Among Canadian topics mentioned on the reel are the selection of a site for a new central library in Toronto, the fund collected to build Convocation Hall at the University of Toronto, the decision given in the Alaska boundary dispute, and the formation of a citizens' education committee. Smith wrote articles and letters about the Irish question, reciprocity, protection, the policies of Joseph Chamberlain and about religious topics. The publication of his little book The Founder of Christendom inspired a number of letters from readers. Some responses expressed disagreement with Smith's views. From time to time he received letters from persons he had not heard from for decades, including the Warden of Bradfield College, Reading, and an elderly Englishman who had been Smith's coachman in the eighteen seventies. Lord Mount Stephen wrote of their first meeting in Montreal, and American financier L. V. F. Randolph wrote of accompanying Smith on his first journey to Niagara in 1864.