The Early Postal History of Northern Ontario

Nicholas Escott
Released September 2022. Exhibit series # 116.
104 pages, 8.5" x 11", spiral bound.
Colour C$ 37.00 [ISBN 978-1-989280-34-8].

The Early Postal History of Northern Ontario chronicles the development of mail services in Northern Ontario, i.e., the area north of the old Voyageur canoe route from Lachine, near Montreal, through Lake Nipissing and the Mattawa and French Rivers, including Manitoulin Island. This is a vast, sparsely populated, area of forests, muskegs, and Canadian shield bedrock. The period covered starts with the Hudson’s Bay Company fur traders in the early 1800s and extends through to the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the late 1800s.

Nick Escott attended medical school in Hamilton at McMaster University. His first job, as a GP in an underserviced area (Marathon, Ontario) for five years, confirmed his love of the great outdoors. He then specialized in General Pathology (in Texas) and returned to northern Ontario to practice Laboratory Medicine, where he has been a member of the Pathology Department at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre since 1984. He is also Medical Laboratory director for seven small hospitals across northern Ontario from Nipigon east to Chapleau, and an Associate Professor at the Northern Ontario Medical School University (NOSMU).

While living and studying in Texas, Nick became a member of the Texas Prairie Beaver Regional Group and spent many hours with the late Ed Richardson, OTB.