The collection consists of six of Walter Crane’s sketchbooks. Two of the sketchbooks date to the summer of 1864, and the remaining four date to the summers of 1897, 1901, 1903, and 1905. The collection’s dates offer a contrast between Crane’s early and later career as an artist. The contents feature his preliminary designs, pictorial observations of the world, and textual notes.

Crane’s sketchbooks are filled with landscapes and towns and building interiors and exteriors from Crane’s life in England and travels to Ireland. Aligned with Crane’s commissioned and published works, the sketchbooks include sketches for his book designs, a heraldic eagle, and plans for a panel painting or frieze. Flora, fauna, men, women, children, Greco-Roman figures and architectural details make up the wide range of subjects covered in the sketchbooks.

The drawings range from Crane’s rough ideas expressed in his preliminary sketches and line drawings to tonal drawings and studies of individuals, landscapes, and flowers. The drawing techniques play with perspective, topography, bodily gesture, facial expression, tone, line, outline, form, and colour.

Crane’s notations appear throughout the sketchbooks, including on the sketches themselves and on their facing pages. He also hand-wrote inspirational excerpts from poems and essays which includes quotes from Charles Kingsley and John Ruskin works.

Between blank and torn pages, the medium for the textual and visual content shifts between pen and pencil on paper. Several landscapes are full-page watercolours on paper.

The fonds includes a copy of No. 3 Canadian General Hospital (McGill), 1914-1919 owned by Walter de M. Scriver and ephemera relating to Canadian General Hospital No. 3. It also contains a handwritten poem entitled "Tune of T'anks," composed by Scriver for his family and dated France, 1915.

The fonds derive from his active work in associations and at McGill University and consists of correspondence, minutes and agendas of meetings, reports and documents with various professional associations and committees, showing his involvement and interest in meteorology and physics. At the University, his correspondence is mainly for the University administration (1967-1969), the Physics Department, the McGill Associations of McGill Teachers (1968-1969) and the Visiting Committee (1967-1969). Included are his physics notes and laboratory reports as a student at the University of Toronto, student photographs, laboratory notebooks in Physics and Mathematics, teaching aids consisting of transparencies and notes for lectures, reprints and drafts of his writings mainly about hailstorms, the ozone and weather radar (1951-1986). The collection also contains group portraits of the Physics Department at McGill and University of Toronto. In addition, there are Dr. Hitschfeld's notes on experiments and observations, including photographs, on radar (1950's), tornadoes (1955) and the ozone (1960's). Films of scientific experiments also form part of the funds.

The fonds contains the personal and business papers of Walter H. Smith, 1849-1895. It includes diaries, poetry, accounts, and papers concerned with a variety of topics including transportation, immigration, and the Chicago Exhibition, 1893.

The fonds consists of one 9 x 12" (23 x 30.5 cm) envelope containing a box of lecture tickets, testimonials and receipts collected by Dr. Walter J. McInnes MD 1865. The cards were issues between 1862 and 1865 and as is customary, they contain certification of Dr. McInnes' attendance and his assistance in a number of courses.

Booth's autobiographical notes, ca 1949, apparently prepared for a Congregational Yearbook, are supplemented by sixteen photographs, printed notices of Booth's performances as an elocutionist, and diplomas.

Affidavit concerning Bown’s controversy with the Hudson’s Bay Company over the printing by the Nor’-Wester of a petition on memorial dealing with imprisonment of Dr. John Schultz. It is dated 10 July 1868 at St. Cloud Minn. Note: Part of Exhibit A, and all of Exhibits B, C, & D are missing.

"Architectural Drawings, 1910-1, 21 drawings." The drawings document, through plans and elevations, Painter's addition to Windsor Station in Montreal. Also included are copies of plans for the original building constructed between 1880 and 1890.

"Dessins architecturaux, 1910-1911, 21 dessins." Les dessins rendent compte, par des plans et des élévations, de l'annexe conçue par Painter à la gare Windsor de Montréal. Signalons également des copies des plans de l'immeuble original construit entre 1880 et 1890.

Fonds consists of Vaughn's draft of Sir William Van Horne.