The series consists of records relating to conferences and symposia organized or sponsored by the Royal Society of Canada, which date primarily from 1970 to 1985 when K. J. Laidler chaired its Committee on Symposia. Conferences and symposia supported by the Society tended to have an interdisciplinary focus, bringing together leading scholars from different disciplines to address a common problem or contemporary issue. Laidler's files contain the minutes of the meetings of the Committee on Symposia and his correspondence as its chair, revealing the higher direction of the committee, which conferences and research projects it supported or refused to support, and how it worked within the Royal Society as a whole. Project files for specific conferences, symposia, commissions, panels, and workshops generally document the origins, organization, management, and financial arrangements of the symposium, and the publication of its proceedings. The more common material found within these files includes conference proposals, correspondence with participants and other interested parties, curriculum vitae and biographies of speakers, evaluations by peer reviewers, conference programmes, attendance lists, press releases, newspaper clippings, correspondence with government agencies and funding partners, copies of papers presented to the various symposia, reports and studies, and manuscripts of the published proceedings and other documents relating to publication.
The series holds extensive files for conferences and symposia with the following titles or on the following subjects: Acid Rain (1982), Amerindians (1975), New Perspectives in Canadian Archaeology (1976), a Century of Canada's Arctic Islands (1980), Atlas of Northern Canada (1977), Nuclear Issues in the Canadian Energy Context (1979), Communications in the Home (1972), Committee on Nuclear Issues in the Community, Copernicus Celebration (1973), Energy Resources (1973), Gauss bicentennial (1977), Glacial Till (1975), Great Lakes Water Quality (1984), Habitat - Human Settlement (1975), Preserving the Canadian Heritage (1975), Hermes Satellite (1977), Commission on Lead in the Environment (1984-1986), Mercury Pollution (1971), Nuclear Winter (1984), Parasites - their world and ours (1977), Physics and Chemistry of Ice (1973), Long Range Transport of Airborne Pollution (1982), Long Range Transport of Airborne Pollutants Program (1984), University of the Future (1976), Waste Recycling and the Environment (1974), and Canada and World Food (1977) among other symposia and conferences. A file for the Copernicus Celebration at the National Library in 1973 includes 32 photographs (file 146-3).
In addition, the series includes an audio tape (2 h, 12 min) of recordings of the Hon. Senator Maurice Lamontagne, Dr. Louis Dudek, and Dr. Wilder Penfield at the symposium on "The Arts and Sciences in an Age of Technology" hosted by the Royal Society of Canada in Ottawa, June 1969, and recorded by the Public Archives of Canada; and two audio tapes (8 h, 26 min) of recordings of the proceedings of the symposium on "Communications in the Home", hosted by the Royal Society in March 1972 at the National Library and Public Archives in Ottawa.
