Covers Commemorated the Royal Visit of 1939
by John Burnett (EPH2)
Originally published in Linns Stamp News
In the spring of 1939, a unique opportunity was presented to stamp collectors across Canada when King George VI and Queen Elizabeth accepted a long standing invitation to visit Canada.
Officially the visit had a two fold purpose. It was the first visit of a reigning monarch to Canada, representing official acceptance of an invitation first issued in 1858 when the young Province of Canada got up enough pluck to make such an offer, (previously that offer had been turned down by Queen Victoria, King's Edward VII, George V, and Edward VIII).
The second and more important reason for the visit was to cement relations between Canada, the United States and Great Britain in the event that general hostilities should break out in Europe. Indeed, just 2½ months after the visit, England was at war with Germany, and WWII in the European theater began in earnest. It may well be that due in part to this royal visit, Canada declared war on Germany at the same time as Great Britain, and the United States took the first steps in what would become it's lifesaving "Lend Lease" program.
For collectors, the royal visit was a golden opportunity to start a small topical collection. Those collectors who had an interest in railway post offices were especially fortunate as the king and queen would travel across Canada by rail, and their royal train would have its own RPO.
Figure 1 is a snapshot of the royal couple disembarking at Quebec City on May 17, 1939, delayed two days after their scheduled arrival by bad weather on the Trans Atlantic crossing.
Figure 1 - King George VI (center) and Queen Elizabeth (left) arriving in Canada for the royal visit of 1939.
A set of three bicolored stamps (Scott & Canada Specialized 246-248) was issued on May 15, 1939 as originally intended. It includes the 1¢ stamp depicting Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret Rose, a 2¢ value showing the Canadian War Memorial in Ottawa (a reminder of the joint Anglo-Canadian sacrifice in WWI), and a 3¢ portraying the king and queen. Figure 2 shows a full set on a cacheted May 15 first day cover. All three stamps are cancelled with a single strike of the French-language TRAIN ROYAL / BUREAU DE POSTE circular date stamp in black.
Figure 2 - A May 15 first day cover for the royal visit set (Scott and Canada Specialized 246-248) with French language royal train cancel.
People from all over Canada had been told that if they wanted a souvenir cover from the royal visit with the new commemorative stamps cancelled on the royal train they need only send a stamped self addressed envelope with the appropriate fees. The covers, they were told, would be returned with a nice cancel - inked in purple, a color long associated with royalty. However, the decision to use purple ink inadvertently created some modern Canadian cover rarities. The purple ink took a long time to dry, and smudged easily in the intervening period, creating a nightmare for post office officials confronted with tens of thousands of souvenir envelopes from patriotic Canadians. As a result the decision to use purple ink to cancel the mountain of covers on hand was abandoned almost immediately. The purple ink was replaced with reliable, standard, post office black ink.
There was one important exception. Canadian postal rules require that all mail marked Special Delivery be delivered as is. Because of this the very few covers with special delivery stamps (believed to fewer than 100) that had been cancelled in purple, before the decision was made to change to black ink, had to go to their addressees. Figure 3 shows such a special delivery cover with a purple ink cancel, it clearly shows two examples of the French version TRAIN ROYAL date stamp, a valuable and elusive highlight to any Royal Visit collection.
Figure 3 - This special delivery 3¢ Royal visit FDC received the rare French royal train postmark in purple.
All first day covers show the May 15 date, even though the train did not go into service until May 17. In addition to the various ROYAL TRAIN cancels there is also a flag cancel available in both English and French versions. Figure 4 shows a nice example of the English version of the flag cancel on an autographed June 1, 1939 cover. The autograph of G.W. Ross Postmaster of the royal train is on the left just below the very nice Athabasca Hotel advertisement
Figure 4 - An Athabasca Hotel advertising cover with the English version of the royal train flag cancel and the autograph of the postmaster.
Because time was so critical the royal couple were back on schedule by May 19. The royal train carried them across Canada and down into the United States, where they opened the British pavilion at the New York World's Fair.
King George and Queen Elizabeth entered the United States June 7, 1939, the event is recorded, along with the time (9:30 PM) in the four bar Suspension Bridge N.Y., transfer office hand-stamp that ties the U.S. 3¢ Washington Inauguration commemorative to the cacheted cover pictured in Figure 5.
Figure 5 - When the royal train entered the United States June 7, this Suspension Bridge, N.Y., transfer office postmark marked the event on a cacheted cover.
There are numerous other royal train postmarks including postmarks from the United States and parcel post marks available for such a focused collection as the royal visit of 1939. The Royal Visit of 1939 is a good example of a small, specialised collection which can lead you down all sorts of philatelic avenues.
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