post

 

For the second time in less than a year the postal workers stopped working, but they are back now (on rotating strikes, but so far not in my area) so I've gotten back into checking my mailbox every day and sending cards through Postcrossing.

Our vans are a little different - less boxy - than these ones from the early 1990s, (same colours)

 

a couple of interesting and very different postboxes both from 2011

day 16 of NaBloPoMo

pillar boxes

Although I don't have the actual stamps, I do have this set of 2002 PHQ cards - which I think I prefer

and, I was pleased to discover, after getting them, that the engraver was Czeslaw Slania (1921-2005)

Note: the colour changed from green to red in 1874 and the blue box was for airmail.

 

maybe Joy can enlighten us if she has seen any new pillar boxes with the CRIII cypher? 

 

pink granite

a rather grand building for a post office...  built in a Romanesque Revival style around 1902

Note the steeply pitched red roofs - perfect for keeping off the snow that Minnesota is known to have.  It is now known as the Landmark Center and used as an arts and cultural center.  This card dates from around 1910.

postie

 

received from Germany

post offices

 

Post Offices in India, from top left

Lucknow, Cooch Behar, Nagpur, Udagamandalam, Delhi, Shimla

Post Offices in Canada, from top left

Miramichi, Saint-Ours, Battleford, Toronto

 

some historic post offices for a postal themed Sunday Stamps

lost

a HUGE post office in Philadelphia.

Long since demolished.

 Card is pre 1905

stylish

Many loved the above building in Vancouver and were worried about its fate 

when it was closed and sold a few years ago.  

It now has several glass towers on top and is a residential/commercial complex.

This post office building in Grimsby was saved while several other buildings were gutted when an accidental fire broke out on the main street three years ago. 

mail train

Mount Pleasant station on the Post office's underground railway which runs from Paddington to Whitechapel, connecting six sorting offices and two main railway stations

mail delivery

Issued in 1974, this series honours all the postal workers for the 

Centenary of Letter Carrier Delivery Service

top row - the postmaster, mail services courier
middle row - mail handler, postal clerk
bottom row - letter carrier, rural mail courier

postman

As I think on the mess in the US with the postal service and
in honour of the poor beleaguered postal employees,
a week of postal related stamps and postcards.

Toronto

Today is the 186th anniversary of Toronto. 

Toronto's First Post Office was officially opened before the city became incorporated. After several decades of other uses, it is now again in use as a full post office (since 1983)

Sunday Stamps - A

The front of the stamp booklet and the First Day Cover for Black History Month 2019

Stamp illustrated by Ron Dollecamp and designed by Andrew Perro

Albert Jackson is shown here wearing a circa 1890 uniform as he delivers mail on his route.

He is thought to have been the first Black letter carrier in Canada in 1882. Born into slavery in the US, he was brought to Canada via the Underground Railroad as an infant.  His position as a letter carrier was threatened when his [white] co-workers refused to train him and he was pushed into a porter's position.. When word spread about the way he was treated, political pressure, especially from the Black community, and intervention from the Prime Minister had him reinstated as a carrier delivering his route in Harbord Village, where a laneway has been named in his honour.

for the letter A - Albert Jackson

R.M.S.P.

The Araguaya was built in 1906, the second of the modernized fleet for travel to South America. Each of these ships were named with the letter A, with Araguaya being a river in Brazil. The Royal Mail Steam Packet Company was started in 1839 and by 1840 had an agreement to carry all of Queen Victoria's mail to the West Indies. There were fourteen ships - all named for rivers - sailing twice a month to Barbados. Nearly every 20 years a new Royal Charter was granted to extend the destinations. The Araguaya's maiden voyage was Southampton to Brazil then on to Montevideo and Buenos Aires. With the advent of WWI she was requisitioned and adapted as a military hospital ship to serve with Canadian forces. After 1920 there was a refit and she again was destined from Southampton to South America as well as occasionally on a Hamburg - New York route. Later, in 1926, another refit as a cruise liner and she was on her way to the Norwegian fjords. By 1930 she was sold and renamed Kraljica Marija and sailing under a Yugoslavian flag.

for Postcards for the Weekend - mail related

Sunday Stamps II - 138

1928 US AIR MAIL

The US postal service started constructing airway beacons between 1923-1933 to aid navigation before there were good aviation charts for pilots. A series of lighted beacons were placed every 10 miles or so along with a brightly painted concrete arrow for navigation during inclement weather and at night. The lights would flash a code to identify each beacon's number. By 1940, when technology had improved, the beacons were torn down and the steel went towards the war effort.

for the letter A - air mail

Sunday Stamps II - 95

1990, Canada for Canada Post Corporation

This is how the Canada Post delivery vans looked in the late 1980s and 1990s. The Post Office department was known as Royal Mail Canada from 1867 until the late 1960s when it was rebranded as Canada Post. The short from of the official name was known as Poste Mail in Quebec and Mail Poste in English Canada, although now it is Canada Post (English) and Postes Canada (French). Canada Post delivers to a larger area than the postal service of any other country in the world. In 2014, a controversial plan to phase out door-to-door delivery was initiated, although already any subdivisions built after 1985 were having to go to 'community mailboxes' to pick up their mail.

for postal related

Sunday Stamps II - 29

one of a series of 5 Finnish mailboxes issued in 2011

for postal themed stamps

rural postman in summer uniform

National Postal Museum Collection