Pembina To Winnipeg Private Courier

Here are some private courier labels from Pembina on the U.S. side to Canada !

I have a number of these on cover, Somewhere. They were produced by Kasimir Bilesky. As I recall he passed away in the 90's at 90+ years of age.

Revstampman You are correct he had postoffice boxes in Pembina and Winnipeg !!

I take it the Blue is First Class and the Pink, second class.



Nice labels.

Londonbus1.....not stalking, honest.

Oops! Just seen that one is outward and the other inward journey.

Actually one is from Canada to US. The other is US to Canada.

i can not win !!

Yes, Bileski was a stamp dealer here in Winnipeg, who also had a Post Office box in the USPS installation in Pembina, ND.

Because there was a difference in the price of postage from US to Canada, his American customers could use the US domestic rate to get mail to him at the Pembina address. Also, this allowed him to reply to his American customers and escape the higher rate from Canada to the US by mailing from Pembina.

The labels he produced were stuck onto the letters to US customers to account for a mythical portion of the journey from Winnipeg to Pembina -- which in reality was little more than Bileski driving down to Pembina to check his mail and mail a few letters.

The Pembina address also came in handy when Canada Post was on strike and mail from the US to Canada was officially embargoed by the USPS (as is typical in a strike situation). By sending mail to him im Pembina, the message still got through despite the fact that there was a mail strike in Canada.

Little more than a gimmick, but very ingenious on his part. What would be interesting would be to find such a label on a letter not originating from Bileski or his Stamp Store, which would show that he couriered for the public at large during a mail strike in Canada. From what I have been able to find out locally he would occasionally do so, despite the fact that such a thing was illegal in those days before private couriers, and the carrying of mail was apparently legally a government monopoly to perform.

Some gossip on Bileski.

New Bileski Title Pages

Three new title pages have just been published by K. Bileski,
Station B, Winnipeg, Canada. Designed by the renowned artist,
Arthur Szyk, the new pages comprise one for Great Britain,
one for the U.S.S.R., and another for the Airmails of the World.

All are in the same high standard of workmanship which has
characterized previous pages in this series and they are
exceptionally good, as I have commented here in the past.


- George B. Sloane
Sloane's Column
Stamps
October 4, 1947

Tying the relationship with Bileski to artist Arthur Szyk,
One has to wonder if Szyk designed the Cinderellas?
Would a closeup of the Cinderella have Syzk's name aboard?

Here is a Cinderella by Szyk that gives the US Aust alliance.
Syzk signed this 1944

I have a cover (us stamp) wth a similar sticker showing a paddlewheel steamer and dated 1982. Is there a maejet for these?

This isn't the first time there was a courier from Winnipeg to Pembina.

During the mid-1800s, really the only way to send and receive mail at Winnipeg (then the Red River Settlement) was through Pembina. The original courier was by oxcart.

Look at this exhibit for the full story:
http://redriver.cgpostal.com

How many different Winnipeg to Pembina labels were produced?

How many different Pembina to Winnipeg labels were produced?

Arthur Szyk passed in 1951 and I doubt that he did the artwork for these. They're also not in his style at all.

The labels are two different issues, dated, and made in response to a couple of long Canadian postal strikes. Nothing mythical here. You may enjoy driving 140 mi (220km) roundtrip to stop by the post office and a coffee but a number of Canadian dealers obtained US PO boxes at some point in order to stay in business; the smart ones would have kept them for years, just in case. With people today howling over "merely" slow mail in the era of COVID, there were equally impatient people then including those who complained about not getting Canadian stamps on their mail. This probably would have been first done during either the long 1974 or 1975 postal strikes. See: http://postalhistorycorner.blogspot...81-from.html .

I was buying mixtures from a dealer in (I think) Victoria BC, "Black Cat Stamp Co." or somesuch, around that time. Anybody remember them? They also had (a) local post label(s) during one of the strikes mailed from a US post office in Port Angeles WA, a ferryboat trip away. So these were legit usages. There were no extra charges for mailing perhaps because the mailers didn't expect strikes to last as long as they did. I don't recall either Bileski or Black Cat selling labels afterwards. As well-recorded as the 1971 British postal strike stamps are, is there some reference for Canadian strike mail stamps?

So the strikes were the reason for their creation. The stamps might have been used after a strike while Canada Post caught up on the backlog, but no longer. There are probably bogus issues and ones never used.

I gave away the few Canadian strike mail stamps I had. If anyone has any from anywhere, particularly used or on cover, I'd like to see them.

There was a total of 22 Bileski Pembina-Winnipeg stamps issued, two per year between 1975 and 1984 (except 1979 when 4 stamps were issued). Half were Pembina to Winnipeg, the other half were Winnipeg to Pembina.

The stamps featured a reproduction of the famous "Pembina Twins". These were a pair of the 7½ pence Dominion of Canada Queen Victoria stamps found on a cover from Pembina to Montreal and cancelled with the bold PEMBINA postmark on Nov. 2, 1858. The cover survived until 1906 when a collector soaked the stamps off, and cut them apart. The stamp with the "PEM" portion of the postmark turned up in a London auction in 1906, the one with the "BINA" portion was sold in a 1921 auction in New York. The stamps were finally reunited in 1936 by Dr. Lewis Reford and Col. John S. O'Meara of Montreal, who having separately bought each half, realized that they could be fit together perfectly.

Goodness me !
I read about a similar instance 20 years ago, lost the the journal, and have looked ever since, thinking I had lost it forever.

Bingo!
Saved with a great feeling of Joy.
Thank you