This fonds contains personal, professional, and domestic records from the life of Joan Somers Sullivan in the later-20th and early-21st centuries. Series I (Personal Records) includes reminiscences about Joan, medical information, clippings related to community activitism (including traffic problems in Old Sandwich), and personal journals. Series II (Professional Records) features her resumé and qualifications, as well as administrative records, correspondence, public talks, research material, clippings, and publications connected with her pioneering effort to unionize legal secretaries in Windsor, Ontario during the 1970s. This includes talks for events held by the Faculties of Law at the University of Windsor and the University of Western Ontario, and articles published in the Windsor Woman women’s liberation newspaper and The Oyez Windsor law students’ newspaper. Series III (Domestic Records) contains recipes and household hints used in her later-life personal housekeeping, as well as lists of her annual Christmas baking.

This fonds consists of a single research file containing information about the Walkerville Match Company, ca. 1899-1905, collected by history enthusiast Edward S. Wright. The document draws together facts about the company from a variety of contemporary sources and includes images of a number of documents and artifacts relevant to the company’s history.

This fonds contains records from the mid-1960s depicting the involvement of cosmetic company Beauty Counselors of Canada and its Sales Promotion Manager Doug Johnstone in branding Windsor, Ontario as the “City of Roses” (or “Rose City”). Most of the records were originally kept in scrapbook form by the company, and include news clippings, photographs of people and products, newsletters, and promotional ephemera. The rose campaign took shape under the direction of the Greater Windsor Foundation, a cross-sector initiative that sought to change what was then perceived as Windsor’s negative reputation. A 2011 email from Johnstone and 1960s newspaper articles explain this wider context. Although the records are focused on the rose campaign, some of the photographs and ephemera provide insights into both women’s work (as salespeople for the company) and women’s beauty culture in the 1960s.

23 personal letters received by George Philpot. 22 of them were written by Irene R. [surname unknown], containing personal news, romantic hopes and feelings, and occasionally strife within their long-distance relationship. Irene’s news touches on aspects of her rural social life, the progress of her Normal School studies, news and advice from mutual friends and previous graduates of the Normal School, applying for rural school positions in competition with friends and acquaintances, physical conditions and amenities in one- and two-room rural schools, gender inequities in hiring and salary practices for teachers, the challenges of rural school fairs and timetabling as a multi-grade teacher, interactions with rural school trustees, and the prevalence of gossip about young women and schoolteachers in rural communities. 1 letter is from Betty Smith, who thanks George Philpot for his assistance in securing her a position at the Fuller Brush Company.