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World War, 1914-1918 trench map and aerial photograph collection

  • RC0306
  • Collection
  • 1914-1918

The collection consists of trench maps and aerial photographs created during the First World War. The majority of the maps were created by the British Ordnance Survey for the Allied forces, although a few German, French and other maps purchased privately by officers exist within the collection. As the collection is almost exclusively made up of British mapping, coverage is limited to the British sector of the Western Front extending from the English Channel in the north to the vicinity of Reims in the south.

The aerial photographs were produced by the [British] Royal Flying Corps (renamed Royal Air Force when it merged with the Royal Naval Air Service in 1918). However, a few French and German examples exist within the collection. Approximately 350 photographs in the collection have hand annotations ranging from simple circles indicating the location of important features on the recto to full, textual descriptions on the verso. Approximately 90 additional photographs are mounted in an Album acquired from the University of Alberta.

World War, 1914-1918 collection

  • RC0309
  • Collection
  • 1761-1968

The collection consists of correspondence, photographs, post cards, maps, manuscripts, typescripts, orders and other official documents, diagrams, programmes, souvenirs, song-sheets, artwork, leaflets, sound recordings and moving images, and printed materials.

Michel Brisebois collection of World War I leaflets

  • RC0399
  • Collection
  • 1915-1918

The collection consists of leaflets, postcards and bookmarks dropped by airplane and balloon by the French, British and Germans on France, Belgium and Germany during World War I. References to their listings in Klaus Kirchner’s Flugblatt-Propaganda is provided in the finding aid. Some of the leaflets are quite rare. The collection also contained some periodicals. Both La Lettre du soldat à ceux du pays envahi and Lettres à tous le Français have been removed and catalogued for Archives and Research Collections periodical collection. Issues of one periodical, La Libre Belgique, remain with this collection as Archives and Research Collections periodical collection already has a full run.

Myers Coplans collection

  • RC0515
  • Collection
  • 1914-1921

This collection consists of water supply maps, notes, and plans detailing his work supplying good drinking and disposing of waste water generated by the army. Included are diagrams for building water chlorination/filtration systems in the field, detailed maps, and other notes.

Coplans, Myers

United States Army Base Hospital No. 20 collection

  • RC0591
  • Collection
  • 1918-1920

The collection consists of the History of United States Army Base Hospital No. 20 (Philadelphia, 1920): 257 pages with many illustrations; as well as 16 photographs, 1918. The material appears to come from May Grenville of Thorold, Ontario, who served as a nurse with the hospital. There are initial photographs of her at Ellis Island, where the nurses were stationed before setting out for France. It then includes photos of the staff, as well as some of the various personnel Grenville served with in Mobile Surgery units, plus a postcard of the chapel at Chatel-Guyon, where the hospital was. In addition to photos related to the hospital, there are two photos of Canadian soldiers, as well as two photographs of grave markers at Vimy Ridge taken on 22 December 1918. The names on the grave markers are F. Thornton and Charles Grenville, her brother. Finally, there is a small, unidentified photograph of a number of women seated on one side of a sunny room. A number of the photos appear in the book.

United States Army Base Hospital No. 20

Nash's Magazine World War I collection

  • RC0592
  • Collection
  • 1914

This is a collection of fourteen letters, some addressed to the editor of Nash’s magazine, mostly written in August and September 1914, the beginning of World War I. One of the letters begins: “you have asked me for a message of encouragement to your readers in the dark hour of our country’s fortune.” The collection ranges from lengthy letters to a few lines. Literary contributors include Barry Pain, Louis Parker, Mrs. W. Desmond Humphreys, E. Temple Thurston. There are also letters from military figures (Major General Sir Henry Page Croft, Major General Sir Alfred Edward Turner, General Sir George Benjamin Wolseley). Other contributions are from Sir T. Vansittart Bowater, the Lord Mayor of London , the Archbishop of Armagh and the Bishop of Chicester.

Pelham Webb collection

  • RC0682
  • Collection
  • 1914

The fonds contains poem manuscripts and a single letter. The identity of Mrs. Russell, to whom the single letter in this collection was written and for whom the poems, addressed to "Lydia", were presumably composed, is unknown.

Webb, Arthur Pelham

Edmund Blunden collection

  • RC0692
  • Collection
  • 1920-1968

There have been a number of accruals which have been combined for the purposes of description. The collection has been arranged into three series: manuscripts, correspondence, and other. It is supplemented by his books, mainly first editions, which have been catalogued for Research Collections.

Blunden, Edmund

World War, 1914-1918 poster collection

  • RC0830
  • Collection
  • 1913-1921

The collection consists of posters issued by the following British organizations: Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, London; Parliamentary War Savings Committee; National War Savings Committee; Joint Labour Recruiting Committee; Ministry of National Service; Navy; Imperial Maritime League; City of London; and Blue Cross fund. The collection also contains posters issued by the governments of Canada (includes Canadian Victory Bonds), France, United States and Germany. There are a large number of posters from Louvain, Belgium. There are also several posters issued by the German occupying forces in France and Belgium and the British occupying forces in Germany.

Paper soldiers and battle scenes collection

  • RC0899
  • Collection
  • c.1890-c.1925

Paper soldiers were a popular children’s entertainment or decoration beginning in the 1700s, rising to a height of popularity in the mid-19th century, before all but dying out after the Second World War. This small collection typifies the range of materials on offer from the late 1800s into the post First World War period from German printers (two of the companies were in Germany, the third was in the Alsace region, which at the time was under the rule of the German Kaiser). Some are printed on heavy card (soldaten auf karton, eg. item 1) while others on thin newsprint. There are examples of a number of styles, including simple cut-outs, others that could be glued together to create three-dimensional landscapes and objects, as well as black and white images for children to colour (eg. item 13). There is also one example of the scheibenbilder (target picture) style (item 16). German is always the first language on the sheets, but many included French and English, and some Italian and Spanish, showing the world-wide market for the material.

The Carl Joseph Scholz company of Mainz (founded 1793 and still in existence as of 2015) has a long history in both the printing industry and paper soldier manufacture. At one point their distribution of toy soldiers went as far East as Russian, and west to Great Britain and North America. The company stayed in the Scholz family at least until the Second World War.

Hohenstein & Lange operated in Berlin from 1876-1906. In 1898 the company became a joint-stock company and the inclusion of Druck und Verlag, Aktiengesellschaft Berliner Luzuspapier-fabrik vorm Hohenstein & Lang on item 11, date it to this later period.

There have been many iterations of Carl Burckardt’s original company, but they all maintained a variation of the name. The paper soldiers in this collection are all printed under the Druck u. Verlag v. C. Burckardt Nacht in Weissenburg (Elsass) imprint, which existed from 1890-1906.

George Baldwin Read Collection

  • Collection
  • 1808-1958

The collection consists of Cpt. Read’s First World War military maps and Active Service Testament. An 1808 map of Russia. A copy of Col. R. Meinertzhagen’s Birds of Arabia, which belonged to Cpt. Read’s son.

Read, George Baldwin