Canada: Its Postage Stamps and Postal Stationery

by Clifton A. Howes

Direct evidence is given in a letter from H. F. Ketcheson to Mekeel's Weekly Stamp News; he writes as follows:[232]—

Regarding the Canadian reply card (error with stamp on upper left hand corner) issued in 1884 (not 1885) would say that I purchased a quantity of them from various post-offices. I was at that time an employe of the Canada Post-Office Department and saw a number of these passing through the mails and writing to the offices at which they were posted found that they had received a supply from Ottawa, and one office informed me at the same time that they had re-received instructions to forward all they had on hand to Ottawa as they had been issued in error.

The cards were identical in every respect with the regular ones, except for the peculiarity, and therefore call for no further description than has already been given them.

In the Philatelic Monthly for March, 1887, is noted a change in the stamp on the single post card, which otherwise remained as before. The new stamp has the foliations around the numerals and is identical with Type 3 of the wrapper stamps, already described, and which it preceded, in fact, by two or three months. As was to be expected, the reply card followed with the same change in the stamps, but no particular notice seems to have been taken of it in the contemporary magazines. The article in the Dominion Philatelist records it as having appeared in 1887 in "black" and in 1888 in "dark green", but the only chronicles that seem to have noted it were the Philatelic World for January, 1888, which says merely that

"the stamp on the reply paid card has been slightly altered," and the American Journal of Philately for February, 1888, which says a new reply card in "gray on buff" has just been issued. The information is added that the inscription "Postage" had been changed to "Postcard", but inasmuch as this was a hoax which apparently started with Le Timbre-Poste in the fall of 1887[233] and went the rounds of the philatelic press, the value of the rest of the information is considerably lessened in consequence and we shall therefore take the dates as given in the Dominion Philatelist, which seem in the main to be correct. The wrapper stamp of 1875, with wavy line inside the oval, illustrated by Le Timbre-Poste as appearing on the cards in May, 1888, was never employed. It was probably confounded with the third type.

The next change in the cards was likewise due to a new variety in the stamp, which once more lost its foliations and had only a quatrefoil ornament beneath the numerals, as described for Type 4 of the wrappers, which it again preceded by a couple of months. The new card was apparently first noted in the Canadian Philatelist[234] as having been issued at London, Ont., on the 7th December, 1891. This of course may not have been its earliest date of issue but is doubtless not far from it. The normal color of the impression is a dull ultramarine, but the Dominion Philatelist chronicled it in January, 1892, in a "very light skim milk shade of blue", which may be listed as a very pale ultramarine.

The reply card in the new type is again an uncertainty. Le Timbre-Poste for June, 1892, chronicled it in blue, which it never appeared in. The Philatelic Monthly for July, 1892, noted that the reply card had appeared in the latest type, but gave no color; probably the item was borrowed from the French Journal without credit. Meanwhile the Dominion Philatelist for June, 1892, merely mentions that "the reply cards of Canada are now appearing on a glazed thin card; design same as before," which would indicate no change from the current type 3. In December, 1892, however, the Philatelic Journal of America reported that it had received from Toronto "one of the new Canadian reply cards. The message card bears a stamp the same type as that of the current 1 cent postal card, but on the reply card the

stamp is of the old type. Perhaps this is an error as the former double card had the same die on both." It may have been an error but it troubled no one but the philatelist. The Monthly Journal for 31st January, 1893, also notes the receipt of a similar copy from Mr. D. A. King. The account says:—"The specimen was found in a packet of reply-paid cards, the remainder of which had the stamp of the now obsolete type upon both halves." It would seem that the end of 1892 was therefore about the time of the "semi-appearance" of the stamp of type 4 upon the reply cards; nor does it appear that the double card with stamp of type 4 on both halves was issued before the "half-breed" card, as the latter continued to be used for nearly two years, the card with type 4 alone not being definitely chronicled until the issue of 30th November, 1894, of the Monthly Journal.