St.catharines - Wrong Spelling Of Name On Cancels.

The correct spelling for it is St. Catharines, but it varied historically and many people spell it wrong regularly of course.

There is no consensus as to which Catharine or Catherine, Saint or not, the city is named after.

How interesting. I just checked the official website for Geographical names and the names all carry a dot as in St. Catharines. Maybe Canada Post asks for NO dots for the addressing of mail to make it easier for the Optical Character Readers. I've always been taught to put a dot but I can learn to drop it.

(RIP) Wert's historical methodology was often poor. In this case, citing an alternate spelling in a privately written document and building on that as historical "fact" of an official name change.

Proper proof would of course build upon official Canadian postal documents for the official spelling over the years. So far, nobody has posted anything from postal records to support a spelling with an A.

British usage favours omitting the full stop in abbreviations which include the first and last letters of a single word, such as Mr, Mrs, Ms, Dr and St
American usage prefers Mr., Mrs., Ms., Dr. and St., with full stops.

Having received a school education with sisters in the first years, I was accustomed to writing St and not St. for Saint as the British does. The abbreviation St. was used to designate a street only.

Never the less, St Catharines is the largest city in the Niagara region of Ontario and Sainte-Catherine is a municipality located on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, near the Lachine Rapids.

For anyone interested, this link has a quick summary of the various theories for the name's origin. The full details are in the archives at the local university - Brock.

A nice city and good university - visit there often as my daughter currently attends.

https://exhibits.library.brocku.ca/...introduction

Not as proof of anything, I offer:

The book 'Ontario Post Offices' by Smith (1988) only gives the spelling 'St Catharines'.

The book 'Ontario Broken Circles' by Graham (1999) records the spelling St Catherines in post office cancelling devices 1819 to 1868, and the spelling St Catharines 1859 to date.

This does not imply that there was ever an official name change.

Jan

Here is an example of a postmark with the spelling St Catherines, dated June 3 1845:




(taken from an ebay lot)

Jan

Here another one from st Catherine, 1841, from specialized canadian dealer in recent sales catalogue

Does any of this really matter? The School down the road from me insists on putting an 'E' on the end of their name, while no one else in this City acknowledges it.