This series consists of materials compiled or created by Madeleine Parent and documents the Canadian Textile Council (CTC), the Canadian Textile and Chemical Union (CTCU), and the Confederation of Canadian Unions (CCU). Materials speak to Canadian unionism and document the split from American-based international union the United Textile Workers of America (UTWA).
The largest sub-series (C1) documents the CTC, founded in 1952 by Parent and Robert Kent Rowley. Documentation includes correspondence, reports, collective agreements, and union publications. There are several files on the CTC's national conventions, executive board meetings, and labour organizing and disputes for some Locals. Comparatively, there are fewer materials regarding the CTCU (sub-series C2). Nonetheless, various files document the CTCU's activities, including annual conventions, disputes, agreements, and the CTCU's constitutions and by-laws.
The CCU sub-series (C3) includes materials related to its conventions, national executive board meetings, and policies and constitution. There are also several files on member unions and issues of union publications, including Canadian Union News, Confederation of Canadian Unions Bulletin, C.T.C.C. Le Travail, and the CAIMAW review.
Each of the last seven sub-series (C4 to C10) relate to a different company and document the CTC or the CTCU’s activities regarding each respective company. All seven sub-series include information on collective agreements. Sub-series C4 to C8 contain information on the CTC’s application process for certification as the bargaining agent. Some documentation also speaks to the conflict between the CTC and American-led unions. For instance, materials in the Woods Manufacturing Company, Limited sub-series (C5) document the conflict with the UTWA, and materials in the Wabasso Cotton Company Limited sub-series (C8) document the campaign between the CTC and the UTWA.
Among these sub-series, there is also documentation on various strikes. The Dominion Textile Company Limited sub-series (C4) includes materials related to the 1952 strike of workers at Quebec plants and disputes in the 1960s that occurred at the Ste-Anne's mill in Quebec. Sub-series C6 documents the 1971 strike of Texpack Limited workers. Sub-series C7 details the three-month 1956 strike of Harding Carpets Limited workers at the Brantford, Ontario plant. The smallest sub-series, C9 and C10, document the 1973 strike by workers employed at the Artistic Woodwork Company Limited, including the police response to the strike, and the 1978 yearlong strike of workers at Puretex Knitting Company, due to the installation of surveillance cameras in the factory.

Series consists of financial records including budgets, 1960-1971, financial statements, 1948-1967; ledger sheets, 1951-1961; and invoices, 1939-1957, 1967.

With surviving records dating from 1936, Administrative Records reveals much of the practical functioning of the MCSA at the executive level as to day-to-day business and to some extent also in matters of longer term policy. In files typically spanning anything from a year to a decade or more, it documents executive supervision of the four Sections -- Case Work; Group Work and Recreation; Health; and Older Persons -- and the standing and special committees appointed by the Board of Directors (formerly Governors) and their Executive Committee. The heaviest of any series in correspondence, Administrative Records contain a high percentage of the communications of the President (who also served as the Chairman of the Board), the Executive and Assistant Executive Director, the Secretary and the Board of Directors variously with other officials, committees, and member organizations and their delegates to the Council.

It also holds reports, briefs, and minutes generated by external welfare agencies or internally by MCSA members and submitted to the executive (i.e., the Directors). But the Board of Directors also produced their own minutes, memoranda and reports, some of which survive in this series. The correspondence, policy statements and working papers in Administrative Records reveal the MCSA's over-all direction, perhaps never more so than in the late 1960s and early 1970s wherein along with the Committees Series they detail connections and merger negotiations with the Conseil des Oeuvres and then the Conseil de Developpement Social. In thus chronicling the transformation of an established, autonomous English-speaking institution into, first, an increasingly bilingual and then a French-as-official-language one (albeit with a provision for other language service to anglophone or allophone agencies and clientele), they reflect QueQec nationalist pressures in the wider society about them.

The series provides a main link with universities (most signally the long-standing affiliation with the McGill School of Social Work); Montreal, Canadian and Quebec governments; and such varied bodies as the Canadian Welfare Council, Association Cooperative d'Economie Familiale, Conseil de Bien-Etre du Quebec, Canadian Mental Health Association, and United Community Funds and Councils of America. Administrative Records likewise act as the medium of liaison with Welfare Federation and United Red Feather Services in regard to pensions, benefits and conditions of employment for paid personnel.

In general documenting the annual conference and public accounting of activities held after the close of the fiscal year, this series consists of MCSA records only, i.e., those generated by or for the institution's central bureaucracy; and, in a single instance (file 1094), an address delivered at the annual meeting of a member agency, the John Howard Society. Where the MCSA was itself closely affiliated with, or a member of, an external organization but the latter was not a member of the MCSA -- for example, the Canadian Mental Health Association or the Canadian Welfare Council -- the foregoing's annual meetings are in the Conferences, Seminars, Workshops and Institute Proceedings Series. The annual reports of functionally farther removed external organizations -- for instance, the Arctic Institute of North America or the Canadian Research Centre for Anthropology -- are in the Subject Files Series.

In the early years a few gaps exist in the MCSA records of annual meetings and annual reports. However, extant holdings represent 1924-1925 and 1931-1972. Though sparse compared to later standards, annual reports from the first usually included statements to the public and the Council membership made at annual meetings by the President, Executive Director, Executive Secretary, and heads of the four major Divisions (later Sections); but sometimes not all of these features are present and if there was an annual meeting, it does not seem to have been recorded. Of particular interest to students of the Depression may be the 1931- 1933 Annual Report of the Special Committee on Unemployment (file 997).

By the early 1960s, however, reflecting an increase in the amount, complexity, and professionalization of MCSA activities, files in this series have substantially expanded. They contain: invitations to member delegates and non-member political figures and welfare officials; agendas; logistics; dinner menus; minutes of the last annual meeting; and reports by the President, Chairman, Executive Director and/or Associate Executive Director, and Honorary Treasurer. Also included are amendments to the Constitution and by-laws, the report of the Nominating Committee and the election of Directors, the appointment of auditors for the next fiscal year, and addresses by guest dignitaries or visiting officials of other welfare organizations. In later years these files invariably contain the minutes of the last general meeting, and often of the current year, too. As of 1969 the fall meeting and annual meeting become virtually the same thing, being held the same day and place, the annual meeting taking perhaps an hour in
the morning for the presentation of executive and administrative reports with the afternoon devoted to the fall conference's addresses, papers, panel discussions and workshops. Most of this series is understandably serious in style as well as subject, but a lighter note was hit by Constance Lethbridge at the 1956 annual meeting with her production of Progress Through Planning and Leadership: An Illustrative Musical Playlet (file 803).

Administrative records consist of general and committee minutes, 1902-1972, annual reports, 1902-1964, personnel files, 1937-1947, files of correspondence and memoranda on individual sites as well as themes, e.g. water pollution, 1906-1972; and various surveys and studies, 1912-1967.

Series consists of minute books from annual and general meetings, and various committee meetings from both the Parks and Playground Association and Community Garden League of Greater Montreal.