The Bureau of Archives, as it was originally known, was first located in the Ontario Legislative Building, under the leadership of Alexander Fraser (1860–1936), a Scottish-born Toronto journalist, academic and militia officer who held the position of Provincial Archivist from 1903 to 1935.

In the Depression era, the Archives was put on a precarious footing by Premier Mitch Hepburn's desire to close it down as a cost-cutting measure.

[3] Talman eventually took new employment as Chief Librarian at the University of Western Ontario, where he started an archives collection that became the Regional History Division at UWO.

The groundbreaking was attended by former Minister of Government Services Gerry Phillips and former York University President and Vice-Chancellor Lorna Marsden.

In the words of Alexander Fraser, "The Province has been so long entirely neglected that when I undertook to organize the department I decided that the most valuable service I could render to the public was to acquire, to collect, and safely preserve whatever material I could find, believing the day would soon come when the value of such material would be fully realized and the necessary office assistance provided to enable me to make the accumulated archives conveniently accessible to the public."