Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/445

 Minor Notices 435 Canadian Archives for the year igo§ is to consist of three volumes, of which two, the former of nearly 1,300 pages, the latter of a thousand, have already appeared. The first contains a report on the archives of the Maritime Provinces, many papers from the Illinois settlements and the collections of the Chicago Historical Society, the instructions to the governors of Lower Canada from 1791 to 1839, letters of 'audreuil, Levis, and Dumas in 1760, a further summary of Parisian documents, mostly orders of the king and despatches, 1742-1784, with an elaborate index, and a genealogy of the families of La Beauce, P.Q. The sec- ond volume, except for a minute census of Isle Royale, taken by the Sieur de la Roque in 1752, is wholly devoted to genealogical material, for the Isle d'Orleans and Acadia, though the latter is accompanied with many documents which have a bearing on the expulsion of the Acadians. Genealogy, it is well known, is an object of passionate interest in French Canada, which may possibly justify so large an expenditure of government print in this field. In 1903 the Province of Ontario established a Bureau of Archives and appointed Mr. Alexander Fraser to the office of Provincial Archivist. His first report, the First Report of the Bureau of Archives for the Province of Ontario, printed by order of the Legislative Assembly (Toronto, King's Printer, 1904, pp. 72), is a brief preliminary state- ment in which Mr. Fraser sets forth in an intelligent and workmanlike manner the probable duties and programme of such an establishment, calling special attention to the need of bringing together into one repository all papers and documents of historical interest, not in current use, from all the departments of the provincial government; to the need of extensive collection, either into the provincial archives or into local places of deposit, of municipal, school, and church records, correspond- ence, and other documentary material ; and to that of copying, calendar- ing, and printing the more important records of the history of Ontario in all periods. Many interesting suggestions as to the process of col- lecting are given. Then follows a summary description, proceeding from one office to another but not yet covering all departments, of the historical records preserved by governmental bodies, and a body of selec- tions from correspondence of the department upon questions respecting the nature and utility of its work; lastly, to encourage collections in local history, suggestions as to compiling the history of a township are presented, and are illustrated by a collection of materials respecting the county of Durham. Mr. Fraser's Second Report (1904) (Toronto, King's Printer, 1905, pp. 1436) contains the evidence in detail, with the official reports based thereon, presented to the British Commissioners in Canada and Lon- don by United Empire Loyalists in support of their claims for com- pensation from the British Government at the close of the Revolu- tionary 'ar. The manuscript volumes containing the evidence taken