Canadian Association of Token Collectors (CATC)
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President:
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Scott E. Douglas |
President Emeritus:
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Harry N. James |
Vice-President:
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Ian Speers |
Secretary-Treasurer:
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Ian Speers |
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2018 - Eric Leighton -
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The Great Dry Salt Goods Puzzle which appeared in the December 2017 Numismatica Canada, Volume 16, No. 4, Issue No. 64. |
2019 - James Haxby -
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Discoveries From The Doug Robins Collection which appeared in the June 2018 Numismatica Canada, Volume 17, No. 2, Issue No. 66. |
2020 - Len Buth -
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J. R. Ormond Watchmaker - Jeweller Montreal, CE; Peterborough & Port Hope, ON; Winnipeg, MB; Victoria, BC which appeared in the September 2019 Numismatica Canada, Volume 18, No. 3, Issue No. 71. |
2021 - Eric Jensen -
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Hotel Lethbridge Cigar Stand Token which appeared in the June 2020 Numismatica Canada, Volume 19, No. 2, Issue No. 74. |
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Membership Application Form
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JOIN THE CANADIAN ASSOCIATION
OF TOKEN COLLECTORS
Click here to download the CATC Membership Application in PDF format. You can view and print the application using Adobe Acrobat Reader and then complete the form and mail it with your cheque to the address shown on the form. If you do not have Adobe Acrobat Reader, please click the link below to be taken to the Adobe web site to download the software. This software is available free of charge from Adobe. |
During the colonization period of Canada's history there was no official policy by either France (ca. 1670-1760) or England (1760-1830) to provide an expanding economy with any form of uniform currency like that which we take for granted today. Severe shortages of money for everyday trade were the order of the day.
To illustrate how serious this was one can just look at what passed for money early in Canada's economic development. During the French Regime the beaver pelt was the first widely accepted means of trade, i.e. our first money. A crude progression it may seem but wampum was the next step. Wampum was used as legal tender until 1670 by both whites and native Indians; it's use continued by the Indians into the late 1700's.
Later in the French era playing-card money and jetons made for the colonies partially filled the need. French Canadian colonial issues include the sol, the livre and the ecu, but here we are primarily interested in the flower of the token issuing period--from about 1813 to the 1890's.
The main classification of types is much the same as for other countries to do so earlier in Europe and the U.S.
The first Dominion of Canada coins were issued in 1870. The 1858/59 pieces we think of as Canada's were made for the Province of Canada (the union of Upper and Lower Canada in the 1840's). The point being that they were not then official in other parts of what later became Canada as a whole.
A basic chronology of colonial token issues starts with Nova Scotia, the first colony to issue regular coinage about 1814. In 1823 the Nova Scotia Thistle series appeared with George IV as an obverse theme and a Scottish thistle design on the reverse. These were made in 1824 and 1832 as well. Remarkably, the 1832 issue still bore the portrait of King GeorgeIV although King William had reigned for two years. Thistle tokens were ordered by the Nova Scotia government without the approval of the British government; therefore they are semi-regal coinage. There is a large series of counterfeits of this series which are collected in their own right.
In 1856 Nova Scotia produced a new token which had British approval -- the Mayflower 1/2d. & 1d. regal coinage. Some numismatic writers have called these the most beautifully designed coinage ever made in Canada.
A similar situation occurred in New Brunswick. Frigate tokens of 1/2d. &1d. were issued (semi-regal) in 1843, but by 1854 an officially recognized version of the same frigate design was created with the word currency replacing the word token to indicate regal status. These too rank most highly in the judging of Canada's great designs.
Prince Edward Island is attributed with the second most extensive series of tokens -- the (thought of as common) Ships Colonies & Commerce 1/2d. pieces from the 1830's to about 1860. Over 50 varieties are listed by Lee's numbers and nice examples of scarcer ones are a challenge to find. A private P.E.I. issue by James Duncan in 1855 is the first Canadian piece to use the word cent -- the first Canadian decimal.
The most readily available Newfoundland tokens were made by four brothers from England who set up as merchants in St. Johns and Harbour Grace. These are the Rutherford 1/2d.'s of 1840-1846.
