63

Chapter XXIV--King George Stamps 67

Chapter XXV--The War Tax Stamps 69

Chapter XXVI--A Proposed Commemorative Series 70

Chapter XXVII--Official Stamps 71

Chapter XXVIII--The Special Delivery Stamp 72

Chapter XXIX--The Registration Stamps 74

Chapter XXX--The Postage Due Stamps 77

Chapter XXXI--The "Officially Sealed" Labels 78

THE POSTAGE STAMPS OF CANADA.

By BERTRAM W. H. POOLE.

INTRODUCTION.

Canada was originally the French colony of New France, which comprised
the range of territory as far west as the Mississippi, including the
Great Lakes. After the war of independence it was confined to what are
now the provinces of Quebec and Ontario--then known as Upper and Lower
Canada. At the confederation (1867) it included only these two
provinces, with New Brunswick and Nova Scotia; and since then it has
been extended by purchase (1870), by accession of other provinces
(British Columbia in 1871 and Prince Edward Island in 1873), and by
imperial order in council (1880), until it includes all the north
American continent north of United States territory, with the exception
of Alaska and a strip of the Labrador coast administered by
Newfoundland, which still remains outside the Dominion of Canada. On the
Atlantic the chief indentations which break its shores are the Bay of
Fundy (remarkable for its tides), the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and Hudson
Bay (a huge expanse of water with an area of about 350,000 square
miles); and the Pacific coast, which is small relatively, is remarkably
broken up by fjord-like indentations. Off the coast are many islands,
some of them of considerable magnitude,--Prince Edward Is., Cape Breton
Is., and Anticosti being the most considerable on the Atlantic side,
Vancouver and Queen Charlotte Is. on the Pacific; and in the extreme
north is the immense Arctic archipelago, bound in perpetual ice.

The surface of the country east of the great lakes is diversified, but
characterised by no outstanding features. Two ranges of hills skirt the
St. Lawrence--that on the north, the Laurentians, stretching 3,500 miles
from Lake Superior to the Atlantic, while the southern range culminates
in the bold capes and cliffs of Gaspe. The St. Lawrence and its
tributaries form the dominating physical feature in this section