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This series contains 7 small yearbooks of the Church of the Messiah for the years 1920-1926, including duplicates for the years 1923 and 1926 and one for 1920-1921. The yearbooks are a detailed record of the activities of the year and associated persons. Each contains a list of the officers of the church and its various committees, clubs and associated organizations. They also list the dates of acts of civil service and some have dates of special addresses given by the minister. The minister listed in all of them is Sydney B. Snow.

This series contains textual records related to the operation of the Church Sunday school. This includes materials related to the administration of the school, namely ledger books; meeting minutes; prospectuses; annual reports, attendance records and pedagogical material.

The two ledger books run from 1961 to 1971 and 1957 to 1975 respectively. The extant minutes consist of two bound minute books, one from the Sunday School Teachers’ Association covering 1851 to 1864 and another of Sunday school teachers’ meetings from 1870-1883, as well as Religious Education Committee minutes from 1960-1967, 1968-1973 and 1986-1993. The series also contains scattered annual reports from 1916 to 1996 and church school prospectuses from 1950 to 2002 with some gaps. There are also records related to the selection and training of teachers and volunteers, as well as a small number of pedagogical materials from various time periods.

Attendance records exist for the years 1842-1849, 1994-1995, 2001-2002, 2003-2004. The series also contains a set of Sunday school cards which run from 1910 through 1917 and include cards recording total school attendance and money collected each Sunday per class, as well as cards for each individual student that record their individual attendance information.

This fonds contains materials created and collected by the Unitarian Church of Montreal from 1842 to 2025.

The Church has gone under a number of names during its existence. At the file and item level, the material is attributed to the name used in those records. Where the name use is not consistent, the creator/collector of these records is referred to as "the Church."

This series contains records related to the property on the corner of Sherbrooke and Simpson streets. Construction of the main church building and Channing Hall began in October 20, 1906 and the congregation moved in on September 1, 1907. Unitarian House was purchased in September of 1946 and was located at 3419 and 3421 Simpson street, immediately to the north of the main church property. Channing Hall housed a pastor’s study, a kitchen and rooms dedicated to various purposes over the years. It also housed the Sunday school. Over the years 1968 to 1970 Channing Hall underwent a remodelling. After the purchase of Unitarian House, the buildings were subdivided into classrooms for the Sunday school. It was in use by the church until 1978, when it began to be leased to various tenants.
The Church remained at this property until the fire of May 25, 1987, which destroyed the main church building.

The series is comprised architectural drawings related to the construction and renovation of all buildings on the property, including not only the main church building but also Unitarian House and Channing Hall. Beyond this, it also contains other documents related to the property such as surveyor’s reports, deeds, financial reports on building upkeep, meeting minutes, correspondence related to the building, newspaper clippings, as well as photographs and drawings of the buildings.

This series also contains records related to the post-fire response and rebuilding effort. These include meeting minutes, reports on the cost of rebuilding, proposals for rebuilding/moving and opinion polling of the congregation. There is also a small amount of correspondence related to public response to proposed rebuilding projects and newspaper clippings.

This sub-series contains records related to the renovation and maintenance of the main church building and property located at the corner of Sherbrooke and Simpson before the fire in 1987. It also contains correspondance and internal reports related to a move proposed in 1983 that never occurred, as well as correspondence and legal documents related to dealings with the neighbouring Port Royal apartments from the 1960s and early 1970s. These include agreements and communication related to maintenance and use of a shared lane between the two properties, as well as the sale of a piece of the Church's lot to Port Royal in the early 1970s.

The majority of the series is comprised of architectural and zoning plans, as well as meeting minutes and internal Church reports, regarding the renovation and maintenance of the main church building. The architectural plans were drawn up by the firm Chadwick Pope & Edge through the 1960’s and early 1970’s. The zoning plans are from 1912, 1954, 1962 and 1972, presenting a good representation of how the lot changed over time. The reports and meeting minutes were generated by the Building Committee and Special Committee of Acoustics, including a survey of the congregation on space needs. There are also a 29 black and white photographs. 26 of these are of the interior of the church, used in a property study and focusing mostly on structural defects. The 3 remaining photographs are external shots of the church building from 1970. Also included is correspondence from la Musée des beaux arts related to the building’s stained glass windows.

