A REVIEW FROM THE JOURNAL OF THE POSTAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF CANADA

December 31, 1996, p. 49.

"Canada's Decimal Era, 1859‑1868," by George B. Arfken and Arthur W. Leggett. The Vincent Graves Greene Philatelic Research Foundation, 1996, pp. x + 303. ISBN 09680270‑0‑8.

The Vincent Graves Greene Foundation deserves our sincere thanks for the project it has undertaken to publish definitive works on the stamps and postal history of the eras associated with Canada's early stamp issues. The series began with the Duckworths' book on the Large Queen period, carried on with Arfken's work on the Small Queens, and now continues with this book on the Decimal era. Work is in progress on another volume, on the Pence era, which will thus appear in due course. One can only hope that the series will be carried on into other times as well‑, a book on the period of the Maple Leaf and Numeral issues would be most welcome, for example.

The work under review carries on in the same excellent manner as the first two books in the series. After a brief presentation of the historical background in Chapter 1, including mixed franking with Pence Issue stamps, the next eight chapters are devoted to mail addressed to various destinations, beginning with domestic mail and ending with points "Beyond Suez," with some pretty exotic stops between. The final chapter deals with late usage and combination usage with Large Queens.

Each chapter has sections dealing with all of the major classes of mail matter, including registered letters, circulars, unpaid and partially‑paid mail, and so on. The treatment is quite thorough, but occasionally an important cover is not mentioned, The authors wisely chose to include stampless covers of the period, in order to be able to illustrate postal markings of the period which are not known on stamped covers.

Regulations taken from Post Office Department circulars and other official documents are quoted in support of statements in the text. I think that this adds immeasurably to the value of the book‑it certainly obviates the question "how do they know that, and are they sure?" about assertions made in the text.

The book contains many photographs of covers which illustrate the different rates and markings discussed, some of them on colour plates. These covers often show very rare rates or were addressed to unusual destinations, and really are a joy to behold. A few of them appear to be from the Lindemann collection, but were not credited as such‑ other covers from that collection might have added substantial information to the book. Annoyingly, captions for some of the illustrations are word‑for‑word copies of parts of the text. On balance, though, an excellent book.

Robert C. Smith