The Canadian Encyclopedia

The Canadian Encyclopedia (TCE; French: L'Encyclopédie canadienne) is the national encyclopedia of Canada, originally published by Hurtig Publishing and online by the Toronto-based historical organization Historica Canada. Described as "The Biggest Publishing Project in Canadian History", the original publication was compiled by more than 2,500 scholars and specialists, with more than 9,000 articles. It has received positive reviews and praise for its creation.

The encyclopedia website, compiled by more than 5,000 scholars and specialists, consists of more than 25,000 entries and over 60,000 multimedia items including images, maps, charts, games, assessments, and videos. The website also incorporates, The Youth Encyclopedia of Canada, The Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, specialized articles on diverse subjects, articles from MacLean's Magazine, and The Timeline of Canadian History. The website likewise provides an educational hub for educators and guardians, which includes instructional materials, assessments, and specialized study aids.

First published in 1985, the consistently updated version has been available for free online in both English and French since 2001. The physical copy and website includes "articles on Canadian biographies and places, history, the Arts, as well as First Nations, science and Canadian innovation." By 2013 over 700,000 volumes of the print version of TCE have been sold and over 6 million people visit TCE's website yearly. The publication is a non-partisan, non-political initiative by a not-for-profit organization with financial support by the federal Department of Canadian Heritage and Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada.

While attempts had been made to compile encyclopedic material on aspects of Canada, Canada: An Encyclopaedia of the Country (1898–1900), edited by J. Castell Hopkins, was the first attempt to produce an encyclopedic work entirely on the subject of Canada. This was followed by W. Stewart Wallace's The Encyclopedia of Canada (Macmillan, 1935–37), which was then sold to an American publisher, the Grolier Society, providing the core of John Everett Robbins' Encyclopedia Canadiana (1957).

More common, however, were encyclopedic works focused on particular qualities of Canada. For instance, in 1911, Arthur Doughty and L.J. Burpee compiled the Index and Dictionary of Canadian History as a companion to the Makers of Canada series; Doughty and Adam Shortt edited the 23-volume Canada and Its Provinces (1913–17); Norah Story's The Oxford Companion to Canadian History and Literature was published in 1967; the comprehensive Encyclopedia of Music in Canada was published in 1981 and revised in 1992; and a new Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, edited by William Toye, was published in 1983.

By the 1970s, Canada had been without a national encyclopedia since Robbins' 1957 work, which by that time was terribly outdated.

With this in mind, Edmonton-based Canadian nationalist and publisher Mel Hurtig was left unimpressed with the lack of Canadian reference works as well as with the various omissions and blatant errors (e.g., Brian Mulroney was described as a Liberal rather than Conservative) found in existing encyclopedias with Canadian entries. In response, Hurtig launched a project in the 1970s to create a wholly new Canadian encyclopedia.

In 1978, around the province of Alberta's 75th anniversary, Hurtig approached the Alberta government with the idea of supporting Hurtig's idea of an encyclopedia as Alberta's "gift to Canada", which gained the support of Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed. On 15 November 1979, the Alberta Legislature announced that the provincial government would underwrite the development costs of the encyclopedia with CA$3.4 million and would donate a further $600,000 towards the delivery of a free copy to every school and library in Canada. (This was done on the condition that no other funding would be able to obscure the gesture of the Alberta Government.)