A five cent stamp

The heat of the day seemed buried in the asphalt of Main Street. Talk about town was of the plans to merge nearby Outlet Park with forestry lands to create Sandbanks Provincial Park. Toward the end of the afternoon, a secretary from the Bank of Nova Scotia headed to the post office with bank mail. There, the Picton postmaster stamped the handful of letter-size envelopes, which included one with the typed address: ‘Bank of Nova Scotia, Belleville, Ont.’ There was no street name or number or postal code; this was the era when information was easier to remember, the era when telephone numbers had two digits. The day was August 10, 1959.

The year was notable: Fidel Castro became President of Cuba; John Diefenbaker was our Prime Minister; close to home Bob Hayward drove the speed boat Miss Supertest to win the Detroit Memorial Cup. The Miss Supertest boats would go on to bring fame to Picton, winning the International Harmsworth Trophy three times in a row before audiences packed along the shores of Long Reach.

Meanwhile at St.Lambert, Quebec, Queen Elizabeth and Dwight D. Eisenhower stood for the inauguration of the St. Lawrence Seaway. The Royal Yacht Britannia sailed through the first lock to officially declare the international waterway open. The event also carried the announcement of the partnering of the Canadian Post Office with the U.S. Postal Service to release the first joint issue stamp, an undertaking rumored to have taken nearly as long as the building of the seaway itself.

At the time, Canada Post was lying low. Earlier that year it had released a stamp to recognize the 50th anniversary of J.A. McCurdy’s first flight in the Silver Dart in Nova Scotia. The stamp design featured a rendering of the Dart; in the background was the likeness of three Avro Arrow aircraft. The stamp was launched on February 25 of 1959, three days after ‘Dief’ made the controversial decision to shut down production of the Arrow, ordering all evidence of its existence to be wiped from the record.

Recently, as part the ongoing tradition, Canada Post launched a commemorative stamp to celebrate the wins of Miss Supertest. But of all commemorative stamp releases none will ever trump the hubbub around the Joint Issue Seaway one.

Turns out that in 1980, one of the envelopes mailed from the Picton Post Office on that nondescript day in ’59 made headlines when it showed up at ‘Greg Manning’s Rarity Auctions’ in London, England. The envelope was the one that had been mailed to the Belleville bank. On the top right corner of the mailing was the recognizable three cent stamp with the Wilding portrait of Queen Elizabeth; stuck onto the envelope to the left of it was the red, white and blue Joint Issue Seaway five cent stamp. In the design, the top part of the stamp had the name ST. LAWRENCE SEAWAY in both official languages. Lettered at the bottom was the word CANADA. The centre part of the stamp, the core that was shared by both countries, had the Maple Leaf bold in red delicately balanced with the American eagle. There was only one problem: the centre part was…oops…upside down! There was a booboo at the printing presses, and a bunch of sheets of fifty stamps escaped from the post office before the national news caught wind of it and a recall was hurried. In the time being, the Picton bank had purchased a pane of 50 and had already licked 25 of them onto mail that had left.

Called an ‘invert error,’ the mistake was a Holy Grail for philatelists who, upon hearing the news, pounced on every Joint Issue stamp they could find. Some of the envelopes that left Picton on that hot August day, along with those sent from other places, continue to be traded in the stamp kingdom, ending at auction and in private collections. While we can only boast three ‘error stamps’ in our postal history the Seaway issue holds the distinction as being ‘the First’; in the collector’s ‘hall of fame’ it is billed as one of the ‘great error’ stamps.

When the hammer went down at Manning’s on the rainy morning of May 10, 1980, the winning bid for the envelope postmarked—PICTON PM 10 V111 ‘59 Ont.— was shouted across the room. It sold for £7,500 U.K. or $22,500 Canadian. It seems that there are no ordinary days on Main Street.