Fancy Cancels on Canadian Stamps 1855 to 1950

Third edition

David Lacelle
Released August 2018.
250 pages, 8.5x11, spiral bound.
Colour C$ 24.00 [ISBN 978-1-927119-90-7].

For more than 50 years, David Lacelle has been cataloguing and maintaining a database of thousands of bits and pieces of information relating to more than 1700 different Fancy Cancels. Due to the invaluable input from the 80+ members of the BNAPS Fancy Cancels & Miscellaneous Markings (FC&MM) Study Group over the ten year period since publication of the second edition, the author has compiled more than 350 additions, revisions and updates. In addition, there are three new appendices relating to a series of fake cancels, the removal of previously ‘unconfirmed’ cancels and ‘joke’ markings.

Dave Lacelle started collecting stamps as a young lad and soon specialized in Canada, with the intent of having a complete collection by age 12. As so often happens in real life, some other things (bicycle, girls, university, job etc.) got in the way for a while. At about age 10, Dave received a small tobacco tin of Scott No. 41s, the Three Cent “Small Queen” issue, from a kindly aunt in Montreal. There were about 30 Small Queens (an awesome duplication to a 10 year old!), with all but one having either circular date stamps or machine cancels. He asked his local stamp dealer about the oddity and was told that it was a “cork” cancel, probably from and old whiskey bottle cork. The seed was planted, and from this single cork cancel a much later collection grew, as well as a BNAPS study group, and both the first and second editions of this book.

Dave still has this first cork, and has enjoyed the 60 (or so) year hobby which came from it. He would like to ask collectors to please practice “random acts of kindness”, as his aunt did. You never know when such an act can have a long term positive effect upon a young person.