Douglas joined the Whaletown Women's Institute in 1950, shortly afterwards becoming president of the local branch. She served on district, provincial and national boards as B .C. publicity director and F.W.I .C. director
of public relations and as president of the North Vancouver Island district. She edited the brief which won the Tory Award for the FWIC and was editor of "Modern Pioneers", a history of the W .I. published in 1960. Series consists of typescripts of articles and news releases, notes and research for articles, and correspondence.

From an early age, Douglas was an avid letter writer, and maintained many correspondences throughout her life. This series includes both incoming and outgoing personal correspondence, filed separately except where Douglas had kept both together.

This series contains a representative sample of fan mail received by Douglas for her articles, books and poems ; letters written by fan' who became long-time correspondents ; and one group of outgoing correspondence from "Grant Madison" to Frances Lang. (The distinction between "personal" and "fan" was one made by Douglas , even in the case of long correspondences .)

These files contain information used by Douglas in her writing and include a mixture of working copies of articles, correspondence & notes, lists of sources and lists of photos. Douglas' original organization of subject groupings has been maintained ; each file is an original grouping of material.

This series contains incoming and outgoing correspondence with publishing firms, periodicals and newspapers, writing associations and others regarding the publication of Douglas' works. Original groupings have been maintained.

Series consists of incoming and outgoing correspondence.

Series consists of records of correspondence and address lists.

Series consists of resumes, publicity releases & interviews, articles about Douglas, and lists of writings and photos.

Series consists of royalty statements; invoices & statements showing income from writing ; lists of writing accepted for publication ; income tax information ; property tax records ; some correspondence.

Series consists of legal documents concerning personal, property and business matters.

Series consists of a mixture of material relating to Douglas' property on Cortes.

Series consists of inventories of goods compiled by or for Douglas.

This series contains a mixture of material relating to Douglas' life, including some material about her father.

Series consists of clippings of articles by or about Douglas ; other clippings are found in the Scrapbooks Series.

The photographs date from the 1890s (pictures of or taken by Douglas' parents and family portraits) . There is a large assortment of childhood pictures of Gilean, her schoolmates etc. Douglas started taking photographs as a child and by her early twenties was an avid and accomplished photographer. Photographs taken by her during the 1920s through the early 1940s are for the most part found in the albums . Pictures taken in the 1950s and 1960s fall into 3 main categories : black & white photos of the B.C. coast taken during her trips on the boats of the Columbia Coast Mission, color and black & white photos of communities in B.C. and eastern
Canada taken during her trips for the W .I., and pictures of Channel Rock. Unfortunately the slides and pictures taken on WI trips are unlabelled and for the most part can only be identified as to general location and date. During the 1970s and 1980s the photographs are almost exclusively of Channel Rock. A representative of these in included in this series ; others may be found at the Cortes Museum and Archives.

Aside from Douglas' own photographs, there are several interesting groups of other people's pictures in this collection: an album with pictures of overseas service during World War I, a group of labelled photographs of Baffin Island, Pangirtung, etc . taken in 1926/27 by an RCMP officer, and photographs from a trip around the world on a freighter in 1919.

Series consists of photographs taken by Douglas (both personal and those used to illustrate magazine and newspaper articles) ; family photographs, both portraits and snapshots ; photographs given to Douglas by friends and correspondents; photographs acquired from archival and commercial sources for use as illustrations ; slides and negatives; film strips.

Series consists of scrapbooks containing clippings . Most were compiled by Douglas. Two date from ca. 1898 and contain clippings about Douglas' parents. Two contain clippings of various subjects of interest to Douglas ;
the others contain clippings of Douglas' published writings and reviews of her work.

Series consists of journals, diaries, engagement calendars, address books and bank books. Most of the yearly journals or engagement books have entries for only part of the year.

Series consists of index cards containing information about the submission and publication of poems and articles in newspapers and periodicals.