This sub-series contains records related to the construction of the main church building on the property located at the corner of Sherbrooke and Simpson streets. It contains textual records related to the history of the church building, including photocopies of “Montreal then and Now” articles from the Montreal Gazette from the 1980s with pictures, meeting minutes and a photocopy of the lot’s record of purchase from 1905.

The sub-series also contains architectural plans created by the Maxwell Brothers as well as their specifications for construction. Photocopies can be found in Box 10 and originals can be found in Tube 36.

The sub-series also contains articles from 2000 and 2002 about the Maxwell Brothers and their work on the church building.

This series contains the correspondence and copies of legal documents related to the bequest to the Church of a property in Rawdon, QC by Nicholas Jonas, who died December 6, 1971. The process of transfer took some time, so the Church only took ownership of the property in August of 1975. The series includes a travel map of Rawdon with the lot marked in pencil, as well a map of all the lots in the area. Also included are property tax receipts, correspondence with the Jonas family and a copy of Nicholas Jonas’ holographic will, dated December 14, 1959.

This sub-series contains documents related to the rebuilding and move efforts in the wake of the fire that destroyed the Sherbrooke street church building on May 25, 1987. It includes reports on the state of the church buildings after the fire, as well as internal correspondence between Church officers and external correspondence with various legal, consulting, architectural and construction firms. It also includes calls for and received project proposals, along with financial analyses and draft resolutions to be submitted to the congregation regarding said proposals.

Notably there is also a copy of an ultimately rejected proposal, with drawings, called the "Simpson Project." It aimed to build a mixed use high-rise tower on the site of the Sherbrooke street church, which would’ve included space for the Church. There are also 11 full sized architectural drawings of the project. The project was controversial in the greater local community and the sub-series also contains correspondance from community members and minutes of city consultation meetings.

This sub-series contains the minutes and reports generated by the committees created after the fire. Notably it also includes the results of a congregational survey done by the Building Needs Committee in 1988. The series also contains documents identifying those involved in said committees.

Before the purchase of the de Maisonneuve property in 1995, there were several proposals put forward regarding whether to rebuild on the same property or move to a new one. Many of these committees worked on multiple of these projects. The committees for which there are records are the following:

• The Options Committee (created January 13, 1988)
  This committee was responsible for recommending a building project to the Board of Management.

• The Building Needs Committee (created May 11, 1988)
  This committee was mandated to update the 1984 Property Study Committee Report (this can be found in UCM-SE10-SU2) in order to guide any rebuilding project. It also surveyed the congregation on the needs for a new church building.

• Building Committee (Operated from October 1988 to October 1989)
  This committee was mandated to oversee the design and construction of any new church building. It became the Design Committee in October 1989.

• Design Committee (created in October 1989)
  This committee oversaw design and use plans for any new church building.

• The Project Management Committee (created October 3, 1990)
  The series contains two written mandates for this committee. The first tasks it with recommending a building project and the second with acting on behalf of the Board of Management in dealings with developers. It appears that the Options Committee is often retroactively referred to as the Project Management Committee as well.

• Furniture, Fixings & Equipment Committee (was active 1995-1996)
  This committee was responsible for the internal details of the de Maisonneuve building.

This series contains the orders of service, music lists and calendars created by the Church. All three types of material have some overlapping purposes in the planning of the services and the communication of their content. Calendars were created from 1905 to 1953 after which orders of service begin to be created. The music lists exist chronologically alongside or instead of orders of service from 1947 to 1953.

Orders of service tend to have more information about the services than the calendars which again tend to have more information about the services than the music lists.