1837 gave rise to the Lower Canada Rebellion and an attractive token design which led to the un sou and Bouquet sous series -- the most extensive of all Cdn. tokens by type. Many were made in Belleville, N.J. Another important design type was also issued in 1837 by the political establishment of the rebellion era. There is a very nice, short collectible series that starts with tokens featuring a French Canadian Habitant on the obverse and the Arms of the City of Montreal on the reverse. 1/2d. & 1d. versions were made by the City Bank, the Quebec Bank, the Banque du Peuple and the Bank of Montreal.
In 1838/39 the Bank of Montreal ordered a new design to replace the 'Habitant'. These are the scarce side-view tokens -- scarce because the bank official who ordered them rejected them as inferior in quality and returned the issues of both years to the minter in England. Most were melted. The phrase side-view is used to describe the three-cornered view of a bank building on the obverse. Conjecture has it that a lack of detail in trees used in the obverse design caused the rejection.
Upper and Lower Canada merged in 1842 into the Province of Canada and the Bank of Montreal needed a new token. Thus the third in the series, the Front-view tokens of 1842/45 were born. Front-view because a two-corner design of the bank building was used. These were fully accepted and became the largest issue in Canada to that time. The Quebec Bank issued their own versions of the Habitant in 1852 with a new reverse. The Bank of Upper Canada followed with the more widely recognized St. George and the dragon 1/2d & 1d. tokens from 1850 to 1857.
Throughout this entire time individual private issues were made, too many to list here. Molson's made a popular piece; Hudson's Bay Co. issued a diverse, interesting series covering different locations of their outposts; Thomas Church designed and personally struck a long collectible series of commemorative/personal tokens. As in the U.S. the list of collectibles by topic or issuer is quite daunting to either generalist or specialist.
Canadian token mintages range from less than 100 to the largest issues of up to 500 thousand. All quite low relative to our experiences in the decimal world. Yet prices are low, on that same relative basis, because fewer people collect them and a little work is necessary to find and study them -- as with U.S. colonials. Grading also differs to allow for inferior dies and striking methods.
Collecting this material combines the greater relative scarcity than decimals with a greater variety of designs, themes and origins. In doing so, a collector not only gains a picture of the evolution of Canadian coinage, but the development of the country itself.
The challenge in token collecting is two-fold -- finding the piece you want can be more difficult than even the scarcer decimals, and the reverse may occur, encountering a token not known to you and trying to attribute it to a time, place and issuer. Great fun!
Canada is a very young country. There is more history before Confederation (1867) than since.
If it can be said that Canada came into being as an economic entity in the early 1700's, then while there may be some out there who don't like the analogy, Canada's ancient money is the beaver pelt and wampum; Canada's modern money is our current decimal coinage; leaving the above described tokens as Canada's mediaeval coinage.
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CATC member Eric Jensen of Calgary, Alberta has recently
compiled a 100 page listing of Attributed
Canadian Maverick Tokens. This is a great
reference and
research document which readily establishes if a particular token with
no town, city or province named, has been previously identified. This
reference is in PDF format and can be easily transferred to any PC
desktop, which saves printing. The document is very
user-friendly
and names are easily searchable. This is a "live" work-in-progress
document that will be updated as any new tokens are identified which
fit into the listing. All maverick tokens that have been
attributed are cross-referenced to the source.
Any CATC member may request this document from Eric and he will e-mail it to you free of charge. Eric may be contacted direct at egjensen@telus.net. Go back to select a button |
The Robert purves General Store was located just east of the
village of Wallace, Cumberland County, Nova Scotia. Purves was a
shipbuilder by trade and built his store next to his shipyard at
Wallace. He also had another store at Tatamagouche, N.S. In 1854, the
RETRIEVER, the largest ship ever constructed in Wallace, was built at
his shipyard. It was a 990 ton full rigged ship, with one deck and
three masts. Purves was known to be close with money. In order to make
a profit by selling his shipbuilders all the goods they needed, he had
a copper token made in 1855, with his name on it, to pay his men. These
tokens were redeemable for merchandise at his store and had the
following inscription:
Obverse : ROBERT PURVES/CHEAP/FAMILY/STORE/WALLACE
Reverse : Encourage/Country/Importers
He left Wallace in the early 1860's and moved to Tatamagouche,
where he continued to operate his other store and to build many smaller
ships. His store was later torn down and the first steam powered engine
to saw lumber for ship construction was set up on the site. When he
died in 1872, his widow sold the balance of the remaining tokens, which
totalled around 200. Purves was buried in Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The author wishes to acknowledge
the assistance of Mr. Francis Grant, Wallace, N.S. and the Cumberland
county Museum, Amherst, N.S. for their help in locating material for
this article.
