The fonds comprises three accessions, the first of which was donated in 2014. This accession spans boxes 1-9. The second accession (an accrual) was donated in 2017 and spans box 10 and files 11-01 to 11-10. The third accession (an accrual) was donated in 2022 and consists of file 11-11.

First accession: While some of the materials in the fonds had clearly been arranged by members of the McLennan family, there was no order apparent to the majority of the materials received by RBSC. Some materials had been organized by Hugh McLennan in the 1980s, and materials belonging to the “Writing, research, and publications” sub-series of the William McLennan series appeared to retain much of their original order. However, most of the materials in the fonds were stored loosely in metal trunks for a number of years and became disordered and interfiled over time. Where no discernible order was present, the archivist provided an order to increase ease of use by researchers.

Given the lack of order, it was difficult in some cases, particularly in the case of collected historical materials and documents, to distinguish whether materials were collected by William McLennan or other members of the McLennan family or by Frederick Griffin. Given the connection of the McLennan family to Glengarry County and William McLennan’s interest in scholarly antiquarianism, historical materials originating from that area were arranged in the William McLennan series. Additionally, historical documents without any obvious connection to Griffin’s legal work were arranged in the William McLennan series.

While there seems to have been a number of tenuous connections between the McLennan family and Griffin, it is unclear how Griffin’s materials came to be included in the fonds. As a fellow lawyer with an interest in history, William McLennan may have collected Griffin’s materials at some point, perhaps after Griffin donated his papers and books to McGill University, where McLennan was librarian and later honorary librarian.

In addition to providing an order to some of the materials, the archivist weeded some material such as duplicate copies of newspapers and clippings or other published materials without any annotations.

Second accession: Similar to the first accession, materials from the second accession had no apparent order. Given this, it was difficult to ascertain the provenance of particular records. The archivist assigned records to series after analysis and in consultation with members of the McLennan family. In keeping with the order determined by the first archivist to work on this fonds, the second archivist created a series to reflect new records originating from William Durie McLennan. No materials were removed from the second accession.

Third accession: The third accession consists of a single file of letters from Barlett McLennan and therefore was arranged with other materials related to him which are located in the Series: Hugh McLennan (1927-2004) files.