The fonds consists of documents and letters accumulated during the course of Griffin's legal career, including: dockets of the firm Griffin & Sewell, 1833-1875; legal notes by Griffin concerning wills, sales, and mortgages 1850-1876; legal documents of property transfers and marriage contracts 1826-1860; and notes on marine insurance in the St Lawrence 1843-1848. There are as well two notebooks of legal definitions, dating from approximately 1860.
Fonds contains Frederick Holland Mackay's lecture notes from several courses of medicine for the session 1910-1911. They are W.F. Hamilton on medicine, H.A. Lafleur on the respiratory system, C.F. Martin on neurology and F.G. Finlay on heart conditions. The fonds includes one student notebook with an inscription from W.W. Francis and Mackay to W.W. Francis.
Howes' papers are entirely concerned with his work at McGill and fall into four series: personal materials, teaching materials, research papers and consulting files, and papers concerning collective bargaining. Private files (16 cm) cover the period 1939-1962 and contain memoranda, correspondence and reports concerning Howes' appointments, salary and benefits, his engineering courses and Extension Department work, and the business of MAUT. Personal notes and poems from colleagues are also included. Teaching materials comprise 20 cm of lecture notes and laboratories notes for his course in radio design (1960), as well as a small number of files on equipment, the Engineering Faculty Summer School and student advisors (1944-1959). Research papers include a copy of Howes' doctoral thesis, as well as 18 cm of National Research Council applications, both his own and others', but all relating to acoustics, from 1948 to 1964. His work as a consultant is documented by a further 18 cm of engineering briefs and performance reports on radio stations in Ontario (1949-1960) and files of correspondence and reports on television transmission in Ottawa and Fredericton, as well as work undertaken for the U.S. Signal Corps. Howes' effort to justify the construction of the anechoic room in the McConnell Engineering Building resulted in 18 cm of plans, reports, and correspondence with industries interested in sound-proofing (1958). There are also some general research notes on noise levels in the Engineering and Physical Sciences buildings at McGill. Finally, Howes' involvement in the question of collective bargaining rights for engineers is attested by 13 cm of notes and correspondence, largely with professional engineering associations and with political figures such as Senator A.K. Hugessen and Prime Minister McKenzie King.
Collection consists chiefly of manuscripts produced by Frederick T. Bason, including a handwritten version of the author's manuscript "Summer" (19 leaves, written in 1962) and a two-part typescript of "The Last Bassoon," complete with the editor's corrections (part 1, pages 1-132 and part 2, pages 133-291). File 2 also includes a 24-page booklet of "Fred Bason goes fishing," published in 1959. File 1 also contains the following items: 1. A typewritten note from Fred Bason addressed to the owner of the original manuscript of 'The Last Bassoon,' dated January 1962. 2. A typewritten one-page list titled "Fred Bason has for sale the following splendid books." 3. A two-page handwritten letter dated January 1961, addressed to M. James, written on Fred Bason's author letterhead. In this letter, Bason expresses his gratitude for a cheque for a purchased manuscript, discusses his lectures in England, and mentions potential lectures in Quebec, specifically at McGill University.
The fonds comprises nine series (including seven main categories of information) of records on the life and career of Frederick B. Taylor. It is the largest collection to date on Frederick B. Taylor. Biographical Information includes an excerpt from an unpublished autobiographical manuscript, Essays includes works such as "Reflections on painting Stephen Leacock", Photographs includes both professional and social snapshots. Two main facets of the Archive which hold particular interest are Works and Correspondence. Works includes over 1550 reproductions of Taylor's work. This selection is a cross-section of Taylor's artistic mediums and includes painting (landscape, industrial, portrait, still-life), etching, drawing, sculpture as well as six original prints and seven original canvases located at McGill University. Correspondence comprises some 2000 letters, documents or memorandums, spans from the early 1920s up until Taylor's death in 1987 and is divided into professional and personal series. The professional series focuses primarily on the relationships Taylor held with various private galleries and exhibitors of his work including the Klinkhoff, Kastel and Dominion Galleries in Montreal, the Roberts Gallery in Toronto as well as numerous Canadian public galleries and museums which remain repositories of Taylor's work, among them the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. The personal section demonstrates Taylor's substantial and often life-long relationships with his family and friends, among them, artists André Bieler, Alan Harrison and Carl Allen Smart as well as Paul Wakefield and Colin Wyatt.
Fonds documents the friendship between Tooke and William Boyman Howell through the letters from William Boyman Howell, retired in England, to Frederick Thomas Tooke in Montreal, during the Second World War, from 1941 to 1947.
