Canada Post Official First Day Covers

Desmond Maley is the music librarian at the J.W. Tate Library,
Huntington College, Laurentian University and editor of the Newsletter
of the Canadian Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and
Documentation Centres.

This attractive, well-produced catalogue is the first devoted to
official first day covers (OFDC). OFDCs have found a niche in the
philatelic world following the introduction of the Maple in Spring
design for the Maple in Four Seasons issue of 1971. Their popularity is
due in no small measure to the work of graphic designer Bernard
Reilander, who, since 1974, has designed and produced almost all of the
OFDC cachets and day-of-issue cancellations that accompany each new
issue.

A smaller section is devoted to the so-called “presentation” first
day covers used by the post office from 1949 to 1977, a set of eight
cachet designs that also doubled as replacement covers for damaged mail.
There are also sections on esoterica such as the “stamp launch”
OFDCs of the late 1970s, where guests attending an official launch
ceremony for the new stamp were given an OFDC with an inscription
overprinted below the cachet.

The reproductions, which are in black-and-white, are of good quality,
and prices are listed for singles, pairs, blocks, inscription blocks,
and combinations as applicable. The editors say that prices for the
early covers especially are tentative because they are rarely available
on the market. But there is a surprising discrepancy between these high
prices and those given in Unitrade’s Specialized Catalogue of Canadian
Stamps. This anomaly aside, the catalogue deserves a place on the shelf
of most collectors.