Unknown Postmark ___side B'ch

Good morning!

An odd cancel - I've not seen the B'CH before. Any thoughts?

Nice position dot at 3 o'clock. Possible RPO?

Riverside Beach, NB had a post office from 1898 to 1900 according to the LAC.

I have to admit that this one has me stumped.

I also have never seen the abbreviation B'CH before. Except for ST. or STE., abbreviations of any kind are unusual in town markings. They are more common in R.P.O. markings but I could not find anything that could be possible. (I did find an example with G'CH as an abbreviation for Goderich).

I feel it is unlikely to stand for Beach, as there is easily enough room in the cancel to spell it out in full. Riverside Beach mentioned above was only open for 2 years. My book on Post Office of New Brunswick has a blank in the column for postmark. I believe this means that what, if any, cancel was used is unknown.

Also unusual in this cancel is the time: 6 PM. It was extremely unusual in this time period to give an explicit time like this. (One can find examples with just AM or PM).

Can you read the year in the date? I find the second digit too indistinct to identify.

It is possible that this cancel is an administrative cancel, or maybe a foreign cancel, or maybe one used way out of date, or maybe a forgery.

I will keep my eyes open.

Jan

Riverside Branch???

(Toronto, ON 1893-1907)

It seems it is indeed RIVERSIDE BRANCH. Thanks for the opinions, really appreciate it.

Really glad I could help!

Went to Port Williams last evening, tried to found out where the community hall is, I'm hoping to attend (my first!) stamp show there if it happens again in April!

I have to agree. I found this scan of another (from ebay):




The image quality isn't good, but I think you can make out part of RIVERSIDE B'CH in the top and TORONTO in the bottom.

This is an unusual cancel as Branch is not part of the official name. It wasn't used in their duplex cancel, and I couldn't find any other branch offices of Toronto which used it.

Jan

Here is the link that will take you directly to the page for Riverside (Branch)
Thanks to Alie for finding this originally.
https://recherche-collection-search...ide%20branch
This is such a great search tool.