The development of the mail service of Canada, with its challenges and innovations, has been one of the essential themes of Canadian history, as it is intricately bound up with all the major themes in the physical, economic and administrative growth of the world’s second largest country.
The postal consequences of vast area, difficult terrain, extremes of climate, and a population distribution concentrated within a narrow band across a country stretching from Atlantic to Pacific, are intense logistical difficulties in delivery of the mail. It is 2,750 miles from Halifax to Vancouver, (without reckoning in St John’s Newfoundland or Victoria, British Columbia). It is unsurprising that the pioneers who developed the posts, their modern successors, and the transportation solutions they devised – from snow-shoes to modern snowmobiles, from early canals and railways to modern aircraft and trucks – have a place not solely in practice but in the stamp collection.
The Canadian postal story begins with the appointment of Hugh Finlay as Postmaster General, in the city of Quebec, in 1763, and soon after the signing of the Treaty of Paris (10 February 1763). During what
