The collection includes textual, audiovisual and sound documents about the 1963 strike and the Reesor Siding shooting. Three of the series mainly contain reproductions of newspaper clippings as well as various textual documents. Documents pertaining to Paul Doucet’s play Le silence d’une tragédie can be found in one of the series. There also is a series containing the funeral cards of the three strikers who lost their lives during the shooting. The last series contains sound and audiovisual documents.

The fonds contains photographic documents relating to the trial of the lumbermen accused of unlawful assembly following the shooting that took place at Reesor Siding, during the night of February 11, 1963. Located 55 kilometers west of Kapuskasing, Reesor Siding was a railroad siding, where pulpwood had been stalked. The wood had been cut and pilled by non-unionized woodsmen, settlers’ cutting permits licensees and members of the Coopérative forestière de Val Rita, a forestry cooperative. The lumbermen on strike were employees of the Spruce Falls Power and Paper Company in Kapuskasing and the Kimberly Clark Pulp and Paper in Longlac and were members of locals 2995 and 2693 of the Lumber and Sawmill Workers Union. They were going to Reesor Siding to bring down the pilled wood so that it wouldn’t get to the Spruce Falls paper mill in Kapuskasing. Upon the arrival of the strikers, members of the cooperative opened fire. Three strikers were killed, eight were wounded.

The fonds contains textual and photographic records of Roland Cloutier’s involvement in Northern Ontario’s lumber industry. It provides information on some of the Hearst area lumber companies and on organizations such as the Hearst Lumbermen’s Association and the Ontario Lumber Manufacturers’ Association. The fonds also includes documents pertaining to the Hearst Forest Management company, the Northern Ontario Development Corporation, and to René Fontaine in his role as a member of the Ontario legislature and minister in the Ontario government. This is complemented by government reports, studies analyzing the situation and needs of the lumber industry and of Northern Ontario’s economy, handbooks relating to the working practices of the industry and maps mostly illustrating cutting rights in the forest of the region.