This collection consists of letters and documents collected by Smith while acting as correspondent of "The Standard" during the Russo-Japanese war, 1904. Included are several communications from the Japanese General Staff.

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 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.

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.

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

This collection consists of an account book of members of the family of Lt.Gen. William Cuthbert Ward, R.E., kept partly by Captain W.C. Ward of the 42nd Royal Highlanders, 1850-1885.

Fonds consists of original manuscript for the romantic opera, "Conrad, or, The Heir of Holstein," adapted from Matthew Gregory Lewis's One O'Clock. Libretto was composed by W. H. Bellamy and music by William Hutchins Callcott.

This consists of a diary of William Bastard.

This collection consists of legal documents concerning the settlements of the estates of Sir W. Chester, 1728-1730.

Shaw's papers include memoranda, notebooks and letters mainly on natural history. There are also annual reports of the Montréal chapter of the Nicholas Agassiz Association.