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First Day Covers
By Teresa Van Rees
Oxford County Library
For The Oxford Review
August 13, 2001
Ioor, Fulton, Hacker, Eppstadt. Who are these people? Sports figures? Politicians? No, they are amongst the first Canadian commercial first day cover makers.
A first day cover is a souvenir envelope with a stamp cancelled on its day of issue. Except for some early first day covers, most have a cachet on the left side of the envelope. The cachet takes the form of some beautiful artwork or a few words describing the reason for the stamp being issued. This is accompanied quite frequently by the date of issue.
Ioor, Fulton, Hacker and Eppstadt were the earliest cachet makers. They realized that since stamps were released on a special date, perhaps something should be done to celebrate the occasion.
The Canada FDCS Page http://members.tripod.com/~mr_fdc/index.htm is a great resource for cover collectors. It is an attempt at cataloguing every Cachet made for Canada First day Covers. Starting with the earliest known patriotic cachets, it features the 1927 Confederation Issue which marks the First Commercial Canadian Cachets. It currently ends in 1949.
The site is quite obscure and my husband found it while searching for something else. We were surprised to learn that there were a few cachets that had been made in 1897 for the Jubilee. These are very scarce.
Georges Eppstadt in Ontario and Century Stamps of Montreal made the first commercial first day covers. These are scarce and a valuable piece of Canadian Postal history. The Ralph Dyer first day covers are all hand drawn and are sought for their beauty.
This site is an excellent one. There are several references in print for First Day Covers from the 50's and beyond, but this site covers the earlier ones. It is a work in progress. Viewers of this site are able to e-mail the developer and send in scanned pictures of covers that he has not added yet.
The Canadian First Day Cover site is about some interesting moments in Canadian Postal History. I hope that many readers will take a few moments to view the site.
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