Got it, thanks for the info! I’ll start working on getting some stamps soon then!
Not the clearest shot, but this is from Toronto’s First Post Office! When I go back I’ll get a clearer photo
it has a quill and ink pot and says Toronto’s First Post Office.
1 Like
I just received a call from the Postmaster of BP St-Valentin in Quebec because I sent him a letter to request all the pictorial cancellations they currently have. This super nice gentleman made a shocking revelation to me:
Every year the design changes ever since they started offering pictorial cancel circa 1994, making this year the 30th design they offer. Yes, EVERY year they receive a new design from Canada Post, and the previous (rubber) stamps would be returned to the warehouse waiting to be destroyed. For my pictorial cancel project, he will try to get me as many old designs as he’s capable of finding today, but it’s a huge task to keep track of all these 30 designs.
Also, he told me that last year they had received over 3000 postmarking requests from all over the world for Valentin’s Day. They usually receive such requests well into the summer. For this Valentin’s Day, the number of requests they received is smaller compared with last year’s.
I don’t know if anyone here collects St-Valentin’s pictorial cancel (available in black and red colours). It’s quite a challenge to map out all the 30 cancels that have been previously designed for this village. I will share whatever information I will receive from the Postmaster, but please bear with me if my data proves to be incomplete.
2023’s design:
This year’s 30th anniversary design:
2 Likes
Hey, I forgot to post on this forum.
Recently, I found out that a cancel fabricated by Canada Post is generally valid for 12 years. Typically, the cancel uses a rotating dial mechanism. The dial for the year is usually rendered as a block of 4 digits stuck together that can be rotated as ‘2020, 2021, …, 2031’, unlike that of the day that is made into 2 blocks of digits that can be rotated individually. This means each rubber stamp comes with a lifespan of 12 years, as there are 12 slots for each dial.
Some cancels are particularly short-lived (like the one for St-Valentin is valid for only 1 year), but generally, when a design is made, it’s good for 12 years. After this period of 12 years, it will be up to the post office / Canada Post to decide if they are going to renew the same design, or if they are going to introduce small variation to the old design.
1 Like
As promised, I added an image to my previous post showing the interior of Canada Post’s cancel. The dials of both year and months are rendered as one single rotating block, whereas that of the date are made into two blocks that allow more numeral combinations.
Hey there, I’m so——so——sorry for the delay, dimension info are now updated, i hope it’s not too late 
1 Like
More cancels
Diameters were measured in cm
Lumbering
Upper Kent, NB
3.8
Military
Perth, ON
3.8
And this one, though I didn’t get the pictorial cancel as I expected, I almost died laughing when I found it in my mailbox 
1 Like
Can you tell me what the address is for this Perth PO that offers this cancel?
1 Like
I’ll be spending some time in Canada this summer, mostly in Manitoba, and would like to get some cancels while there (ideally in person but may mail away for others). I’m curious as to why Manitoba has such a low number of pictoral cancels, with just 12, when then other Prairie provinces have significantly more than that (only PEI has a smaller number, but it’s tiny compared to MB). I’m from the Interlake which features 4 cancels from tiny towns (I’m from a tiny town there myself), yet big secondary cities and larger towns like Brandon, Portage, Dauphin, and Gimli have none.
Other than physically walking into different post offices and asking them if they have any pictoral cancels, are there any other resources or ways I might find out which post offices have them? I know Manitoba is consistently seen as a fly-over or drive-through province, but it seems like it’s also ignored on the pictoral cancel opportunities as well.
I have been wondering about the same question as well, ever since I started mapping Canada’s pictorial cancels. Unlike Alberta that has the highest number (and concentration per population) of pictorial cancels, Manitoba has so very few that have been known.
Sadly, beside physically walking into different post offices – or contacting individual post offices if you can find their phone numbers – there is no other way to know if they have any pictorial cancels. Not even Canada Post has a complete list of Canada’s pictorial cancels even though they approve and produce them! (The webpage only lists the ones that were newly designed or whose design has been renewed.)
