The Small Queens
The Printing Periods
There were three printing periods into which Small Queens fall:
The “First Ottawa Period” (1870 – 1871) when the printers' works were located on Wellington Street, Ottawa.
The “Montreal Period” (1873 – 1889) when the printing operation was moved to the Company’s premises in Montreal.
The “Second Ottawa Period” (1889 – 1897) when the Post Office Department insisted that printing be resumed in Ottawa in accordance with the terms of the original contract signed at the beginning of 1868.
Some writers believe that the removal of printing to Montreal took place in October 1871, but this is speculation for which there is no hard evidence. The company experienced a fire in its pressroom in January, 1870, as a result of which it was minuted after a subsequent board meeting that they were going firstly to request that the Post Office Department waive the contractual requirement to print in Ottawa, and, secondly, one of their officers was empowered to find suitable premises in Montreal, which, reading between the lines of the original proposal made it to the Government in 1867, was in any case the firm’s preferred location. In due course it was recorded that suitable premises had been found and a lease taken, and certainly the offices were removed to Montreal in October 1871. What is missing is any record of permission being granted to moving the printing operation as well.
The Post Office Department required printing to be done in Ottawa for ease of supervision, since they owned the plates, and needed safeguards to monitor production. They obviously took some persuading and my guess is that permission eventually was reluctantly given because the Ottawa plant had not the capacity to meet the rapidly increasing demand for postage stamps that had probably led to the reduction in size from Large to Small Queens in the first place, and it was probably only given as a temporary measure since as already seen, that particular requirement – Ottawa printing – of the original contract was never varied.
It should be borne in mind that at that time printers made up their own inks, and while there are graduations in shade during the first three years, it is only at the beginning of the fourth, i.e., January 1873, that there is a real break in the appearance of the stamps, first with the Three Cents value, and then with the other three values current. While the officials of the company relocated, the operatives on the shop floor would have been different men, and the way the Montreal printers made up their inks was subtly different from those in Ottawa.
Click on any of the following to see further details for any given printing period: