Thursday, May 26, 2011

Dogsled mail

Canadian dog sled and barrel mail stamps

As further proof that I need to continue the blog posts about great stamps, a Canadian blog reader sent me a fine letter with these great Canadian meta-mail stamps showing historical mail delivery methods in the hinterlands of our neighbor to the north. I think they are a new release? He explained them quite nicely, so I shall quote him directly:

The first stamp tells the story of the winter of 1910 in the Magdalen Islands. A telegraph cable snapped and left the inhabitants cut off, so they put their mail in that barrel, rigged a sail to it, and sent it off with a letter asking the finder to mail it. The second stamp shows a dog sled carrying mail, which until airmail was the only reliable method in northern Canada. It was still used regularly until the 1960s, and it's still possible to have mail delivered this way by the Gold Rush Trail Dogsled Mail Run in January!

Wow. So incredibly cool. And I am so very delighted to have received these stamps firsthand!

So... anybody ever had mail delivered via the Gold Rush Trail Dogsled Mail Run?