The John Bryden fonds includes textual, graphic and media records principally documenting his political life as well as his work as an historian of Canada and the Second World War.
Mr Bryden served as a Liberal MP for about a decade and his fonds documents his engagement with issues and topics that arose during this time. The fonds includes documents generated in Mr Bryden's parliamentary office and in his rural Ontario riding. As a result, the fonds documents issues and topics from both perspectives.
Mr Bryden notably participated in and led debates about topics including the Christmas holiday, the oath of citizenship, gun regulation, same-sex marriage, the legalisation of marijuana, global heating, video lottery terminals, chemical and biological warfare, First Nations' rights, third-party election financing and the tax status of charities. Several of these debates have subsequently resulted in significant changes to Canadian law, while others remain unresolved.
As an MP, Mr Bryden led a cross-party ad-hoc committee examining/updating the Access to Information Act.
The fonds also documents some of the most significant events of the turn of the twenty-first century. These include the 1995 Quebec referendum, the Sponsorship Scandal, the 9/11 attacks, the war on terror and debates about deploying Canadian combat troops to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Mr Bryden's parliamentary career also coincided with significant turmoil within the Liberal Party as factions loyal to Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin vied for control. The fonds contains insights into these struggles. In 2004, Mr Bryden crossed the floor to the Conservative Party of Canada just as it emerged from the merger between the Reform Party and the Progressive Conservatives.
Mr Bryden kept a personal diary during his time in parliament. He displayed a talented, journalistic eye for capturing people, places, discussions and events. Diary entries provide insights into life on Parliament Hill, the personalities of many well-known elected officials, the stresses and pressures under which MPs worked.
The fonds also contains several video documents. Three episodes from Mr Bryden's live phone-in television programme on a local Hamilton station demonstrate how an MP represented government business to his constituents. The video of an all-candidates meeting shows how national politics played-out at the local level. Two videos featuring Paul Martin document the power struggles within the Liberal party. A video interview and an audio recording features Mr Bryden reflecting on the role of a backbench MP. Finally, an audio recording of Mr Bryden's election theme song captures the flavour of the era's small-town electioneering.
The fonds includes a mass-produced 1982 board game entitled True Dough Mania, a satirical variant on Monopoly in which the policies of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau cause the players to go bankrupt.
The fonds also documents Mr Bryden's research for two books on Canada and the Second World War: Deadly Allies: Canada's Secret War. 1937-1947 (1989) and Best Kept Secret: Canadian Intelligence in the Second World War (1994). Mr Bryden conducted extensive interviews with approximately forty men and women involved in wartime secret intelligence and the development of chemical and biological weapons. The oral history interviews are some of the only accounts by participants about these activities, since the men ands women involved adhered to their wartime secrecy oaths until the ends of their lives.