From what I know, all the pictorial cancels I have hitherto discovered are associated with ‘real’ post offices (bureau de poste de la socieété, comme on l’appelle en français), not with concessionaire post office that tends to be located inside a pharmacy.
(Sadly, I failed to convince my boss to make our post office the first concessaionaire that offers a pictorial cancel, so I believe no one has it for the moment.)
1 Like
Well, it looks like I have a summer project then! 
I like to go road-tripping as much as possible when I’m home, mostly for photography, but also because my town only has a population of about 400 people which means there’s often very little to do, unless it’s visiting, eating/drinking, or watching TV (and in the case of my parents, lots of afternoon naps as well).
I’ll try to pop into any proper post offices on my trips (I know to avoid the Shopper’s kind) and see what they have. Based on what you’ve posted here I’m assuming I don’t need them to cancel a real stamp like Japan does, unless I want to actually mail the postcard.
Edit - It seems like Canada Post is similar to Japan Post, in that they only know (and post about) current pictoral cancels, but have no master list of all the cancels they have produced over the years (I mean, I’m sure one must exist, but it’s location is probably buried in some file drawer somewhere).
1 Like
Of all countries I know, Canada has the loosest rules regarding pictorial cancel collecting – in that NO (Canadian) stamp is required to request a cancel. We can simply get one on a piece of paper, or even on our passport, without presenting at least one stamp of one cent.
This, in fact, doesn’t make much sense (to me at any rate). I plan on writing to Canada Post with my list of questions and suggestions for them to consider to change the rule. But I will do that only after your summer trip 
Canada’s pictorial cancels have existed long before the age of internet – as far back as in the 70’s – and building an online repository is only a recent effort of the last 2 or 3 years. During this period of time, many cancels have expired (a cancel typically lasts 12 years in Canada), and many others were introduced. I think coming up with a master list of all the (at least currently active) cancels is not on the top of Canada Post’s list of priority, given all the financial struggles they are facing …
1 Like
New addition to BP Place d’Armes which is located in Old Montreal:
This is the rendering of my final design:
[Note the font change – this is because I didn’t have the same font Canada Post design team has access to.]
As I was designing on the theme of ‘Montreal + light’, I came up with this concept inspired by the annual international fireworks competition held in Montreal’s La Ronde – an amusement park known for its roller coasters – that is visible from the Old Port.
This is a very different kind of concept from the traditional cancel design that is primarily black on white; instead, mine is primarily white on black. No one was sure if it would work out, even though it passed Ottawa’s approval. It turns out that one bar of the roller-coaster’s rail was physically rendered as a very fine line on the rubber part of the cancel. This characteristic would make the roller-coaster looking almost like a line if the cancel sucks too much ink, or if the rubber gets dirty.
Originally, I made the ‘POSTES CANADA POST’ into one string that was meant to be read from left to right. This reading direction corresponds to the moving direction of the train, going up and down of the ‘mountain’ (in French, roller-coaster is called ‘mountaine russe’, literally ‘Russian mountain’). But Canada Post may have set regulations on how their trademark is presented, they insisted on putting ‘POSTES CANADA / CANADA POST’ as a separate line.
My original design also contains 2 little details:
(1) The white space where the date of the cancellation is was rendered as a combination of 2 flags with curved edges. However, judging from the tiny size of this block, the curvedness of the lines wouldn’t appear so clearly, so I decided to just cover that part with a white rectangle – whatever it represents.
(2) The name of the post office is printed in stylished font of various height. These alphabets are meant to be the ‘supports’ underneath the roller-coaster.
Lastly, let me show you two premilinary designs at the brainstorm stage (they are not very pretty, I hope my reader can bear with me):
(a) This is an impossible design because the date rectangle was too low:
(b) Originally, I tried very hard to make the white rectangle ‘looking integrated / natural’ in the design. One of the versions I came up with was to cover the bottom part of the cancel with silhouettes of people. But again, this was abandonned as the rectangle has to be at about the centre.
1 Like