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

Today's post tackles the third high value in the Centennial series: the 15c Bylot Island, by Lawren Harris. Bylot island is in part of what used to be the Northwest Territories and is now Nunavut. Next to the 10c this was the second most heavily printed high value. The reason is because the foreign airmail rate to Europe was 15c during the life of this issue. So, the vast majority of covers to those destinations would have had the postage paid by a single 15c stamp. The demand for these stamps would have led to many printings, and of course a very delightful array of collectible varieties, including many rare plastic flow varieties that are now listed in Unitrade. In keeping with the method I followed in dealing with the 10c value, I am going to separate these by gum type and then cover this value in two posts: one for the dextrose gum stamps, and one for the PVA gum stamps. Today's post will look at those stamps issued with Dextrose gum. Unitrade lists five varieties for ...

Today's post will be the last to deal with the 10c Jack Pine design from this series. I will examine the last group of printings - those which were made using PVA gum. According to Unitrade, the 10c Forests stamp from the Caricature issue, that replaced this set, was first issued on September 8, 1972. This would suggest that there should have been no more printings of this stamp after that date. Yet, according to Unitrade, the chronology of the printings for this value is really quite interesting indeed: Printings on medium fluorescent paper from plate 3 first appeared in March 1971. The low fluorescent paper printings did not appear until 1973. Unitrade does not provide a preceise issue date for these.  The general Ottawa tagged stamps appeared first, in February 1972. The Winnipeg tagged stamps appeared later, in November 1972, after the general tagging had already been introduced. So the immediate question that comes to mind is: why would any printings of this stamp h...

This week's post is the second of three posts that will explore the printings of the 10c Jack Pine stamp from this issue. This week, I am looking at the printings that bear the experimental PVA gum that collectors refer to as "spotty white gum". It was a very shiny PVA gum that was at the same time streaky. In many ways it almost looks like a hybrid between the older dextrose gum and the matte PVA gum found on the later printings. It was in use for only a very short time in 1971, as evidenced by the fact that only three commemorative issues from 1971 are found with this type of gum: The Emily Carr stamp, that was issued on February 12. The Radio Canada International stamp, that was issued on June 1. The Census Centenary stamp, that was also issued on June 1. Unitrade lists three basic varieties of this stamp with this gum type, which were issued between December 1971 and January 1972. All of them were reportedly printed on hibrite paper, and are as follows: ...