1931 Cancelled First Flight Newfoundland To St. Pierre

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The flight never took place as the post offices in the three countries did not recognize the label.

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In Newfoundland up to the 1930s mail could be a little slow in arriving. Some outports might only get mail a couple times a year when the supply ships (Known as "Coastal boats") came. Coastal boats bringing supplies to the outports operated well into the 1970s even after roads went through to most communities.
But in the 1920s airmail revolutionized Newfoundland communications. Mail that might have a two year turnaround time might only be a couple weeks turnaround - even to England. By the late 1920s stamp collectors were actively collecting Flight Covers for mail that was delivered all throughout North America. Pilots loved being able to charge a little extra to carry mail and therefore more likely to make running a little airline profitable. Pilot Charles Roy and a couple friends bought a derelict Fokker Universal Monoplane from the Canadian air force and completely rebuilt the aircraft and added pontoons so he could land on water. Flying covers for collectors was a big part of the business plans for their new airline and a Flight from Nova Scotia to St Pierre was planned for Dec 15th 1930. Stamps were printed that showed their airplane flying over John Cabots ship the Matthew. But the flight got delayed as they had trouble getting cachets and approval from the St Pierre government and on dec 16th a storm that was described as a hurricane broke the plane from its moorings in Sydney harbour and Charles Roy and his partners watched as the plane drifted across the harbour and required extensive repairs.

Finally on Aug 1st, 1931, after selling and preparing 4100 covers and with an approval letter from the St Pierre Governer, Charles Roy, His partner J Robert McCowan and two sacks of mail containing the 4100 covers left Sydney harbour. Extreme wind, rain and a storm delayed the progress and they got fogged in at Burgeo for five days. It's a miracle that they even made it at all but a few days later they arrived in St Pierre where 4000 people (Pretty much the entire population) greeted them like celebrities as they touched down in St Pierre harbour. A plane coming was big news in those days.

The sacks of mail was offloaded with plans to bring them to the post office, add St Pierre and Miquelon stamps and put them into the mail system where the post office would return them to the addresses printed on them. Unfortunately , an unexpected problem now occurred. I assume that the customs people in St Pierre were not stamp collectors and bringing 4100 covers and mailing them seemed dodgy to them The letter from the governor didn't help matters and the 4100 covers was confiscated by customs and Charles Roy eventually left leaving his covers behind.

After 27 months of haggling with customs the covers were returned by surface mail when Roy and McCowan added a rubber stamped notation to them and signed them before returning them to the customers who expected their covers back more than two years earlier. Most (If not all) covers were signed by McCowan.

Only 4100 covers exist and while there were various mint stamps made up few (If any- other than the 4100 on the covers to St Pierre on the aug 1931 flight) were ever used.