By Mike Smith
In June 2024 I started compiling a postcard collector’s guide for the Toronto Postcard Club (TPC) in aid of its 50th anniversary festivities scheduled for 2027. One of the sections in this guide will include concise business histories and/or biographies of the country’s most important postcard publishers, printers and photographers. Now if the TPC had asked me to compile this type of publication say 20 years ago, I’d have been in a real pickle. Back then, I knew from experience that if any business records did in fact exist for Canadian postcard publishers during the trade’s classic era (1895–1919), they’d be buried in reference libraries or archives all over the place. I remember how frustrating it was when I tried to put together a short essay on the life of major Toronto publisher W. G. MacFarlane for my first (2006) MacFarlane handbook. All I could get my hands on was a tiny clipping from his obituary in the Globe and Mail printed after his death in 1942. By the way, MacFarlane’s postcards are among the most collectible in the hobby today (see Figure 1).
But for roughly the last 15 years or so, digital library websites have become an ever-expanding online archive of very helpful publications. One unbelievably useful trade periodical I found online, Bookseller and Stationer, has provided me with more information on Canadian postcard publishers that you could imagine. For example, in Bookseller and Stationer’s August 1905 issue there’s a fact-filled article on W. G. MacFarlane’s postcard business that even incudes his portrait! And now, thanks to information I found in issues of Bookseller and Stationer from 1905 to 1908, I’d like to introduce Wayback Times readers to someone I consider to be a very underrated publisher, Toronto’s A. L. (Arthur Lawrence) Merrill.
Even though I’d seen A. L. Merrill’s name on the backs of numerous antique postcards when I took up the hobby decades ago, the first time I actually learned anything about him was after reading the October 1905 issue of Bookseller and Stationer. In that issue it said that Merrill registered the copyright for a postcard called “Look Before You Leap.” Unfortunately, the card wasn’t illustrated. The November 1905 issue was much more enlightening however: “Among the firms in Toronto dealing in picture postcards is the old established and reputable firm of C. R. Parish & Co., 304 Yonge Street. Mr. Merrill, the head of the firm, is a graduate of Toronto University, and the ability he shows in conducting his business is evidence that he did not cease using his brains when he took his degree. The firm has three stores in Toronto, each making a specialty of picture postcards.” One of Merrill’s popular patriotic postcards is shown as Figure 2.
Merrill ran numerous postcard ads in Bookseller and Stationer throughout 1906. In the March 1907 issue he was interviewed about the postcard trade, and several of the statements he made were simply incredible: “I have 50 Toronto subjects, totalling 1,000,000 cards; and 50 Canadian views from ocean to ocean, totalling 1,000,000; and 50 views of Canadian cities and towns also totalling 1,000,000 cards. This year I expect to handle 10,000,000 cards. There will be a consignment of 100,000 cards in today from Chicago.” Whether or not Merrill embellished this business summary to blow his own horn, there’s no doubt that he was very active in the trade. You’ll find his name on the backs of many different postcards in all kinds of styles (see Figures 3 & 4).
The last reference to Merrill I found in Bookseller and Stationer was in the November 1908 issue. In that particular magazine there’s a fascinating article about a city-wide crackdown on “naughty” postcards. The article states that on 7 November 1908, “A crusade has been carried out by the Toronto Morality Department against sellers of obscene post cards. As a result raids have been made, fines imposed and in a few cases warnings given.” The article further states that A. L. Merrill successfully defended himself in court against a charge of selling obscene cards, but one of his store clerks was not so lucky. Hmmm, I wonder if the clerk had to take one for the team?