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Jacques Cartier commemorated philatelically

The year 1934 saw the celebrations for the 400^th anniversary of the expeditions of Jacques Cartier the Saint-Malo ship’s captain to the new world. Until this time the French kingdom had shown little or no interest in the North American continent, although the rich fishing grounds were well known to the Breton, Norman and Basque fishermen. Fish was an item of great importance to a catholic country where there were many days of religious fasting during which meat could not be eaten. After the many wars with Charles V of Spain concerning the north eastern provinces of France peaceful times returned and King Francis 1 finally had the resources to finance an expedition to the New World. Jacques Cartier was appointed the leader of the first expedition. He left Saint-Malo on April 20 1534 and visited the west coast of Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, the Magdalen Islands and planted a flag with the arms of the king, taking possession in his name of the lands of the Gaspe. He did not visit St-Pierre at this time. The second expedition in 1535 was a disaster, the native people were warned to be wary of his intentions by Iroquois interpreters on board the ship and when the ice trapped the small fleet, the expedition had to winter over in the New World. The ferocious winter and lack of food took many lives, though the natives indicated to Cartier remedies for the scurvy, which had decimated his crews. In 1536 on returning to France he sailed by the south of Newfoundland and made a landing at St-Pierre. In his journal he recounts that “we were at the said islands of Saint-Pierre where we found many ships from France and Brittany, ( at this time an independent duchy),we stayed from St. Barnabas’ day on the eleventh of June until the sixteenth and I named the said isles the islands of St.-Pierre.

Philatelically Canada and France commemorated this anniversary with handsome sets of stamps; Canada had previously depicted Cartier on the Quebec Tercentenary 1c. stamp of 1908. In 1984 Canada and France issued a joint issue with a common design to commemorate the 450^th anniversary of his voyages, but in that year St.-Pierre and Miquelon had not yet recommenced issuing stamps and so there was no special issue for the islands. A more modest commemoration of the 1934 anniversary was made by St.-Pierre in the form of five values of the current definitive issue being overprinted “Jacques Cartier 1534-1934î. The stamps received little or no recognition, especially as during this period of time the world was deep in the economic depression of the 1930s. Now that the stamps of the islands are universally collected, these commemoratives are much sought after, especially when used on commercial mail. They can be found in unused condition fairly readily but on cover the price would probably run you to $US100.

I illustrate here a philatelically prepared cover that is postmarked on December 8 1934. The most commonly seen used values would be the 0.50c, 0.75c and 1.50fr stamps, as these represented rates in use at that time. The 5fr. value is rarely seen in context and when it is seen it is usually postmarked at a later date, probably in the 1940s after the second world war, when these stamps were still available at the Post Office in St.-Pierre.

Philatelic articles by David Allen