The records of Gary Lauk and his Executive Assistants Eric Green and Albert Mellul, are described in this finding aid. They were created in the course of the operations of the Minister's Office during the New Democratic Party (NDP) administration of government. The majority of the material pertains to Lauk's term of office as the Minister of Economic Development (1973-75), Minister of Mines and Petroleum Resources (October - December, 1975), and as Education Critic (1976-1982). Some material predates Lauk's appointment and relates to his responsibilities as a MLA.
Much of the material given in the initial donation deals with the direction given to the Department of Economic Development in its activities of promoting the economic development and diversification of BC while much of the material in the subsequent donation deals with the Education sector in BC from the mid 1970s to the early 1980s. Other records deal with the Lauk's communications with the British Columbia Cabinet and with the NDP party of Canada. A smaller amount of material relates to Lauk's role as a member of the NDP Caucus and the MLA for Vancouver Centre and a few files are of a personal nature.
The records have been arranged into three series: MLA for the Governing Party; Executive assistant to Lauk; and MLA for the Official Opposition Party. Within the first series are subseries of government department and subject files, as well as outgoing correspondence and Printed reference material. In addition, a subseries titled General government files, has been created of the documents that accumulated unfiled, while Lauk was Minister of Mines and during the provincial election.
The Executive Assistant to Lauk series contains two subseries: Subject files and Outgoing correspondence.
The MLA for the Official Opposition Party series contains Lauk's records that he acquired and/or accumulated during the time period from 1976-1985. The series contains four subseries including Education Critic; Subject files; Correspondence; and General government files.
The records largely consist of typewritten documents, such as correspondence, memoranda, briefings, minutes and itineraries. The records also contain printed materials such as press kits, new releases, brochures, newsletters, and newsclippings. Also included are a substantial amount of published and unpublished studies, reports, and proposals produced by the Department of Economic Development or by the other government departments and non-governmental agencies. The non-textual materials include an album of colour photoprints of the BC government's delegation trip to Japan, which Lauk was a part of, as well as a number of loose colour and black and white photoprints.
The fonds also contains correspondence files of Leo Nimsick (1972-1973), Lauk's predecessor as Minister of Mines and Petroleum. Lauk acquired these papers when he was appointed Minister.
