Subseries consists of materials used for the writing of Gordon Shrum: An Autobiography with Peter Stursberg, edited by Clive Cocking. This book was conceived by Darrel Zarn of the Faculty of Interdisciplinary Studies at SFU. He approached Peter Stursberg, an experienced journalist, who conducted a series of oral history interviews with Shrum in 1983. In order to fund the interviews, they were conducted under the oral history program of the Public Archives (now the National Archives) of Canada and the Parliamentary Library. Stursberg also made a 21/2 hour video interview of Shrum at the Instructional Media Centre at SFU. In addition, he interviewed nine of Shrum's friends and Shrum's son to provide material for the books's introduction. Because Stursberg was occupied with other projects, Clive Cocking a Vancouver writer and editor was hired to complete the project. Cocking conducted a series of supplementary interviews in 1985 to clarify statistics and other facts from the oral history interviews. Unfortunately, Shrum passed away suddenly before the manuscript was completed. The finished book appeared in 1986 through the support of SFU and the University of British Columbia.

The subseries contains transcripts, background materials, notes, drafts, U-matic videos, audio reels, and audio cassettes.

The subseries consists of records about the life of Gordon Shrum and includes photographs, transcripts, and a scrapbook. The transcript is from an interview conducted in July 1973 by Allen Specht as part of an oral history project at the University of British Columbia. Although the transcript includes a brief biography of Shrum, the main topic is the Canadian Officers Training Corps.

Sub-series consists of interviews with various individuals relating their experiences with Gordon Shrum. Interviews were conduted by D. Zarn and C. Duppereault. Interviewees were Harry Evans (SFU Registrar), Rob Watt (Vancouver Centennial Museum and later first Chief Herald of Canada), Lorne Davies (Director, Recreational Services and Athletics), and Professor James Wilson (Department of Geography).