This article originally published in the "CEE TEE", Volume 13, number
3, May of 1984. An illustration of the token is in the original article.
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Is the Service Check an advertising
chit, a trade token, or an
I.D.
tag? There is ample room for divergent views here, however the use to
which the disc was put rather than what is stamped on it should provide
us with the answer. The Research Committee of the Vancouver Numismatic
Society in 1962 discussed such items and was of the opinion that if a
token was good for a value or service which would normally cost money,
it should be classified as a trade token, even if no value was stamped
on it; there would seem to be no valid reason to alter this view today.
With the advent of Prohibition in B.C. near the end of World
War I the use of Service checks became popular as a means of getting
around some of the stringent regulations relating to the sale of
liquors to the public. These were used by many of the returned
servicemens clubs, private clubs, and even by some of the hotels which
had clubs formed on the premises to make use of space formerly used by
their bars or saloons, prior to Prohibition.
Instead of selling liquor to club members, they would be sold
a service; this could be for the use of locker space for the storage of
the members liquor, for cubicle space behind the bar for the same
purpose, for serving the member with drinks from his own bottle, or any
number of other services. Laster as Prohibition eased, the Service
Checks were used by some clubs as drink tokens, openly. Service Checks
could be purchased from the club manager on the premises.
While some of the earlier checks were made of brass, most are met with
in aluminum with the club's name on the obverse side, and simply
SERVICE or SERVICE/CHECK on the reverse side.
Originally published in the Volume 9, number 2, March
1980
"CEE
TEE", the article contained illustrations of two Service Checks.
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A brief history of this well known
Yukon trading
company was
published in the C.N.A. JOURNAL of March, 1967. The article recorded
how Messrs Taylor and Drury met while en route to the Klondike but
learned of a gold rush at Atlin, B.C. and opened a business there. In
opposition to them were Whitney and Pedlar. Both firms moved to Lake
Bennett during the construction of the White Pass and Yukon Railway to
do business with the temporary population of 10,000 at Bennett City. In
July, 1900 they took the first through train to Whitehorse the terminal
and soon both firms were doing business there.
They remained in opposition until 1912 when Taylor Drury
Pedlar & Co. Limited was incorporated. Using the steam-powered
"kluahne" on the Yukon river system the company opened and supplied
trading posts at 18 locations, although no more than 12 were in
operation at any one time. Tokens were used at these posts in order to
avoid the need to hold large sums of money at each one. Acceptance of
the tokens was so great that the native people hesitated to accept
"steamboat" money from people travelling on the boat. While the name
was changed to Taylor & Drury Limited in 1921, the tokens
remained
in use in some posts as late as the 1940's.
While these tokens have been long sought by collectors, we
were aware of an overhang in the possession of the families and have
wondered what might come of this remainder. The question has now been
resolved with the purchase of all of these tokens by D.M. Stewart of
Victoria, B.C. There were 33 of the $5.00 tokens which limits the
number of sets available. The brass tokens in denominations of $5.00,
$10.00, and $20.00 are in good condition but the aluminum 25c, 50c and
$1.00 tokens are worn, holed, bitten and generally in poor condition.
The article, originally published in the "CEE TEE" in
Volume
14,
number 6. November, 1985 stated from whom tokens could be purchased.
Photos of the business in Whitehorse, taken this year, (1999), will be
published in the December issue of the "CEE TEE".
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>>>
Background to the Banque Du Peuple Br. 715 ... by W. Jacobs ...........
Nova Scotia's 1856 Mintage Figures ........... by E. Leighton .........
Two New Canadian Police Medals ............... by J. Boddington .......
Store Tokens of Hickson, Ontario ............. by H. James ............
Richard Irving Creelman (1852-1932) .......... by Scott E. Douglas ....
Some Saanich, B.C. Dairies ................... by R. Greene ...........
More on the Fake Nor'wester .................. by G. Brunk ............
No Will?! No Way!! ........................... by Scott E. Douglas ....
Unreported Dairy & Bakery Tokens ............. by C. Faulkner .........
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For further information about the
CATC, please contact
us at:
Canadian Association of Token Collectors
Ian Spears Secretary-Treasurer
3280 Bloor St. W. Suite 1140
Toronto, ON M8X 2X3
E-mail: ian.speers@utoronto.ca
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