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Graced with British stamps, master made youthful gaffes
By Bret Evans
One of the things that confused me as a child was why my mother had two sisters called Grace.
Years later, I was told that one was my mother's sister, and the other was her cousin, who was raised as a sister by my grandparents. I never really understood why; it was a long time ago, and I had never met either Aunt Grace, as they both lived in England with virtually every other relative. To me, they were Aunt Grace in London and Aunt Grace in Loughborough.
In any case, one of these Aunt Graces decided to take an interest in me. She was a single professional woman and I guess a nephew in Canada became a focus for any unfulfilled maternal instincts.
Back in the days when I was filling that Woolworth's stamp album, my mother decided to let my Aunt Grace (see, it does get confusing) know about my interest. Aunt Grace had inherited the family home and my mother thought that she still might have my grandfather's stamp collection.
Well, it turned out that grandpa's stamps disappeared, along with the family Bible and photo albums, during the London Blitz, when some inconsiderate German bombardier dropped a bomb on the family home. However, she did mail me a group of covers using the Battle of Britain commemorative stamps of the time (Scott #430-437). The irony that these stamps commemorated that same battle where the sought-after stamp collection was destroyed was not lost on me, and I hope not on my Aunt.
Dismayed that the address - Master Bret Evans - was a reminder of my youthful status, I was happy to soak these off and hinge them into my album.
For the next couple of years, regular shipments of mint stamps arrived. I always thought it was nice of Aunt Grace to send me new stamps, because I didn't have to use hinges. I just licked the back and stuck them in the album. Soon my Great Britain page was so full I had to tape a blank sheet of paper into the album to handle the overflow. Aunt Grace was smart enough to pick stamps that would appeal to someone my age, so the collection was nowhere near complete.
I guess you could say I managed to make pretty much every mistake possible.
This entire exercise in stamp abuse ended when the family relocated from Ottawa to Brantford. The stamp album was packed for the move, and never really unpacked again. The family moved three more times in the next five years and the stamp box just moved further and further to the back of the closet each time. Eventually, I let Aunt Grace know that I had kind of outgrown stamp collecting.
By the time I got married and started to have children, the album had ended up in a box in the attic of my parents' home. One day my dad announced he was clearing out the attic and wondered if I wanted my old stamp album and stuff. I'm sure that, for many of you, this type of moment led to a renewed interest in stamp collecting. Not knowing that I would one day be working on CSN, I said I wasn't interested.
So it was thrown out. A collection that had been years in the making. I had taken stamps worth perhaps $2, and turned it into a collection worth virtually nothing.
The reason I mention this is that it occurred to me recently that it would be interesting to hunt down some of those stamps.
The Battle of Britain, Spitfire, and even the Royal Air Force have been the subjects of a fair number of issues, with more coming out each year.
So I guess I'll start with those eight Battle of Britain commemoratives, just for old times' sake. Not only that, but I want them used. However this time, I think I will use a stockbook.
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