 Laurentian circa 1973, Canadiana circa 1973, Viva-Tone circa 1977 My son and I are fans of the CBC show Back in Time for Winter. The show follows a modern day family as they recreate life in Canada through several different decades (1940s to 1990s). In that spirit, I thought it would be fun to look back at the school supplies a typical Canadian student might have seen when back to school shopping in the 1970s. Colored pencils would have been a staple of back to school shopping lists. You would likely see colored pencils sets from Venus, Eagle and Dixon. The advertisement below from 1974 shows sets from each of these three companies all of which had manufacturing facilities in Canada.  Newspaper advertisement from August 18, 1974 In the early 1970s, older students would have been shopping for a slide ruler. Later in the decade, electronic calculators such as the TI-30 would become affordable. Do you have memories of shopping for school supplies in the 1970s? What was a cherished or wished for item that you had?
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 During the 1970s and 1980s there seemed to be agreement between the big three Canadian pencil manufacturers about the proper color for a student pencil. These companies all had a jumbo (10mm or 13/32" diameter) pencil for the youngest students that were painted red: The Berol Alphabet No. 1, the Venus Primer Print 1 and the Dixon Primary Printer #1. The next sized jumbo pencil (8mm or 11/32" diameter) for slightly older students were all painted blue. These were the Berol Alphabet No. 2, the Venus Primer Print 2 and the Dixon Primary Printer #2. (I don't have the Berol yet to display here).   |
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