Diaries (1854-1883), covering travels from Lachine to Red River (1854-1855), Lachine to Honolulu (1859), the voyage to Victoria (1860), travel in British Columbia (1864, 1867, 1868, 1870), journeys to Europe (1865 and 1880), travel from Montreal, where he was Chief Factor (1872, 1875, 1877, 1879), and a journey to Japan and China (1882-1883). The British Columbia diaries cover travel on the North West Coast (1870) to the Kootenays via the Dewdney Trail (1868) and to French Creek, McCullough Creek, Kamloops, Clearwater River, etc. (1867), and life in Victoria (1864). Letters and notes, including one letter written by his son Edwin to his mother, 7 June 1914, Winnipeg, describing his visit to Victoria and Vancouver.

The records include: diaries, field books, scrapbooks and subject files containing notes and correspondence covering Swannell's career as a surveyor in Northern British Columbia, his army service in the First World War in Europe and Russia and his later travels in British Columbia, Europe and Asia. The diaries and field books are profusely illustrated with photos.

Scrapbooks, 1925-1950 (5 volumes) containing postcards, photographs, hotel and motel brochures, menus, tickets, time tables, place mats and other memorabilia collected by Mr. and Mrs. Scott Graham on vacations in Ontario, the United States (mainly New York, Washington, D.C., and Washington State), British Columbia and the Prairie Provinces. The scrapbooks also contain theatre programmes, Anglican Church leaflets and Council of Women and Women's Canadian Church meeting notices, etc.

Travelogue. Impressions of Canada as seen by an American couple travelling from Newfoundland to BC, a sports fisherman, an American schoolboy and a landscape painter. BC footage includes views of Mt. Robson, Vancouver and Victoria; fishing at Amethyst Lake in the Thompson Valley; logging for pulpwood (including falling, trucking of logs, log jam being cleared with explosives); totem poles at Kitwanga.