Canada Small Town Stamp Club Newsletters

I had occasion recently to peruse most, if not all, of the southern Ontario stamp club newsletters. I came away most impressed with The Bulletin put out by the Saugeen Stamp Club that meets in Hanover, Ontario. It appears to be a very active club whose membership takes in a wide geographic area. There were much larger centres that fell short and some offered nothing other than a "site under construction" notice. A few appeared to have been under construction for some time.

Although ranking highest in my estimation I was surprised that the majority of The Bulletin's content had to do with stamp issues from around the world, something that is handily covered by a myriad assortment of global philatelic blogs. I would have thought that the membership, through their collections, would be in a position to populate a portion of the newsletter with articles and related images pertaining to the postal history of communities centred on the Bruce, Grey, Huron, Perth and Wellington County areas. What comes to mind are the postal hamlets now long gone (i.e., the ghost towns) and their related postmarks, discontinued or dead post offices (dpo), stampless covers, community name changes, the Queen's Bush, the Huron Tract, the railway post offices (rpo), etc. When Canadian collectors do an internet search on the postal history of southwestern Ontario The Bulletin should be on the first page of their search results having offered up articles related to these topics.

The link below is my way of introducing the topic of "small town" stamp club newsletters across Canada. Are there other stand-outs out there?

http://saugeenstampclub.webplus.net...ulletin.html

Interesting thread cynical

I noticed that Jim Measures name is there too and if I am not mistaken, he is heavy into machine cancellations and postal history.

Like you, I am also` interested in the smaller towns but I concentrate on Muskoka / Parry Sound districts, as you know. In these two districts, there are a number of Ghost Towns and DPOs in them.

One of the shortest living POs in Muskoka was Wiman. It lasted for only about 7 months total. I am still looking for that.

I have often thought that our club should start an online newsletter available for all to see. Who knows, maybe in time, this could come to fruit??

Chimo

Bujutsu

Bujutsu: I went back to the site to check out Jim Measures and it seems he recently won an award.

The axe I'm grinding here is my belief that in stamp clubs there are oodles of older people with enormous collections of stamp cancels/covers (i.e., postal history) but have no outlet to show them world-wide because they don't want to get involved with computers for whatever reason.

The club newsletter, in my mind, would be a way to overcome this by encouraging them to bring out their material and allow the computer literate in the club to insert it into a section of the newsletter.

Cynical. I have to agree with you there.

There are about three or four of our local members who do not even have a computer and the only way to contact them is to either phone them or write to them via snail mail.

There are some of us who are computer savvy in varying degrees and I also agree, that this could be a benefit for those members who want to dispose part or all of their collections.

After the new year, I may make a motion in our club to ponder the idea of an online newsletter.

I had to literally pull hen's teeth to get several of them to exhibit.

Chimo

Bujutsu

The Royal Philatelic Society of Canada (RPSC) held their annual ROYALE in Hanover in 2003 but the choice was apparently not without some controversy:

Like anything else Cynical, there are pros and cons to everything.

I can understand the reasoning about small towns. I have been to large shows in Toronto and other cities, though not hardly any in the past several years. I found large city shows great, but, at the same time, too busy and occupied with business. You could shoot a cannon down the isles of the exhibits at CAPEX, 79 and CAPEX '96 but the dealer tables were jammed packed and it was hard to get your turn.

Small towns are more personal, and, in my opinion anyway, more friendlier.I also have a better chance at getting a seat at my favourite dealers table and able to talk as well as conduct business. One example of a large show in a small town has to be the postcard show in Merrickville. There are about 15 to 20 dealers but the atmosphere is friendlier plus the fact that after the show, it is not monotonous and difficult (as a rule) to get a parking spot to go to a popular restaurant like it usually is in larger centres.

Of course, these are just my opinions because I am a small town person anyway. I think I would go nuts in a large city <G>.

Take care

Chimo

Bujutsu

Bujutsu: is this link below for the Merrickville club or one of the dealers. Is there another lick to the club. I notice this site mentions 3 newsletters.

http://www.postcard-directory.com/EOPC/

Hi Cynical

It must be the site for the Merrickville Club. I wasn't aware that they had a site. I do recognize both the names of James Skelding and Jeff Trew.

Some years ago, Jeff contacted me because he learned that I purchased a postcard from an Abbottsford, B.C. auction. The auction house asked for my permission to give my name to him, which I did, and he then approached me with an offer for a postcard I had just won with an image of the Hamilton Tigers team (before it became known as the Hamilton Tiger Cats). To make a long story short, I declined on his offer because I was thinking he must have known something I didn't so I decided to hold on to it. The card has initials of some of the players back then.

While typing this, I get the idea that I should post the card under another thread about an overprint for the Grey Cup <G>.

Glad you spotted this url and thanks as we plan to go to the show again in 2013.

Chimo

Bujutsu

Does anyone know if the Saugeen Stamp Club (i.e., Hanover, Ontario) still publishes their newsletter?