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

This weeks's post continues my exploration of the printings of the 8c slate definitive from this series, which depicts the Parliamentary Library from the centre block of the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa. This week, I will examine the printings of the Winnipeg Tagged sheet stamps. The Winnipeg tagged stamps were issued with both dextrose gum and PVA gum. The dextrose gum printings were released at the same time as the untagged stamps on December 30, 1971. However, the PVA gum versions were released between July 1972 and November 1972, after the General Ottawa tagging replaced Winnipeg tagging as the standard tagging, which is interesting. This may account for the expensive nature of the printings on high fluorescent paper - because they were likely provisional printings made to fill in supply fluctuations of the Ottawa tagged stamps that happened when it became apparent that the OP-4 taggant that was being used for the Ottawa tagged stamps was unstable and needed to be replaced …

Today, I begin a series of four posts to tackle, what is the last of the low value stamps in the series, and one of the most complicated: the 8c slate Parliamentary Library design. This stamp was released after the third postage rate increase since 1968, and was released on December 30, 1971. It is the only stamp produced by the BABN in which both the sheet stamps and the booklet stamps are found with both dextrose and PVA gums and with both Winnipeg and Ottawa Tagging.

Today's post will explore the untagged sheet stamps and the untagged coil stamps. Next week, I will look at the Winnipeg tagged sheet stamps. The following week, the General Ottawa Tagged sheet and coil stamps, and then the following week after that, I will look at the booklet stamps. This last post will repeat much of the same material as the earlier posts about the 1c, and 6c booklet stamps, as the 8c booklet stamps came from the same booklets as these other stamps. The 8c and 7c denominations were the only firs…