Pencils, eh
A virtual museum of the golden age of the Canadian pencil industry.
The Cavalier was a pencil that appears to have only been produced for the Canadian market (as far as I can tell). It is described in the 1950 Moyer's school supply catalogue as, "a very fine inexpensive school pencil." It appears to have been made until at least the 1990s. Earlier versions were made under the Eagle brand name and later versions under the Berol brand. All of the pencils that I've seen have been painted red with a silver imprint although some early pencils may have been painted black. I much prefer the less boring red color. In the collection of Cavalier pencils seen below there is an early Eagle Cavalier. The reverse side of this pencil is stamped "Calgary Catholic Schools". The first Berol pencil included the rectangle logo. the last pair of pencil are probably from the 1990s with just the name Berol but no logo. The Eagle pencil is painted the darkest shade of red. The 181 pencil is round and untipped. The 182 is hexagonal and untipped and the 183 is hexagonal tipped with a silver ferrule and pink eraser. Perhaps the reason that these were only sold in Canada was because there was a Cavalier Pencil Company in the US although the Canadian pencil may predate the company.
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I recently received an collection of religious souvenir pencils from Quebec that I wanted to share (thanks Silvie!). St. Joseph's OratoryThe pencil below is a souvenir of St. Joseph's Oratory. This church is located on Mount Royal in Montreal, Quebec. It is a National Historic Site of Canada and is Canada's largest church, with one of the largest church domes in the world. The Oratory is the highest building in Montreal, rising more than 30 metres above Mount Royal's summit. It is one of the few buildings that violates the height restriction under the municipal building code of Montreal, which limits the height of any building, including skyscrapers, from surpassing the height of Mount Royal. Below is another pencil related to St. Joseph's Oratory. This one includes a photo of Saint André Bessette, C.S.C. (1845-1937), commonly know as Brother André. Pope Pius XIIPope Pius XII was elected to the papacy on 2 March 1939. He was the Pope until his death in 1958. This pencil was probably made to celebrate his election. Pope Pius never visited Canada... the first pope to visit Canada was Pope John Paul II in 1984. Shrine of Our Lady of the CapeThe final pencil is a souvenir pencil from the Shrine of Our Lady of the Cape in Cap du La Madeleine. Cap du La Madeleine is on the shore of the St. Lawrence River halfway between Montreal and Quebec City in Trois-Rivières, Quebec. The history of this shrine goes back to 1634 when the first Jesuit missionaries arrived what was French Canada. The pencil shows the date AD 1714, which was when construction began on a stone church which replaced the original small wooden church. Now that I have pencils from two of the national shrines in Canada, I'll have to see if there are vintage souvenir pencils from others to complete this mini-collection. I know I have seen a pencil from Saint Anne de Beaupré.
I don't get out to thrift shops as often as I used to. And when I do go, it seems I less often find something of note. Yesterday, I was surprised to find a bag full of unopened stationary supplies. I was pretty excited. The bag had several packages of pencils, a Venus hole punch, a couple of plastic ACME rulers, some erasers and a bunch of hole reinforcers. Much of this was made overseas but a couple of the pencils were Canadian. I've seen the package shown above on Ebay in the past but never with the Commodore 64 contest. Contests are nice because it they provide a specific date. This contest closed on August 1st, 1985. The package has not been opened and so we don't know if this could have been a winner... there is a "scratch-and-win" patch on the card inside to see if you've won. I have several Venus Laurentien coloring pencil packages with the Commodore 64 contest but this is the first pencil product that I've seen it on. The pencils in this FaberCastell package just say "Canada HB" on them. Otherwise, they are identical to the Venus 1600 pencils in the other package I found. Packages like this are sometimes the only way to identify mystery pencils they have no manufacturer or brand name. You may notice that one of the pencils is missing its eraser. The package is sealed and the eraser is not inside so it must have come from the factory this way... not a sign of high quality. The product code on the front of the package is CDAP-10-HB (the code on the other Venus package was VP-10-SW). I'm wondering if this package was a bugdet set of pencils made for a bargain retailer. This package had a price tag on it from Metropolitan. This was a Canadian variety department store chain based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The last of the Metropolitan stores closed in 1997.
Hear are a couple of recently found Canadian made Eberhard Faber erasers. They are ready for retirement... world weary and stiff. The Pink-N-Ink 127 eraser has pink on one side for removing pencil marks and blue on the other side for ballpoint ink removal. These remind me of images from Lisa Congdon's blog and book "A Collection a Day". Day 1 is a collection of erasers. A fantastic website to take a strole through. This brings to mind an eraser mystery. At the Museum of the Atlantic there is an exhibit showing artifacts from the Halifax Explosion which took place in December 6th, 1917. One display shows artifacts from school children... pencils, an eraser and a marble. I've always thought that the Pink Pearl eraser looked out of place. While Pink Pearl erasers were made by Eberhard Faber in 1917, it appears that the EF logo and what remainds of the "Canada" printing on the bottom right don't seem right. Eberhard Faber made erasers in the US but not in Canada until the 1950s. and the EF between two horizontal bars logo also seems to be a 1950s or even 1960s logo.
