Title and statement of responsibility area
Title proper
John Buchan fonds
General material designation
Parallel title
Other title information
Title statements of responsibility
Title notes
Level of description
Fonds
Repository
Edition area
Edition statement
Edition statement of responsibility
Class of material specific details area
Statement of scale (cartographic)
Statement of projection (cartographic)
Statement of coordinates (cartographic)
Statement of scale (architectural)
Issuing jurisdiction and denomination (philatelic)
Dates of creation area
Date(s)
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1895-1941 (Creation)
- Creator
- Buchan, John
Physical description area
Physical description
7.6 m of textual records and other material
Publisher's series area
Title proper of publisher's series
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Archival description area
Name of creator
Biographical history
John Buchan, first Baron Tweedsmuir, was born August 26, 1875, at Perth, Scotland. Buchan lived in Pathhead, Fife from 1876 to 1888, when his family moved to Glasgow. In 1892, after attending Hutcheson's Grammar School, he received a bursary to Glasgow University. Three years later he won a scholarship to Brasenose College, Oxford. While at Oxford, Buchan began contributing to periodicals and publishing books. In 1899 he took rooms at the Temple in London and read for the bar. Two years later, he joined Lord Milner's staff in South Africa, working on refugee camps, land settlement, and the administration of the Orange River and Transvaal Colonies.
Buchan returned to London in 1903 and spent the next three years working as a barrister while continuing to pursue his literary career. In December 1906 he joined Nelson's publishing house, where he would remain until 1929. With the outbreak of the First World War, he began a serial history of the war for Nelson's. From 1916 to 1918 he worked for British Military Intelligence, eventually becoming Director of Intelligence in the U.K. Ministry of Information under Beaverbrook. In 1927 Buchan was elected to the British Parliament as Conservative member for the Scottish Universities. He was re-elected in 1929 and 1931. In 1933 he became High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Two years later he was appointed Governor General of Canada and was thereafter known as Lord Tweedsmuir.
A popular Governor General, he travelled widely throughout Canada and endeavoured to make the office accessible to a broad spectrum of society. In 1937, the year which saw him become the first Governor General to tour the Arctic, Buchan instituted the Governor General's Literary Awards. The author of more than 60 books, Buchan was both a world-famous novelist and an accomplished historian and biographer. He died in Montreal on February 11, 1940.
Custodial history
Scope and content
The fonds consists of both textual and microfilmed material relating to Baron John Buchan's personal life and career as Governor General of Canada The textual material includes correspondence, speeches (general and political), writings (published and unpublished), subject files, scrapbooks, press clippings, and photographs. The microfilmed material includes correspondence with Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1936-1940, and one letter from Roosevelt to Lady Tweedsmuir, 1941 Apr. 16 and the original manuscript for "Sick Heart River" which is housed in Special Collections, Queen's University Library.
Notes area
Physical condition
Immediate source of acquisition
Donation by Col.and Mrs. R.S. McLaughlin - 1966
Arrangement
Language of material
- English
Script of material
Location of originals
2110
F3 A4.2 007
MF 363-365
MF 876
MF 1330-1356
V015
SR496
SR497
SR498
Availability of other formats
Restrictions on access
Open
Terms governing use, reproduction, and publication
Copyright provisions may apply, please see archivist
Finding aids
Associated materials
Accruals
No further accruals are expected