search results. Always read a quotation off the page image.
• Two articles could not be read at all. They are held, listed and marked needs attention rather than quietly dropped.
• Some clippings could not be verified, and those articles show the whole page instead. Better a cluttered page than a crop that cuts off the story.

Names and privacy

This archive names people because the newspapers named them, including people who were searched for, rescued, or who died. They were private individuals who did not choose to be part of a permanent record. Names appear as printed at the time. If you are one of these people, or a member of their family, and would like an entry amended or removed, please get in touch.

How to add material

If you have material that belongs in this archive — a clipping, a photograph, a correction — please get in touch at info@jdfsar.ca.

How to cite

Cite the newspaper, not this site. Every article page carries the full citation. Add consulted in the Juan de Fuca Search and Rescue web archive and the date you looked.

Who made this

This archive was created by Christine Baghdassarian, Glynis McFerran and Victoria Clarke.

Building it involved AI assistance: locating and reading the original scans, drafting summaries and citations from the article text, and generating the site itself. Throughout, the AI was explicitly instructed to keep to the facts in front of it and never invent anything — no filling in a missing name, no guessing a date, no describing what a photograph shows beyond what its caption says. Every rule that enforces this is stated plainly in README.md: never invent, never silently drop, and summaries drawn only from the article text.

Even so, a project built this way from 158 articles and their scans will contain errors — a misread word, a mis-catalogued date, a headline recovered from the wrong story on a page. Where something looks wrong, please get in touch at info@jdfsar.ca so it can be corrected.

Legend

These labels appear as small coloured tags throughout the archive. Each one links back here.

ref-only

Copyright material. Reference and fair-dealing quotation only — not cleared for reproduction.

licence unknown

Provenance not recorded — copyright status has not been established for this item.

print-ok

Cleared to reproduce in print or on this site.

permission needed

Reproduction requires permission from the rights holder, which has not yet been sought or granted.

free to read

The publisher's own site hosts this article free to read, with no subscription or login.

subscription or library card

Reading this online requires a paid subscription, or a public library card number through a database like ProQuest.