Pencils, eh
A virtual museum of the golden age of the Canadian pencil industry.
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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.
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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.
Several years ago, a reader of the blog sent me a couple of mystery pencils. They are marked "Made in Canada" but don't say what company manufactured them. Since then I've had a couple of readers contribute some stories and memories of these pencils but no real evidence of the manufacturer. They seemed to be a regional pencil sold in Newfoundland. This would not be surprising as Terra Nova is a National Park located on the east coast of Newfoundland. (Terra Nova is also the Latin name for Newfoundland).  Recently, a reader of the blog who lives in Newfoundland researched these pencils in the newspaper archives of Memorial University and found several advertisements... one of which identified the manufacterer as Northrite. About the time of this advertisement, Eagle-Northrite was the name of the Eagle Pencil Company after they had acquired Northrite.
There are a few other Newfoundland specific pencils. A very rare one is the Eberhard Faber Newfoundlander 1497 HB. A more common pencil is from Berol shown below. These also don't say the manufacterer on the pencil, only on the packaging.  |
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