On Dec. 2, officials with British Columbia’s Peace Arch Stamp Club presented member Alfred Bennett with $100, the first-place prize money for winning the club category in the 2020 CSN Cover Contest.
The club’s cover marked Bennett’s 100th birthday and celebrated him as the group’s inaugural member and Canada’s oldest active philatelist. He helped form the club in 1989.
“We just wanted to let you know how much we appreciate what your magazine has done for our little club and the joy it has brought to this very special human being,” says club President Terry Leishman.
The club’s 240-millimetre-by-105-millimetre cover was franked with a Picture Postage stamp depicting Bennett, who was born on June 1, 1920. The stamp is tied by a June 1, 2020-dated postmark from Surrey, B.C.
A Picture Postage stamp featuring Bennett franks the Peace Arch Stamp Club’s entry for the 2020 CSN Cover Contest.
The cover was jointly designed by Leishman, his wife plus Steve Melanson and contains a brief biography of Bennett. Every member of the Peace Arch Stamp Club received one of the date-stamped, personally addressed commemorative covers earlier this year.
“Alfred was a tank commander in the Second World War, saw action in North Africa and Italy – and earned many medals – was a London ‘bobby’ (police officer) and was on guard at ‘Number 10’ Downing Street, where he met Winston Churchill many times. He raised two wonderful daughters in New Zealand and now lives independently here on the west coast of Canada,” says Leishman, who adds the honour of winning the Cover Contest “brought Alfred to tears.”