“By Grand Trunk Railway” – 1853-1867

Brian Stalker
Released April 2021. Exhibit series # 110.
48 pages, 8.5 × 11, Spiral bound.
Colour C$ 24.00 [ISBN 978-1-989280-18-8].

Railways provided the first all-year-round means of communication within Canada, and promotion of inter-provincial railways was a key component of Confederation in 1867. “By Grand Trunk Railway” – 1853-1867 illustrates the history of the Grand Trunk Railway, Canada’s first inter-provincial railway, which was incorporated in 1852 to develop a ‘Main Line’ linking the Maritime Provinces with Quebec and Ontario. It gained momentum by taking over companies with lines already under construction and by 1860 its ‘trunk line’ extended over 860 miles from Rivière du Loup in the east, to Sarnia in the west, with international connections to Portland, Maine, and Detroit, Michigan.

Brian Stalker, a retired electrical engineer, was introduced to Canadian Railway Post Office postmarks almost forty years ago and has been collecting, studying and exhibiting them ever since. Apart from building up a significant collection of Newfoundland and Labrador RPOs and TPOs, he also takes a keen interest in Canada’s Grand Trunk Railway and its constituent companies. Brian is a Fellow of the Canadian Philatelic Society of Great Britain and was inducted into the Order of the Beaver, the Fellowship of BNAPS, in 2015. He is also an active member of several philatelic societies within the United Kingdom.