Collection consists of 36 autograph letters written to James Cameron and his son Archie. The correspondence includes letters by friends, associates, and members of the Cameron family in Toronto, Lake Beauport, Scotland, England, Hull, and Montreal. Subjects include family news, freemasonry, business (regarding deed of sales), factory work in Toronto, curling, and an April Fools' Day letter. With three extant envelopes.

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 Burney family manuscript collection consists chiefly of material created by Fanny Burney (1752-1840), whose novel, Evelina (1778), was a bestseller during her life time and is still in print, as well as by Burney family members and friends. The manuscript collection contains correspondence, letter fragments, and a journal kept by Fanny Burney (1812), and other materials by Burney herself, other members of her family, and members of their circle. The collection also includes significant correspondence for her father, the musician and musical historian Charles Burney (1726-1814).

The Montreal Mendelssohn Choir Collection comprises several volumes of sheet music from the Choir’s library. The choral folios were compiled and bound into eight volumes at the time of their donation to McGill University in 1895. The estate of D. Torrance Fraser, a former Choir member, donated another four volumes of choral music in 1926 and 1927. Three volumes contain second copies of the pieces from the Choir’s library donated thirty years prior; the fourth volume donated in 1927 contains a number of pieces performed by the Choir but not found in the seven extant volumes from the Choir’s library.

Contains a handwritten copy of J. G. Wood's article titled "Unintentional cruelty," which addresses the treatment and management of horses, published posthumously, and which appeared in "Social Notes." Includes a portrait of the author on the title page.

The collection consists of Edith Smellie's diary, a photograph, and notebook "Visiting List." The first section of her diary recounts a trip from Brockville, Ontario, to New York from October 2-10, 1888. She and her companions left Brockville by steamboat and transferred to rail at Morristown. The diary details visiting Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as Macy's and other stores. The final pages of the diary contain calculations and a short list of purchases, including boots, shoes, paints, and collars. A few pages in the diary begin to recount a second trip in 1889, as well as some poems. In addition to the diary is a sepia cabinet portrait by Sheldon & Davis, Kingston. The visiting list contains numbered entries of visitors for 1897, 1898, and 1899. There are also some addresses.

Collection consists of six account books dating from the 1830s to the 1860s, including ledgers and daybooks, used and kept primarily by Enoch Curtis for his leather tanning business. There are also some loose accounts and notes on small sheets of paper. The ledgers use a single-entry bookkeeping method in £sd. They are organized by individual merchant account, with records of debits (purchases or expenditures made) and credits (payments or goods received). Parallel underlining and Xs indicate when an account has balanced. The collection also includes some records related to Stella Curtis from the 1890s, including one letter and two sheets of math problems marked Clarenceville Model School.

Collection consists of pamphlets and reprints of scholarly works on Latin poetry and literary criticism, compiled by Otto Ribbeck.

The collection consists of 287 negatives, 65 prints and 179 copy negatives from photographer Tappan Adney. The collection documents his passage in the Yukon, Alaska and British Columbia during the Klondike Gold Rush in the late 1890s. The negatives depict various geographic landscapes, people and animals, settlements, and day-to-day mining activities in numerous locations, such as, Dawson, Skagway, Lower Yukon, Bonanza Creek, El Dorado, Chilkoot Trail, Nome, Dyea, Skookumchuck, Hunker Creek, Tagish and Dutch Harbor.

The collection consists of architectural drawings from 1888-1897 documenting three projects by Price: Windsor Station (1888-1889), James Ross House (extension, 1897), and an office building for William C. Van Horne in Vancouver, BC. These were some of Price's important commissions in Canada where he produced his most memorable work in a Romanesque Revival style, including the original wing of Chàteau Frontenac Hotel in Quebec City, QC (1882-1893), and Windsor Station for the Canadian Pacific Railway Company in Montreal, QC (1888-1889).

La collection inclut 35 dessins architecturaux créés entre 1888 et 1897. Il réunit trois projets de Price : la gare Windsor (1888-1889), la maison James Ross (rallonge, 1897) et un édifice à bureaux pour William C. Van Horne à Vancouver, Colombie britannique. Ceux sont parmi des plus importantes réalisations de Price au Canada où il a produit ses oeuvres de style néo-romanesque les plus mémorables : le bâtiment principal de l'hôtel Château Frontenac à Québec (1882-1893) et la gare Windsor pour la société Canadien Pacifique (1888-1889).