In 1961 APSCO (Automatic Pencil Sharpener Co.) released a promotional free comic book. The Canadian subsidiary of this company was APSCO Products (Canada) Inc and was managed (and later owned) by Ralph Roger. The comic was Bozo the Clown and the Mystery of the Missing Point. In the early 1960s Bozo the Clown was a popular character appearing on many TV stations. The comic is just a 16 page advertisement for APSCO pencile sharpeners targeted to students (and teachers). I'm not sure how these comics were distributed. Perhaps they were given away at schools. Inside was an advertisement for comic character themed pencil sharpeners. They had lenticular printed eye stickers for eyes that commonly fall off (and kids draw their own eyes). The eyes appeared to be looking in different directions depending on which way you viewed them. They didn't say APSCO on the sharpener so unless you see it in the original box you might not know the manufacturer.
I rescued this Eagle Neon pencil from a thrift store a few months back. It has seen some better days. It has a petrified wedge cap eraser on top and it had a bit of ink spilled on the side... possibly from an old fountain pen stored alongside it. It has also lost a bit of it's bright neon pink color and the white undercoat of paint is showing through. Despite its appearance, it still writes great. I'm currently doing a master's degree in mathematics and I did much of my work in my last course with this pencil. A great pencil makes doing homework a more pleasant experience.
Dixon's Eldorado is probably best known as a brand of drawing pencils. Dixon called it them the "master drawing pencil". The brand name Eldorado was also given to their copying pencils. The set shown below probably dates to the early days of the Canadian Dixon factory in Newmarket, Ontario which opened in 1931. I'm guessing these pencils date from the late 1930s or early 1940s... before cheap ballpoint pens were popularized. The box for these pencils was made with a deep purple color and gold printing. This box is a bit worn but still in decent condition given its age. "The convenience of copying pencils prior to the introduction of ball-point pens was widely appreciated. In 1916, Mitchell observes that “at the present time [copying pencils] are but seldom employed for copying purposes, but are commonly used for producing writing which cannot
be erased so readily as the marks of a lead pencil.” In many ways, these pencils can be viewed as a predecessor to the ball-point pen. They were convenient (no need to continually dip one's pen into the ink well), provided firm pressure (superior to fountain pens of the time), and generated relatively permanent markings. Their usefulness is demonstrated by the wide range of applications to which they were enlisted." - Liz Dube, The Copying Pencil: Composition, History, and Conservation Implications Picture a "Mad Men" style advertising agency conference room in the late 1960s. They are designing the packaging for a three pack of Venus Velvet pencils to hang from a rack on store shelves. They need to decide on what type of image to put on the card back... I can only imagine the conversation that led to this design. This is the first time I've seen Venus Velvet packaged this way. I also haven't seen Venus Velvet with two blue bands instead of 1 (although some of the Venus "Super Color" colored penils I've seen have two bands). Thirty-three cents for 3 pencils sounds like a deal to me. I imaging unopened packages like this are fairly rare. This one has a price tag from a Gambles department store. I had never heard of this store before I looked it up. Look like they were around until the mid-1980s.
Sometimes you run across an old pencil that captures a specific moment in history. This is one such pencil. Raymond O'Hurley was a politician from Quebec. He represented the Quebec riding of Lotbinière from 1957 through 1963. This pencil was for the 1963 Canadian federal election that was held on April 8, 1963. Unfortunately for Raymond, this was the election when he lost his seat in the House of Commons. Based on the ferrule, this pencil was likely made in Canada by the Eagle Pencil Company. 1963 was the year that Lester B. Pearson's Liberal goverment took power defeating John Diefenbaker's PCs. It was also the year that the Toronot Maple Leafs won their 11th Stanley Cup by defeating the Detroit Red Wings and the television series The Littlest Hobo first aired.
You could work in the rain with Dixon Thinex colored pencils... but why would you? This vintage ink blotter takes committment to work a bit too far. It turns out that this is the first Canadian ink blotter I've acquired that is not from Ontario. Nice to have a bit of variety. I tried to search for information about the Regina Typewriter & Stationery Company but only found a few mentions in local newspapers between 1937 and 1954. I mentioned this ink blotter in a previous post, but that was before I had a Canadian example of one.
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