93rd Annual Congress Tom Rielly Display

Display by Graham Searle

The display and presentation are based around 10 snapshots of Canadian philatelic history from the very earliest organized mails in the 1760’s right up to modern times. The frames include examples of pre-stamp covers, early postal stamps, revenue stamps, cancellations, covers, stamp booklets and even some modern thematic material.

December 1763 Ship Letter from London UK to Quebec via New York. Rated in pennyweights and grains of silver.

The broad range of material on show includes the cover above; the earliest known incoming ship letter to Canada with postal markings. Sent from London UK to Quebec in December 1763 just two months after the first post offices opened in the colony it nicely illustrates the British use of silver weight to rate letters prior to the establishment of a consistent local currency in Canada. The first frame of the display tells the story of the 20 year journey, and the many steps along the way, from this early use of silver weight to a final use of local currency in the early 1780’s.

August 1852 letter from Quebec to England showing an attempt to pay the postage with stamps.

The first postage stamps issued in Canada in 1851 included no value to pay the rate to the UK. Indeed, there was no combination of stamps that would pay the rate of 16 colonial pence or 1sh/4d. The 1852 cover here shows a valiant attempt by one letter writer to pay the rate using stamps. Franked with 1sh/3d worth of stamps it was 1 penny underpaid and charged thus on arrival in Liverpool.

Two values from the 1912 Registration stamp issue of the Province of Quebec.

Revenue stamps in Canada have been issued at both Federal level and Provincial level. The display includes some examples of revenue stamps from the Province of Quebec. Revenue stamps have been issued with a very wide range of face values. The registration stamps shown above are rated at 5 cents and $100.

Some home-made fancy cancels.

Amongst the many cancellations shown in the display are the fancy types shown above. These date from the period 1870 – 1895 when the Post Office was struggling to keep pace with the demand for new cancelling devices and many postmasters created their own designs by carving soft wood.

Graham Searle is a retired Chemical Engineer who spent his working life in the Oil and Gas industry. Like many of his generation he started collecting stamps as a schoolboy and gradually reduced his collecting interests from the whole world to the British Commonwealth to just Canada, a country which he has collected for the whole of his adult life. He describes himself as a stamp collector who stumbled into the world of postal history at some point and found it equally fascinating – but stamps and cancellations remain his real passion. His collecting interests cover all aspects of Canada from the earliest mails to some modern stamp issues although he stopped collecting all new issues in 1978.

He is a Fellow and Past President of the Canadian Philatelic Society of Great Britain and has been Editor of their journal Maple Leaves since 2006. He is also Past President and current Treasurer of the Aberdeen Philatelic Society and a member of a number of other societies specializing in the stamps and postal history of British North America. He has authored several articles on Canadian Stamps and Postal History.

Below is a picture of Graham Searle receiving his Tom Rielly medal from President Alex Walker.