Pencils, eh - Blog

Versalog

5/5/2025

Today is square root day! According to Wikipedia, this is "an unofficial holiday celebrated on days when both the day of the month and the month are the square root of the last two digits of the year." In other words, May 5th, 2025 is 5 - 5 - 25. What better way to celebrate some old fashioned math than with an old fashioned math tool. Below is a Hughes-Owens "Pocket Versalog" and instruction manual. The scales on the pocket version are half as long as the scales on the full size Versalog (4.92" rather than 9.84").

Hughes-Owens Pocket Versalog 341 3050 made by Hemmi.

This book, slide rule and slip case all came together is a boxed set from Canadian retailer Hughes-Owens in the 1960s. My book has an inscription in the front cover dated 1967.

Time to grab some nice drafting pencils and do come calculations. Perhaps some Eagle Turquoise drawing pencils...

V-5 Lead

4/12/2025

In a sea of yellow pencils, how do you make yours stand out?One approach is to talk about the quality of the lead. That’s exactly what Venus did. Early on, they promoted their "colloidal process" for manufacturing high-quality pencil lead. Then, in the early 1960s, Venus updated their branding and introduced a new feature: V-5 lead. What’s that, you ask? Here’s how they described it in a 1962 newspaper advertisement:

“Introducing the new Venus Velvet with V-5 lead—it's the most economical pencil! No matter what pencils you've bought before, be sure to try this new Velvet. Its revolutionary hard graphite core won't break, even if you press down incorrectly while writing. It lasts longer than other pencils. You can make more copies than you could with a ballpoint pen. A choice of 8 unbreakable leads for home and office use. Ask for the new VENUS VELVET—the pencil that writes more for your money.”
– Le Soleil (The Sun), Quebec, March 6, 1962

The oval venus logo introduced in the early 1960s.

With focus on "V-5 lead" and oval logo I can fairly confidently date the pencils show below as having been manufactured in the early 1960s. Advertisements from 1962-1963 all show pencils just like these.

A Canadian Venus Velvet pencil with V-5 lead from the early 1960s.

National Pencil Day 2025

3/30/2025

March 30th is National Pencil Day. Celebrated in honor of Hymen Lipman who patented a pencil with an attached eraser on March 30, 1858. Lipman did not attach the eraser with a ferrule as is done today. Rather the india rubber was glued into the back fourth of the pencil and could be sharpened to reveal eraser insted of lead.

Simpson's

3/28/2025

This week, the Hudson's Bay Company announced that they would be closing all but 6 of their stores. This company has a long and storied history in Canada. We've seen quite a few large department stores close in the past few decades including Eaton's, Sears and Simpson's. Both the Bay and Sears had a connection to Simpson's. Simpson's and Sears started a join company Simpson's-Sears that operated concurrently to Simpson's. The Bay took over the Simpson's stores and many were rebranded to The Bay stores (including ones in Atlantic Canada). Below are a few pencils from the golden age of the Simpson's department store. The style of the ferrule makes me believe that these were made by Eagle Pencil Company.

There are just five Simpson's pencils in this pack... the rest of the pencils are a variety of similar looking pencils to fill the band.

Eagle Royal 81 HB

3/17/2025

The Eagle Royal pencil was an early pencil made in Canada. The Royal was a less expensive pencil than the more common Mirado. The 80 was a round pencil and the 81 was hexagonal. Notice the pencil pictured in the 1940 advertisement shows a metal ferrule while the pencil in my collection has a paper ferrule from later in the World War 2 era. In Canada, the Wartime Prices and Trade Board enacted restriction on the number and style of pencils during the war. In 1942, pencils were not allowed to have crude rubber erasers or metal ferrules or fancy lacquered finishes.

From Dupuis Freres catalog 1940-1941

Newspaper advertisement from August 1944

Eagle Air Express No 9249

3/15/2025

This box was probably manufactured by the Eagle Pencil Co. between the late 1940s and early 1950s. Boxes like this can be quite hard to date. When new, this box contained 6 pencils, including one eraser-tipped, a pen holder, an eraser, and a ruler. Larger pencil boxes sometimes had a drawer with a compass or protractor or even water color paints. This case is in incredibly good condition for its age. The plane on top looks like a Douglas DC-3... according to Wikipedia, at the peak of its dominance in the airliner market in 1939, around ninety percent of airline flights on the planet were by a DC-3 or some variant.

The top of an Eagle Pencil Co. Air Express pencil box No. 9249.

The side of an Eagle Pencil Co. Air Express pencil box No. 9249.

The interior of an Eagle Pencil Co. Air Express pencil box No. 9249. These pencils shown are not the ones that would have originally come with this set.

It is pretty rare to find a pencil case like this that was made in Canada. This is one of the few that I've seen. I've also seen a red version of this case but only the ouside cover and in much worse condition. Most of these pencil cases had a snap close front instead of the sliding case. If you have photos of vintage Made in Canada pencil boxes like this, I'd love to hear from you!

*** Update - March 2025 *** I found a picture of this set in the Eaton's Autumn-Winter catalogue from 1950 (French edition). The original contents were described in the catalogue as "SCHOOLCHILD'S COMPANION. Contains 6 pencils, including one eraser-tipped, a pen holder, an eraser, a ruler. 5-4153. Price, complete... 35¢"

Campfire Season

3/9/2025

I was pretty excited to find a Camp Fire notebook at a thrift shop today. It's in great condition and hasn't been written in exept for some notes on the back of the front cover. These notebooks seem pretty hard to find given how long they were sold and how common they were. I suppose that they were mostly used and discarded.

A little piece of Canadiana to brighten my weekend.

For more background on Camp Fire notebooks read my previous blog post here.

Gage Camp Fire notebook

Classic Eights

2/28/2025

What a line up! Four boxed sets of Canadian colored pencils. All sets of eight different colors and from a similar time period (around the 1950s). I recently added the Cray-tone set made by Venus Penil to the group. These boxes have a lot of stype and a bit more elegance than later sets that were sold in clear vinyl packages. I have lots of Laurentian colored pencils but I realized that I don't have boxed set of 8... perhaps something additional to add to this line up.

Four sets of Canadian colored pencils.

60th Flag-iversary

2/15/2025

Canada's flag turns 60 years old on February 15th, 2025. The maple leaf flag was made official by a proclamation from Queen Elizabeth II on January 28th, 1965 and on February 15th, it was inaugurated in a public ceremony on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. This week all of Canada’s living former prime ministers released an open letter urging Canadians far and wide to fly the flag this weekend as a show of Canadian solidarity.

What better way to celebrate than by flying a flag and pulling out some commemorative pencils! Below are a trio of vintage, Canadian made, flag pencils.

Venus Canada 65

Venus Canada 66

Canadian Pacific Telegraphs

2/8/2025

I picked up this pad of Canadian Pacific Telegraph paper recently. I thought it would be fun to type out some messages on my Corona 3 typewriter. They also make a nice backdrop for these Canadian Pacific pencils. Because of the name on this pad of paper, "W.D. Neil, General Manager of Communications, Montreal" we can approximate the date. The 1949 CP annual reports also lists him in this position and I've seen several used telepgraphs very similar to this one from around the same time period (early 1950s).