Fonds consists of various materials created or received by the Gillies Brothers lumbering company between 1866 and 1979. Documentation about the company includes correspondence, timber limit records, records concerning properties owned by the company, shanty records, employment records, and financial records. Also included are records on a variety of media such as photographs, sound recordings, and architectural and cartographic records.
There are also several other small groups of records that document activities beyond Gillies Bros. These include financial and other personal records of various members of the Gillies family, records of a mill run by John Gillies which was a predecessor to Gillies Bros. and Co., records of Forbes Galena Mines Limited, and a small number of records that have been attributed to the firm of Carswell, Thistle and MacKay of Calabogie. These were all received by the Archives of Ontario alongside records of Gillies Bros., and have been kept as part of the same fonds.
Although the Archives of Ontario has acquired a wide variety of records from Gillies Bros., few of the series could be described as complete. Many of the series cover a small period of time very well but fail to reveal trends over a long period. The fonds is strongest with respect to financial records and to records detailing timber limits and the day to day production of the timber.
For a more detailed description, use this link to the Archives of Ontario's descriptive database: http://ao.minisisinc.com/scripts/mwimain.dll/144/PROV/PROV/REFD+F+150?SESSIONSEARCH
Gillies Brothers Company