First Day Covers of the 1942 Canada King George VI War Issue

Donald J. Leblanc
Released October 2021.
334 pages, 8.5"x11", spiral bound.
Colour C$ 64.00 [ISBN 978-1-989280-25-6].

Because of the outbreak of the Second World War, Canada did not issue any new stamps between the Royal Visit stamps on 15 May 1939 and 1 July 1942. At that time, and into 1943 a completely new set of definitive stamps, 19 in all including coil stamps, was released.

In keeping with the seriousness of the world situation, the lower values of the set showed King George VI in different military uniforms and the higher values showed different aspects of the war effort in the country. The author notes that the number of different First Day Covers prepared for the War Issue was considerably less than those prepared for the Royal Visit, a “happy” occasion.

The book is divided into sections covering FDCs showing the stamps bearing the King's image, covers with different patriotic themes, an interesting selection of hand-drawn covers, general purpose FDCs, covers promoting War Savings and Victory Bonds, and many business corner card FDCs.

Donald LeBlanc was born in Moncton, NB, in 1949. After completing his early education in Dieppe and Moncton, he went on to obtain his Bachelor of Commerce degree from University of Moncton in 1971. He then continued his education to obtain a Bachelor of Law degree from the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton in 1974.

Moving to Caraquet, NB, in 1975, he practiced law with his own law firm for 26 years until 2000. He was then appointed a Provincial Court Judge, a position that he still holds in 2021. He is married and has two adult children.

On the philatelic side, he has collected stamps ever since his childhood. Over the years, he specialized his Canadian interest and heavily researched the Royal Visit Issue of 1939 and the War Issue of 1942. Rather than exhibit, he preferred writing articles to document his research.

From 1993 to 1998, he was a regular contributor to The Canadian Philatelist. His column, “Don’s Corner”, consisted of fairly long studies of Canadian plate blocks. In 1998, his writings earned him The Geldert Medal for Philatelic Authorship from the Royal Philatelic Society of Canada.

After1998, he put his pen aside for a period of time, but not his passion for collecting plate blocks and first day covers. In 2010, he started writing articles again for the George VI Study Group of the BNAPS and continued these articles on the War Issue and Royal Visit Issue until 2018. He has been an active member of BNAPS for over 45 years. This venture is his second complete study in book form. He is currently preparing a companion book on the first day covers of the Peace Issue of 1946.