Pencils, eh
A virtual museum of the golden age of the Canadian pencil industry.
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?
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Eagle and later Berol Canadiana colored pencils were made in Canada from the early 1950s (this site states 1952) until the factory in Drummondville, Quebec ceased production in 1992. During this time, there were a number of different packaging styles. Below is a rough timeline of the different styles of packaging that I'm aware of. It is based mainly on old newspaper advertisements.
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. 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?
Sometimes it is hard to date vintage pencils and sometimes you get lucky and you can pinpoint a fairly exact date. The Canadiana Combo Set below is an example of the latter. The great thing about this set is that it includes an entry for a back to school coloring contest that closes on October 30, 1976. The coloring sheet is the same as the design on the front of the package. It also states, "to enter color the black and white illustration of Berol's new package". From this we can assume that this packaging was new in 1976. I had previously seen advertisements showing this packaging in 1978 and 1981 but I didn't know when it was first introduced. So, do you want to try out a vintage coloring contest? I scanned the entry just for you! ![]()
Eagle Canadiana pencil crayons were made at the Eagle factory in Drummondville, Quebec. This factory operated under the Eagle brand from 1931 until about 1969 when the company changed its name to Berol, the shortened surname of the company's founder Daniel Berolzheimer. I've seen written that the first Canadiana pencil crayons were made around 1951. The boxed set of eight pencils above is an early set. In my opinion, this is one of the most beautifully made sets of colored pencils to have been produced in Canada. Check out these photos of a similar set from the Pencils and Other Things blog. The pencils inside don't have the white imprint or area for a signature that the pencils below have. The version of these pencils shown above has a spot for you to write your name on them just like the Laurentien pencil crayons. I believe that the stylized letter E trademark seen on the pencils below started being used around 1960. When Eagle changed its name to Berol in 1975, Canadiana pencils continued to be produced but now with the Berol brand name. The pencil crayons from Eagle appear to start at number 501 (with Crimson Red) while the Berol versions seem to start at number 551 (also with red). I know that Berol had a set of 60 colours. I'm not sure how many colours were available in the Eagle sets. The packaging above was used from about 1975 to the mid-1980's. The set of pencils shown below is a more modern version. The pencils are the same but the packaging and the gold lettering are changed.
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