By Mike Smith
With the help of my two amigos, Roger Miller and Robert Montpetit, I’m currently in the middle of compiling yet another handbook for Canadian postcard collectors. This one is on the postcards published by Ottawa’s Heliotype Co., a firm that was incorporated in November 1914, issued its first postcards in 1915, and dropped off the radar by 1920. Although relatively short-lived, Heliotype Co. printed oodles of very collectible view postcards from British Columbia to Prince Edward Island. For the record, this prolific firm may have stayed in business longer but there’s strong circumstantial evidence that it was absorbed/taken over by Ottawa’s Photogelatine Engraving Co. (a.k.a. “PECO”) in 1920.
Because Heliotype Co. was founded right at the start of the First World War (1914–1918), it’s no surprise that it also printed several terrific postcard series of Canada’s servicemen at home and abroad. And while looking for background information on the various military camps showcased in these series, all kinds of interesting nuggets popped up online. These I’d like to share with Wayback Times readers.
One of the longest and most interesting of Heliotype Co. First World War series was of Camp Leaside (see Figure 1). Also known as the Leaside Aerodrome, this particular camp (now part of Toronto) was a Royal Flying Corps training establishment. And, as many stamp collectors probably know (but I didn’t), Camp Leaside was also the site of Canada’s first air mail delivery. Namely, on 24 June 1918 Captain Brian Peck of the Royal Air Force and mechanic C. W. Mathers flew from Montréal to Camp Leaside carrying the first bag of mail delivered in Canada by air. Wow! Just to make this camp’s story even more interesting, one of its trainees was future American author William Faulkner. Although the war ended before Faulkner got his wings, he later became one of the 20th century’s most famous writers, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949.
Another of Heliotype Co.’s First World War postcard series was of the Canadian Engineers Training Depot (C.E.T.D.) at Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Québec. Established in 1915 and called St. John’s Camp back then, this depot was a key training facility for Canadian engineers throughout the war. Note that most of the cards in this particular series have a number (see Figure 2), which wasn’t a common practice at Heliotype Co. On only about 5% of the firm’s cards, there’s a handwritten two-, three- or four-digit number lower left or lower right on the picture side. And unfortunately, it looks like many of the two- and three-digit numbers actually started out with four digits, but the addition of the cards’ white borders covered up some of the digits. It goes without saying that this really annoys postcard cataloguers (like me!).
Now here’s the nugget. Beginning in 1917, St. John’s Camp also hosted an overflow of 2,400 soldiers from the main Polish training camp at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario (Camp Niagara). Over 22,000 North Americans of Polish descent, who volunteered to join the Polish Army in the First World War, were trained at Camp Niagara. Just over 20,000 of these Canadian-trained Polish soldiers went to France, where they became the core of a new Polish Army fighting on the Western Front. Who knew?
One of the most important First World War military series printed by Heliotype Co. was labelled the “Canadian Official War Postcards” series. These cards have scenes of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (C.E.F.) in Europe, and include images of elated Canadian soldiers after their signal victory at Vimy Ridge in April 1917 (see Figures 3 & 4). From the text on the four different types of wrappers I’ve recorded, this series was sold in sets of six and some or all of the proceeds went to “The Canadian War Memorials Fund.”
The Canadian War Memorials Fund was established in 1916 by Canadian-born newspaper magnate Max Aitken. According to The Canadian Encyclopedia website, Aitken moved to Britain in 1910, won a seat in the House of Commons, was knighted in 1911, and raised to peerage in 1917, becoming Lord Beaverbrook. Aitken’s Canadian War Memorials Fund was a groundbreaking art program that commissioned over 100 artists to create nearly 1,000 paintings, sculptures, and prints documenting the Canadian First World War experience. Several of the artists involved would later be part of Canada’s famous “Group of Seven,” including A. Y. Jackson, Frederick Varley, Arthur Lismer, and Frank Johnston. Now that’s a shiny nugget.