Behind the Scenes
A great deal of study, planning and work goes on behind the scenes at the Canadian Postal Museum to increase our knowledge of Canadian postal history, and to enable the creation of exhibitions, publications and public programmes which all help disseminate that knowledge. This part of the site will reflect some of those activities.
Research Activities
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Pièce de resistance of the Canadian Postal Museum catalogue
collection. General catalogue of Dupuis Frères for 1931-32.
The catalogue cover abounds in French-Canadian nationalist
imagery. |
Here you will find sample articles and information on the history of the post based on years of research, that we hope you will find stimulating and informative. The field of postal history is a wide-open one, a point that is made in the Nutshell summary. It can include such specific matters as the significance of what is depicted on stamps (The Labour Stamp), the history of airmail (Winged Messenger), or from a more general point of view, it can be approached as a chronological dénouement playing itself out over the long term.
The post has a long history, one that reaches back to well before the French sailed to Canadian shores. The first formal postal systems, designed for the transmission of written messages, date from the earliest era of ancient civilization. Egypt, Persia and Rome each devised postal systems. Traditionally the post has functioned as an auxiliary of the state power. Harold Innis writes: "The written word signed, sealed and swiftly transmitted was essential to military power and the extension of government." Yet in examining this phenomenon, in time we become aware that the post is more than an artifice of state power. It is also a medium of communication that brings correspondents together to transact business, exchange good wishes and sometimes exchange goods independent of any raison d'État. Correspondents who are hundreds if not thousands of kilometres from each other seek solace in penning their sense of anxiety and despair or sometimes hope, and sending this message along to loved ones.
Canada is a country of large spaces, yet the historical landscape resonates with the echoes of past conversations that allowed our ancestors to overcome the challenge of settling the New World. The history of communication, especially postal communication, in this context has been a triumph of mind over matter. The post allowed for far more than the extension of government; it helped make possible the construction of an entire society.
- Postal History in a Nutshell
- The Labour Stamp
- Winged Messenger: Airmail in the Heroic Era, 1918-1939
- A Chronology of Canadian Postal History
- Postal Reform in Early 19th-Century British North America
- The Origins of Dogsled Mail in the Yukon in the 1890s
- Before E-commerce, A history of Canadian mail-order catalogues
