Vintage Postcards: Postcard Blog » Canada

An Early Cardston, Alberta Blood Indian Postcard

VintagePostcards — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 00:55:28 +0000

We’re delighted that this scarce 1905 private postcard is going home to Alberta, Canada. Nicely detailed and highly collectible, it shows Blood Indian Wolfchild and his wife and daughter — all dressed in First Nation, traditional clothing — posing outside their log cabin at Cardston, AB.

Sent from St. Mary’s Ranch at Cardston, sender Arthur Berry offered “Kind regards and best wishes for Xmas & the ‘New Year’ ” to a Miss Reeve, who lived at “The Stream” in Chiddingley, Sussex, England.

Read about artist-signed holiday postcards, or see more native American postcards at our website. Or, curl up and browse the world’s largest postcard bookstore.

A Smiths Falls, Ontario Patriotic Postcard

VintagePostcards — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 07:53:41 +0000

Canadian patriotic postcards tend to be more localized and — in many instances — more imaginative and flamboyant than their American counterparts. This scarce unused and undivided-back c. 1901-1907 patriotic postcard offering greetings from Smiths Falls, Ontario, Canada is an example of the small-town localization often seem in Canadian patriotics. This desirable Lanark County collectible is in excellent condition.

Two authoritative Canadian patriotic postcard checklists have been published While both are out of print, they can be found from time to time in online bookstores. W. L. (Wally) Gutzman’s The Canadian Patriotic Post Card Handbook, 1904-1914, was published by the British North America Philatelic Society in 1984, and contains many postcard images not seen in Michael J. Smith’s The Canadian Patriotic Postcard Checklist, 1898-1928, which was published in 2003. Both books are worth including in any postcard reference library.

Read another post about Canadian patriotic postcards, or see more patriotic postcards at our website. You can learn more about postcards at our popular reference page. We also offer the world’s largest selection of postcard books.

Canadian Patriotic Postcards

VintagePostcards — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 12:44:29 +0000

Canada has a long tradition of producing quite beautiful patriotic postcards. We thought we’d show you some examples. This one is a splendid c. 1906-1908 (postmark illegible) patriotic postcard of the hospital at Moncton, New Brunswick. It was published by Warwick & Rutter of Toronto, one of the better postcard publishers of the time. Notice the elegant surround with provincial flags, and the Union Jack.

Two Canadian patriotic postcard checklists have been published. The first, The Canadian Patriotic Post Card Handbook, 1904-1914, was authored by W. L. (Wally) Gutzman and published in 1984 by the British North America Philatelic Society. Long out of print, the book can still be found occasionally in the stores of online book sellers. It has many informational color plates and grades postcards by rarity factor although, of course, the prices are long out of date.

Michael J. Smith’s The Canadian Patriotic Postcard Checklist, 1898-1928 is replete with many more examples of patriotic postcards. Published in 2003, it’s also out of print. Both books are worth including in any postcard reference library.

A handsome, if fanciful, patriotic view of the North Bay (Ontario) City Hall is seen above, in which it appears improbably exalted to the level and grandeur of surrounding images of Niagara Falls, the prairies and their agricultural fertility, the Rocky Mountains and Parliament. High hopes abounded, and this exuberance was often reflected in patriotic postcards of the time.

See another Canadian patriotic postcard, or browse the world’s largest selection of postcard books.

Read another blog post about Canadian patriotic postcards.

Canada’s Victoria Day: A Scarce Holiday Postcard

VintagePostcards — Thu, 17 May 2007 20:33:36 +0000

Happy Victoria Day! While it can be difficult to find early Victoria Day postcards, here’s an attractive 1907 example published by Warwick & Rutter of Toronto to celebrate the event. Always held on the last Monday on or before 24 May, Victoria Day, or Fête de la Reine, celebrates both Queen Victoria’s birthday (1837-1901) and that of the current reigning Canadian sovereign, now Queen Elizabeth II.

In 1845, Queen Victoria’s birthday was declared a holiday by the Province of Canada; this holiday has been celebrated in Canada since at least 1854, when about 5,000 Upper Canada residents gathered in Toronto on 24 May near the intersection of present-day King and Simcoe Sts. (the old Government House location), to cheer the Queen.

In this charming and nicely detailed antique postcard, a smiling, cigar-smoking father leads his wife and five children towards the throngs gathered by a docked steamboat. The card, entitled “First Picnic of the Season,” shows the children carrying a baseball, a baseball bat and a soccer ball. Victoria Day marks the unofficial beginning of summer in Canada; many seasonal businesses open for the year on this date. This popular long weekend also means the beginning of spring to gardeners, while the fact that frost dates have likely passed also means the start of cottage season. Parades and fireworks are part of the celebrations.

Browse our selection of holiday postcards, or read about Canadian curling and hockey sports postcards.

Curling and Hockey Postcards, Sports Collectibles

VintagePostcards — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 17:56:30 +0000

Winter’s here, with the first snows of the season and sub-zero temperatures. Hot chocolate and hockey. Watching wintry sunsets amidst the hush that falls when roads are covered in snow. Well, sort of…In all fairness, we must tell you that a forecast of one to two inches of snow produces a “winter storm warning” here. As if preparing for the Blitzkrieg, hordes of shoppers descend en masse on local grocery stores, stripping the shelves bare of staples such as milk, bread and eggs. School officials stay up until the wee hours, monitoring conditions and trying to decide whether the roads will be navigable for school buses. We’re not kidding.

We recently were fortunate enough to find our second curling postcard, which brought to mind the Canadian winters we miss. This c. 1940s real-photo postcard, or RPPC, is a beauty, depicting women curlers on one of the sheets at the Seigniory Club at Le Château Montebello in Montebello, Quebec. It’s now known as the Fairmont Le Chateau Montebello, but curling doesn’t appear to be offered anymore.

Another highly collectible genre of sports postcards is the hockey postcard: specifically, ice hockey. Here’s a recent find, a c. 1908 artist-signed F. Earl Christy hockey postcard showing a man with ice skates slung over his shoulder chatting with a woman who falls into the “pretty lady” or “glamour girl” category of art postcards. Sometimes, this card is seen with a caption reading: “Hockey is not the only game.”

Have fun browsing the sports postcards at our website. If you have any curling postcards or ice hockey postcards for sale, we’d love to hear from you!

Read more about winter sports postcards.