Canadian Philately - The Stamps and Postal History of Canada 1851 to Present by Brixton Chrome

Today's post covers the remaining aspects of this handsome first definitive issue of the King George VI period. 
Booklet Panes and Complete Booklets

Basic Format and Layout





It is with this issue that the collecting of booklets gets really, really interesting. The reason is that a dotted cover design replaced the plain cover designs of the previous issue. Both the front and back covers exist in up to 11 different die types that differ only in terms of the dot pattern. Peter Harris, a dealer in the UK published a detailed study in which he identified the different cover dies that exist on both the English and French booklet covers. As you might expect, the number of potential combinations of front and back covers that exist for each basic booklet is quite high. Another complicating factor, is the width of the staple that was used to fasten the booklet together. This was also the first issue to include pages in the booklets containing information about postage rates. These are called …

Overview

Today's post comes after a period of considerable anticipation by some of our readers who have been eagerly awaiting the start of the King George VI period. In this post we will explore some aspects of the 1937-42 Mufti and Pictorial Issue. The issue gets its name from the fact that the low values are the only stamps, other than the 1949-52 Postes Postage Issue, in which King George VI appears in civilian dress, rather than being in uniform. The Pictorial portion of the issue continues the tradition began by the Scroll issue, ten years earlier, of showing scenes from various regions of Canada.

For some unknown reason, Unitrade splits this issue up into two separate issues, which makes little sense to me, as it is very clear that they are the same general issue. One possibility might be that the stamps were all issued on different dates, with the higher values not appearing until more than a year after the low values.

Again, Herman Herbert Schwartz was the designer of thes…