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 consists of Professor Dawn L. Smith's research on the Spanish Golden Age Theatre revival, post-Franco 1975-1996. The collection includes research materials, newspaper clippings, theatre bulletins, correspondence, notes, and published articles. Also included are copies of two books: Historia de los Teatros Nacionales 1939-1962 and Cuatro Siglos de Teatro en Madrid.

The fonds documents Edgar Tilden Albert's activities as a member of the Organizing Committee of York University and his travelling to Soviet Union for the period 1955-1971.

The fonds consists of a diary of E.C.A. Gordon and account book for work in the shipyards at Galatea, Constantinople, for the year 1856. The accounts are kept in piastres [Spanish currency] and British pounds.

The fonds consists of newspaper clippings of Charles Bothwell Pyper's articles in the Telegram together with telegraphic messages that served as 'hard copy' for his articles from foreign posts; correspondence, and notes; and newspaper clippings from several other newspapers. It includes a typescript of 'Chamberlain and his critics,' as well as earlier drafts, typescripts, some with corrections, of a book on Winston Churchill, and drafts of unpublished dramatic productions by Pyper. The vast majority of the fonds consists of newspaper clippings, notes and related material concerning Pyper's journalism, arranged alphabetically by subject. Some of the subjects included in the fonds are: Clement Attlee, Lord Beaverbrook, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, Winston Churchill, Joseph E. Davies, Anthony Eden, the League of Nations, Palestine in the post-war years, the Spanish Civil War, the Suez Crisis, the United Nations, and World War II.

The fonds consists of correspondence, financial records, notebooks, galleys, and typescripts of Dame Edith Sitwell.

The fonds mainly documents Ernesto Vinci's career as a singer. It also partially documents his activities as a teacher at the University of Toronto.

Fonds consists of material that documents his career as a writer and broadcaster and, as such, includes correspondence with publishers, fan mail, research material, newspaper clippings, reviews of his work, notes, drafts and galleys related to his novels and works of non-fiction. The writing files include photocopies of his own letters written to his mother when he was an internee in England and manuscript and photocopies of letters written to Koch from Daria Hambourg and used as research material for his novel, "The Brothers Hambourg". Fonds also includes transcripts of interviews as well as written reminiscences in the form of letters from many former German internees; these letters were subsequently used as resource material for his book "Deemed Suspect: A Wartime Blunder". Fonds includes a complete set of published copies of his books. The broadcasting files contain correspondence, memos, notes and drafts of scripts, scrapbooks and other material that documents his long career with the CBC.

Fonds consists of more than 60 letters, newsletters, poems, and greeting cards written by Margaret Laurence to Ian and Sandy Cameron, as well as a copy of Laurence's will. The correspondence discusses Laurence's work as a writing instructor and speaker at the University of Toronto, her relationship with other Canadian writers and Clara Thomas, her move from Toronto to Lakefield, and her involvement with the Writers' Union of Canada conference in Ottawa in November 1973. Laurence comments extensively on her own works and her efforts to encourage other writers (including Ian Cameron), her efforts to produce a recording of songs with her lyrics and Cameron's musical score to accompany "The diviners," the film contract based on this novel, and her elation at winning the Molson Prize in 1975. The correspondence also discusses her divorce from Jack Laurence, her relationship with her children, and her views on social and generational change. The correspondence is accompanied by nine vinyl recordings given by Laurence to the Camerons that feature European classical music, African palm wine music, and Ghanian highlife music. The fonds also contains five letters from John Ruskin, the Victorian writer and art critic, to Kate Towney and Arbuthnot Cameron, 1865-1867, regarding Towney's marriage and financial affairs, mineral collecting, and ideas from Ruskin's book, "Modern painters." These letters are accompanied by notes and transcripts, as well as a letter written in 1907 regarding the Ruskin correspondence.

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.