The venerable Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the country’s oldest continuously operating national public broadcasting network, once had a stamp club.
Established 88 years ago, in November 1936, the CBC includes distinct English-and French-language service units known as CBC and Radio-Canada, respectively, reflecting Canada’s official languages. Canadian officials based their Crown corporation on the British model, in which that government had recently reformed a private company into a statutory cor-poration to create the British Broadcasting Corporation. Today, CBC and Radio-Canada also offer their programming ineight Indigenous languages (Dehcho Dene Yati, Chipewyan, Eastern Cree, Gwich’in, Inuktitut, Inuvialuktun, Sahtu Got’ine Godi and Tlicho) plus five international languages (Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Punjabi and Tagalog) through Radio Canada International.
Thirteen years after its creation, in February 1950, the CBC expanded its efforts to include philately with the CBC Stamp Club of the Air. The international club, which included a weekly philatelic broadcast, boasted more than 6,000 members before the end of 1950 and more than 7,500 members by February 1951, a year after its launch. Described by its officials as “Canada’s first network stamp club,” it had a membership of both individuals and groups, including other stamp clubs, which had “enrolled en masse.” “School and Sunday School teachers have sent in memberships for entire classes, and many families have registered as a unit,” reads a November 1950 new release promoting the club.
Club members, according to the news release, had been “enthusiastic about the weekly broadcasts,” to which members could send questions, including requests for pen pals around the world. The broadcast aired on the CBC’s Trans-Canada Network every Saturday at about noon (and half an hour later in Newfoundland).
“In the past few weeks, more than 1,500 requests have been received for the 1950 Stanley Gibbons Catalogue of King George VI Stamps. This catalogue is still available to club members in return for a stamped, self-addressed envelope.”
Each club meeting also included general information about stamp collecting, including, for example, how to mount stamps or find watermarks, a lecture or interview, the question-and-answer period plus an overview of worldwide stamp news.
“Frequently, the club directors leave the studios and take recording equipment out to gather news. In this way they have been able to bring listeners actual accounts of stamp auctions, the departure of the first jet-flown mail from Toronto to New York and many other events of interest to philatelists.”
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