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The London Philatelist

Foreign Destinations of Pre-UPU Mail from St. Pierre and

Miquelon: The Use of Nova Scotia and Canada Stamps.

James R. Taylor FRPSL.

Introduction.
he innovation of the postage stamp with the economic benefits of postal reform, introduced
Tin Great Britain in 1840, was quickly adopted in Europe and North America. Prepaying letters
with postage stamps was introduced in the United States in 1847, in France in 1849, in Canada in
1851, in Newfoundland in 1857, and the French Colonies in 1859. Arrangements to handle the
larger volumes of domestic mail within the various countries or from and to the home country
and colonial possessions were quickly established. Less well developed were the arrangements for
cross-border correspondence between the various national postal administrations.
Before the advent of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) in the 1880s, bilateral regulations,
in many cases cumbersome, required that domestic postage be prepaid to the national border
and letters either had to be franked with stamps of the country being entered before receiving
postal service, or additional fees were collected from the foreign addressee. These systems were
inconvenient and expensive. Limited bilateral agreements for the transfer of mail across national
boundaries and the onward transmission to a foreign address, or transit through one country
on route to another foreign destination, existed but posed problems for local anomalous postal
situations. These problems were particularly acute for the small and isolated French island
colony of St. Pierre and Miquelon, (hereafter referred to as ‘St. Pierre’) located in the northwest
Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Newfoundland.
On 6 April 1851, a postal convention between the United Kingdom, the British North America
Colonies (including Nova Scotia) and the United States, allowed for postage at fixed rates for
inland letters in each country combined into one rate, of which prepayment was optional; partial
prepayment was not permitted (Lowe, p107).
In the 1860s, agreements with the Nova Scotia Colonial Post Office allowed for entry of St.
Pierre mail into the Nova Scotia postal system at various ports, mainly at Sydney and North
Sydney on Cape Breton Island and at Halifax. Mail carried in sealed bags to the home country,
France, also followed this route, to connect with the British Trans-Atlantic Packet at Halifax.
However, similar bilateral cross-border agreements, regarding outward St. Pierre mail, were not
in force for other foreign destinations, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom.
Much St. Pierre commercial business, particularly the fishing trade, was conducted with the
New England ports, so efficient postal connections were important. A treaty for the exchange
of mail, in these pre-1879 UPU times, did not exist between the French Colony of St. Pierre and
the United States and other countries. This was a severe impediment to commercial trade, and
to personal and official communications.

Nova Scotia Stamps before 1867.
As a matter of expediency, an arrangement (in place of a comprehensive postal convention) was
adopted, whereby the St. Pierre French Colonial postage was prepaid to a Nova Scotia port. Nova
Scotia postage was to be affixed at the St. Pierre Post Office to prepay the postage through Nova
Scotia to a foreign address.

129 – 344 September 2020