The Lower Canada / Bas Canada Regional Group meets periodically in different areas of the region. The meetings provide an opportunity to meet fellow collectors who share similar interests, ask questions, learn more about the stamps and postal history of Canada and the provinces, and perhaps find something to add to your collection.

Here are reports of previous meetings.

The Lower Canada / Bas Canada Regional Group held its semi-annual meeting at BNAPEX 2019 Ottawa on Friday, 30 August. Eleven BNAPSers were in attendance, two of whom were attending a Regional Group meeting for the first time.

Dave Schurman, our guest speaker, gave an animated presentation entitled "Federal and Quebec Revenues: A (very) brief overview" which was supported by many interesting legal documents. He has graciously made his presentation available to all (4.6 MB pdf file).

Next meeting will take place in Spring 2020.

The Lower Canada / Bas-Canada Regional Group met on 7 April 2019 in Cote St. Luc, a west central suburb of Montreal. This was the day after the Lakeshore Stamp Show in Dorval.

The morning was lively with an Audrey Berner Tim Hortons coffee run followed by show and tell. Mark had some duplicate books for sale, and Hugo had two cases of general postal history covers. Other members presented stampless letters requiring rate explanations, and Dave Schurman showed some very nice Quebec revenue stamps on documents.

Attendees with morning coffee anticipating the show and tell

Since it was the first full-day meeting of the Regional Group, each member had the opportunity to introduce himself and his collecting interests. Everyone had their own unique specialties! Lunch was provided by a catering service.

Discussions over catered lunch

The meeting featured two guest speakers. In the morning, we had Dave Bartlet who journeyed all the way from Calgary. His presentation on "The Automation of Postage Dispensing" described the sale of postage stamps from vending machines from the Admiral era to the current day.

Dave Bartlet and a slide from his presentation

Our speaker in the afternoon was member Laurent Bélisle who gave a talk on Montreal Letter Carrier and Free Mail Delivery. Laurent's exhibit on this topic won him a Gold medal at BNAPEX 2018 in Quebec City.

Laurent Bélisle, his audience and a slide from his presentation

Activities wound up around 3 PM. There was much camaraderie, inspired discussion, sharing of a great wealth of philatelic expertise and a whole lot of fun! If you live in Quebec, you are missing out if you don’t join us.

Next meeting will be at BNAPEX 2019 in Ottawa.

Photo credits:
Group photo at top: Audrey Berner
Remaining photos: Hugo Deshaye

The revived Lower Canada / Bas Canada Regional Group held its inaugural meeting on Saturday, 22 September, at BNAPEX 2018 in Quebec City. The meeting was attended by 27 people, 20 of whom are potential attendees of future meetings.

Discussed were such topics as frequency and location of meetings. The next one is tentatively scheduled for Montreal around the time of the Lakeshore Stamp Club spring exhibition in April 2019.

Attendees provided contact information to receive emails about future events organized by the Regional Group. David McLaughlin then gave a well received presentation on Householder Mail, an area he has studied and collected for many years.