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.

*** 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¢"

​My son and I are fans of the CBC television 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).

The show doesn't really address what school might have been like for Canadian children in these decades, so this is my attempt to fill in the gap. I did recently see that there is a BBC show Back in Time for School. I haven't watched it but there is an episode on The 1960s.

Below you can see a few supplies that Canadian kids might have taken with them as they headed to school in the 1960s.  

Dating vintage school supplies can be difficult so I can be 100% sure all of these specific items were available in the 1960s but I think I'm pretty close with this small selection of items. Do you have any memories of these or other Canadian made school supplies?

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. ​

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?