Documents, correspondence, drawings and photographs, commonplace books.
Archival Collections Finding Aids
The Library houses over 750 manuscript collections covering a wide range of subject areas. Holdings range from a collection of about 40 third-century B.C. Egyptian papyri to papers of the co-discoverers of insulin: Banting, Best, Collip and Macleod; and finally to drafts, research notes, and correspondence of Canadian authors such as Margaret Atwood, Gwendolyn MacEwen, Leonard Cohen, Mazo de la Roche and Josef Skvorecky. The majority of our manuscript collections date from the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries and pertain to Canadian historical, literary, artistic or scientific fields.
Collections of personal papers are listed by the surname of the creator or collector, e.g. Birney, Earle. Institutional records are listed under the name of the institution, e.g. Royal Canadian Institute.
Collection level records for many of the manuscript collections appear in the on-line catalogue, along with links to finding aids in pdf format.
Displaying 26 - 31 of 31
Papers, 1750-1850. 1 box.
Manuscript and typescript poems in chapbooks.
Papers, 1939-51. 1 box.
Drafts of published and unpublished poems, lyrics, short stories and novels, and correspondence.
Papers, 1964-2010. 121 boxes.
Consists of 34 promissory freight notes for merchandise and peltries shipped aboard the King’s Armed Vessels between British Garrisons on Lake Ontario, Lake Erie and Lake Huron (1778-1787). Also contains 12 manuscript documents on the hardships experienced by fur traders and merchants in their attempts to conduct business in the Great Lakes region (1783-1793); these primarily illustrate the experiences of Philippe-Francois de Rastel de Rocheblave, James Ellice and Toussaint Pothier.
Papers, 1788-1792. 3 boxes.
Drafts of stories, plays, poems, articles, page proofs, audio tapes of readings.
Papers, 1959-1967. 5 boxes.
Account of Atlantic crossing from Portsmouth to Quebec.
Diary, 1844. 1 box (1 volume).