Series consists of 29 diaries, dated reading journals and day planners created and preserved by Watson during her adult life. These Material contain fragments of her creative writing; drawings in graphite, coloured pencil and ink; reading notes and language exercises; collected ephemera; recordings of her daily activities and financial transactions; and reflections on her experiences, emotions, relationships and surroundings.
In general Watson kept confessional and reflective diaries from 1954 (1955?) to about 1957. When she moved to Toronto in 1956 to pursue her doctoral studies, Watson began to keep what can be best described as Reading Journals: dated notes pertaining to books she was reading interspersed with short diary entries regarding her correspondence, her observations of her surroundings and her academic experiences. After she moved to Edmonton to teach at the University of Alberta, and upon her retirement in Nanaimo, Watson's recorded thoughts become more infrequent. In her later life, Watson appears to have purchased commercial Day Planners to record her daily activities and financial translations.
It is apparent that Watson kept journals during her early teaching career in Cariboo Country in British Columbia. However, it seems she destroyed these at a later period.

Fonds constituted of ca. 300 photographs and ca. 100 postcards of military and WWI scenes, Donald and Addison Mackenzie’s political careers, and many of the Mackenzie family members. Also included is correspondence (1819-2002); drawings of the Dalziel barn; school textbooks and essays; published books; programs and papers from the York Historical Pioneer Society, the Horticultural Society, and the Conservation Society; tax notices and assessments; insurance forms; bills and receipts; and newspaper clippings. Mementos from the family’s pilgrimage to Vimy Ridge in 1936 include programs, a remembrance book, pilgrim lists, and a diary written by Major Mackenzie with accompanying transcript. Items from Donald and Major Mackenzie’s political careers include speeches, briefs, acts, Woodbridge Village Council agendas and minutes, election ballets and posters, and electoral boundary maps. Of particular interest is a WWI trench map from 1916 sent by Major Mackenzie to his family. Also A.A. Mackenzie's pre 1901 Victorian officer's infantry sword (used as a dress sword rather than in battle).

Most of the records consist of letters written to Mark Young Stark and his wife, Agatha, in Dundas. Correspondents include friends and family in Scotland or friends and colleagues in Upper Canada. Of the Scottish letters, those from Stark’s stepmother (Mary Bannatyne) and aunt (Grace Young) are the most numerous. Some letters predate Stark’s immigration to Canada in 1833. Other letters were written to his wife and to their daughter, Mary Ann, after Stark’s death in 1866. Topics addressed in the letters revolve around personal and family news but occasionally touch on current events, including politics and ecclesiastical affairs.

Fonds consists of Lindstrom's professorial and scholarly research files throughout her career, as well as records documenting her academic activities. Research files pertain to her publications and monographs such as "Defiant Sisters : A Social History of Finnish Immigrant Women in Canada, 1890-1930" (both the English and Finnish editions), and "From Heroes to Enemies : Finns in Canada, 1937-1947," as well as book chapters, articles, papers, presentations and lectures, and her involvement with the National Film Board production "Letters from Karelia," and subsequent research. The research files span the activities of Finnish and Finnish-Canadian organizations across the political spectrum, such as the Finnish Organization of Canada (left wing), and Loyal Finns in Canada (right wing). Records include oral history interviews (audio cassettes and transcripts), research notes, clippings, a significant and extensive number of photograph and letter collections passed down through generations of Finnish Canadians, diaries, correspondence, publication drafts, academic and professorial notes, microfilm of Finnish language newspapers published in Canada and archival records, financial records of Finnish-Canadian organizations such as newspapers and post-World War II relief funding bodies, scrapbooks, photocopies of rare and unusual documents such as two volumes of a Soviet register of Finnish War Crimes, a list of persons found in the mass grave at Karhumaki, and Soviet lists of North American Finns who journeyed to Karelia to help build a socialist utopia there, academic and professorial files, publicity files, files pertaining to her work with the School of Women's Studies, and her own papers as a university student. The fonds also includes letters written by Lindstrom as a newly-arrived teenaged immigrant to Canada to her best friend in Finland; many of these letters were published in Finnish with English translation in 'Letters from an immigrant teenager' in 2012.