Inspired by Rachelle’s (@mooseontheloose) Japanese fukei-in initiative, I started yesterday making a map of Canadian pictorial cancels that are offered in post offices across the country. Here is the map.
I realised that unlike Japanese people’s adherence to strict rules and regulations, Canada Post didn’t set that much rules about postmark design and collecting. This results in a situation where pictorial cancels can be of different dimensions and different shapes. Many online resources – as excellent as this one though they are – don’t provide cancel specification. When preparing the items, we are often confused about how much space needs to be left on what side of the stamp(s). Hence, my contribution would be to attempt at providing the information regarding cancel dimension.
Currently, the dots marked by colour red denote the post offices whose cancels I have measured with a physical ruler, while those marked by colour blue denote those that I haven’t measured. Right now, I have only finished incorporating information found on Canada Post’s online repository, which is far from being complete. I have written to a blog owner to ask his/her permission to use images found on his/her blog.
Also, I realised that the ‘run date’ doesn’t really apply to a large number of cancels. Often than not, a specific cancel can be replaced by a newer one, in the sense that it’s kept in the back instead of sitting on the counter and being used everyday. Nevertheless, we can still request those old cancels by making clear what we want to ask. A good example is Eastend Post Office:
They in fact offer 3 variations of Scotty cancel, and another one for scouts, all of which can be requested.
Another example:
In Montreal, some cancels were created for specific events with specific dates. Although the dates have passed, these cancels are still being preserved and we can still request them. (It’s just impossible to change the date of the cancel).
My current ambition is that once I finish mapping the cancels I can find online, I will associate each of them with tags and make a little website where people can view and search a group of cancels by tags. I don’t know how this is going to work with free website builders (I have used WordPress and Wix). If anyone has the experience in this domain, I would love to hear what you think about it.
Feel free to post information regarding Canadian pictorial cancels that are currently missing on my map. And please give me the permission to use your images.
Thank you in advance!
P.S. My map is under Creative-Commons. It will never become for-profit.
I wonder if anyone who has obtained this cancel can confirm it’s also got the spelling error, or if the Canada Post site just hasn’t been corrected (given it’s from 2005… seems an awfully long time to have had no one notice)
And if you can, please take a clear and large-enough photo of each individual cancel that I can put on the map / website. Thank you for your contribution!
