This colorful image was published by the Maritime Steam Lithography Co. of Saint John, which paid great attention to detail in this old postcard. The faux wood background is intended to give a 3-D effect to the image, using an art technique known as trompe l’’oeil, or “fool the eye.” The famous explorer was engraved in fine detail, as was the idyllic country cottage, upon which red maple leaves rest. Lest one need a reminder of the event, a wise owl perches atop the country cottage image, holding a sign that says: “Be Wise & Come” in his mouth.

See a scarce Nipissing District logging postcard.

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The sender, a young man who marked his place on the front of the postcard with an “X,” wrote to his sister, Mrs. J. H. Findlay of Braeside, ON, saying: “What do you think of this bunch? This is the cookery and all or near all the men except a few of us. Tell Annie she can have the one marked x at the bottom and you can take your pick. How is the vest coming up? Better make a summer one. Yours, W. D. S.” No trace of the logging camp remains.

Further information is sought on the intriguing photographer, Mr. McDermott.

See another scarce Temagami postcard.

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Also known as “Old John Turner’s place,” we were told in an oral history interview that the house was built about 1885 and was constructed of log. This would probably have been just the first story of the building; although two-story log houses exist, they are uncommon. Notice that by the time this photograph was taken by the Canadian National Railways as part of Northern Ontario tourist promotion, clapboard had been applied to the house. Many settlers’ cabins throughout both Canada and the United States were covered with wood siding at the earliest possible opportunity: while clapboard made the building more weather-tight, the primary motivation from a social history perspective was often “keeping up with the Joneses.”

The unused postcard bears a King George V stamp which was issued on 6 June 1930 and printed in Ottawa by the British North American Bank Note Company, Limited, according to the Canadian Postal Archives Database.

Read about a rare Canadian stamp sold recently at auction for over $250,000 USD.

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An 1851 Canadian black 12 pence stamp sold for $260,000 USD last week in New York City — the highest price ever paid for a Canadian stamp. Charles F. Shreve, president of Spink Shreves Galleries which held the auction last Thursday said: “It’s an amazing accomplishment to get that kind of price for that stamp…Whether it’s the U.S. or any other country in the world, it puts it in the top one per cent of the world’s rarest stamps.”

The 1851 pre-Confederation stamp bears a image of a young Queen Victoria. It’s one of the finest surviving examples from the era, which affected the price. Shreve added: “It’s just an iconic stamp of Canada. This was one of the first issues of Canada, 1851 — the first stamps in the world weren’t issued until 1840 in Great Britain…When the stamp was issued only 50,000 were issued and printed, but most of them were never used and only approximately 1,400 were ever distributed at post offices and of that 1,400, only a tiny fraction were ever saved.”

The stamp was purchased by an anonymous buyer through a New York stamp dealer. It was part of a collection belonging to Wall St. executive Bill Gross, one of the world’s preeminent stamp collectors. Gross, who sold the stamp to raise money for the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum, also sold 132 other British North American stamps and 81 Civil War-era Confederate stamps, raising a total of $3.2 million for the museum.

Gross manages the world’s largest bond fund (PIMCO). In November 2005, he became only the third person in the world to form a complete collection of 19th century U.S. postage stamps. According to the Forbes 400 in 2007, he is the 380th richest person in America, with a net worth of $1.3 billion.

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