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University of Toronto Archives and Records Management Services (UTARMS) R. Brian Land fonds
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1962 election, Eglinton constituency

Brian Land enrolled in the School of Graduate Studies in the fall of 1960 as a political science student. The opportunity for a thesis topic arose in the spring of 1962 as a federal election loomed. He chose to conduct a study of the campaign in the Eglinton constituency in Toronto, partly because he was a resident and because he had a personal acquaintance with a number of the principals involved.

Land offered his services to Donald Fleming, the long-standing Progressive Conservative member from the Toronto riding of Eglinton, and Minister of Finance in John Diefenbaker’s government. It was the first and only time that Land worked for a Conservative candidate. His notebook records that his first meeting was on May 10
and, over the next five weeks, he immersed himself in the strategy sessions, meetings, and envelope stuffing sessions and other activities of electioneering. He attended meetings of the Liberal candidate, Mitchell Sharp, as well as those of Mr. Fleming, and collected campaign literature from all parties.

This series contains background material to the constituency, Land’s notebook, correspondence, notes, membership and voter lists, poll revisions, maps, election results by poll, addresses, campaign literature and buttons, and press coverage. The bulk of the material relates to the Fleming campaign.

The records are grouped by function.

Davenport-Dovercourt Liberal Association

Brian Land’s involvement in party politics was primarily in the Liberal party at the federal level. He was a member of the executive of the Davenport-Dovercourt Liberal Association, for which, in 1965, he carried out a study of the Davenport voting record by conducting a poll analysis for the years 1952-1963. In February of 1968 he was elected as a delegate to the forthcoming Liberal leadership convention that chose Pierre Elliott Trudeau to succeed Lester Pearson as Prime Minister.

This series contains files consisting of: the constitution, lists of executive officers, minutes, correspondence and press clippings documenting the activities of the Davenport-Dovercourt Liberal Association from 1965-1968; the questionnaire, notes, correspondence, maps and report relating to the Davenport voting record; local press coverage, poll results and capitulation sheets for Eglinton riding in 1963 when Mitchell Sharp was elected for the first time (in oversized folders); campaign literature and press clippings relating to Walter Gordon’s successful re-election in 1965; and credentials (including buttons and decals) for and press clippings about the Association’s delegates to the 1968 convention.

Master of Arts thesis and Eglinton

The material that Brian Land gathered during the 1962 federal election formed the basis for his MA thesis that was written under the supervision of Paul Fox. The first part of this series comprises correspondence about the thesis and a copy of its second volume, “Appendices”, that contains charts, campaign literature, buttons, and maps (some oversized), and notes for the bibliography.

The second part of this series contains the files relating to the publication, in 1965, of Land’s thesis as Eglinton: the election study of a federal constituency. Included are the author’s contract, a typescript of the text, notes for and drafts of the index, and the galley and page proofs.

Land 1997 accession

These records document the activities of Brian Land as an undergraduate at the University of Toronto and as a librarian; as executive assistant (1963-1964) to Walter Gordon when, as Minister of Finance, he presented his first budget in the House of Commons in 1963; as a member of the executive of the Davenport-Dovercourt Liberal Association (Gordon’s constituency), and as advisor to and partial author of Gordon’s incomplete memoir, Pursuit of an ideal – Canadian independence. They also cover his involvement in the 1962 federal election (the subject of his MA thesis) that was published in 1965 as Eglinton: the election study of a federal constituency.