Canadian Colours
Because finding vintage Canadian graphite pencils is quite rare, I’ve had to content myself with grabbing coloured pencils as well when I find them. These often also shed some light on the pencilmaking industry in Canada even if they’re not my preferred tools. As far as I’ve seen so far, most of the pencil manufacturers with Canadian operations produced a line of coloured pencils. Eagle (later Berol) probably had the best ones, with their Verithin line. Unfortunately, I have found none of these at reasonable prices thus far.
Next came the much-loved Laurentien, part of Venus, then Faber-Castell, then Eberhard Faber, before being discontinued right around the time that the rest of the pencil industry left the country. I have one unused pack of these sticks which is quite misleading, as the package indicates “Made in Canada", but the pencils themselves are stamped “USA.”
Various sources online tell me these were packages that remained after Canadian production ceased, and the pencils were just shipped up from the US and placed in the Canadian packages. How thrifty and deceptive of them, though no less than I’d expect from an industry that quickly jumped ship when the trade barriers dropped.
Eagle Canada produced these excellent packs of coloured pencils for Eaton’s department store, itself a relic of the era of giant department stores and now resigned to having the malls into which its stores were anchors (or previously the sole occupant) continue to bear its name. This pair that I found online were obviously in the home of someone who loved smoking pipes and cigars from both the colour of the vinyl pack and the smell it exudes.
These curious red correction pencils come from a company called “Canadian Pencil company” whose logo is a quite ambitious map of Canada. Per Erick at Pencils, Eh?, this company operated for only a few years in the 1960s, but was one of the few entirely domestic manufacturers, as opposed to a division of a US or UK concern. They made a ton of great pencils over their short life and I hope to find some more of these in the future.
Another find I made was these red and blue Handy-Check pencils from Venus Canada. This batch was quite well-preserved, with clear foil stamp and very little aging to its lovely glossy varnish.
Hard to come by, and with quite a bit of competition for a dwindling vintage supply, Canadian pencils are a rarity that I love finding, especially because their history tracks so closely with the history of Québec, where many of them were made. I wonder how much it would cost of import an old pencil-making line from a dead factory somewhere? Maybe someone here would like to partner with me to bring the industry back, in the footsteps of Chambers pencils? I’m open to ideas. La Fabrique des Crayons Québécoises anyone?
