By John Willis1 Canadian Postal Museum-Canadian Museum of ... · According to Arlette Farge,...

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1 XIV International Economic History Congress, Helsinki 2006, Session 107 (New and Improved: Version en date du 16/08/2006) The Voice in the Street, the Merchant’s Desk and the Emergence of the Canadian Postal Network By John Willis 1 Canadian Postal Museum-Canadian Museum of Civilization (Revised Preliminary Draft of paper for Postal Session no. 107 at the International Economic History Conference. Handle with circumspection) Introduction Every Tuesday or Wednesday a man comes to empty my blue recycling bin at the office. Polite greetings and formalities are exchanged and we then go about our business. The amount of paper thus disposed in not overwhelming, but it is a good thing that he never fails to come as my office is not always in order. I consume a lot of paper, printing out e- mails, preparing reports and reading or writing letters. In so doing I partake of a habit of communication that has been 500 years in the making. The goal of this presentation is to briefly examine postal communication as part of the overall growth of written communication throughout the western world. The ultimate purpose is and must be to shed light on the Canadian postal experience, but we may have to take a long detour, in terms of geography and subject matter in order to arrive at the beginning of a satisfactory course of exploration. The post, for us, cannot be studied sui generis, as some sort of self-sustaining variable, moving from one methodological slope to the next like a self-propelled tumbleweed. It is part of a larger historical context that saw certain social forces push directly for the establishment of a postal system, and others, which preceded considerably the post in time, that subsequently become embodied in these very systems. The latter have since and in turn helped reshape the post. 1 I should like to thank for their comments on a previous version: Laura Branda (CWM), Richard Kielbowicz. D. Gerber, Y. Frenette and M. Martel. Thanks as well to Pierrick Labbé and Jesse Alexander for research assistance.

Transcript of By John Willis1 Canadian Postal Museum-Canadian Museum of ... · According to Arlette Farge,...

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XIV International Economic History Congress, Helsinki 2006, Session 107

(New and Improved: Version en date du 16/08/2006)

The Voice in the Street, the Merchant’s Desk and the Emergence of the Canadian

Postal Network

By John Willis1

Canadian Postal Museum-Canadian Museum of Civilization

(Revised Preliminary Draft of paper for Postal Session no. 107 at the International

Economic History Conference. Handle with circumspection)

Introduction

Every Tuesday or Wednesday a man comes to empty my blue recycling bin at the office.

Polite greetings and formalities are exchanged and we then go about our business. The

amount of paper thus disposed in not overwhelming, but it is a good thing that he never

fails to come as my office is not always in order. I consume a lot of paper, printing out e-

mails, preparing reports and reading or writing letters. In so doing I partake of a habit of

communication that has been 500 years in the making.

The goal of this presentation is to briefly examine postal communication as part of the

overall growth of written communication throughout the western world. The ultimate

purpose is and must be to shed light on the Canadian postal experience, but we may have

to take a long detour, in terms of geography and subject matter in order to arrive at the

beginning of a satisfactory course of exploration. The post, for us, cannot be studied sui

generis, as some sort of self-sustaining variable, moving from one methodological slope

to the next like a self-propelled tumbleweed. It is part of a larger historical context that

saw certain social forces push directly for the establishment of a postal system, and

others, which preceded considerably the post in time, that subsequently become

embodied in these very systems. The latter have since and in turn helped reshape the post.

1 I should like to thank for their comments on a previous version: Laura Branda (CWM), Richard Kielbowicz. D.Gerber, Y. Frenette and M. Martel. Thanks as well to Pierrick Labbé and Jesse Alexander for research assistance.

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Once the modern postal network came into its own, in western society, say in the 19th

century, it constituted a level of communication and cultural infrastructure, a network,

functioning in tandem with other agencies and devices that lay the foundation of our

modern communication society. The internet and the six o’clock news are ubiquitous in

contemporary thinking on communication. How quickly we seem to forget the anteriorité

of the post in establishing our networked communication standards and expectations.

Succinctly stated, my view is that there have been two main locomotives that have

pushed the written form and hence the post, toward the forefront of communication. One

is voice. This might sound paradoxical, stressing the agency of an oral medium for voice

is the instrument of conversation, en tête-à-tête or in a group. However by virtue of its

interpersonal nature it can have written outcomes. Voice, a remarkably fluid form of

communication, eventually became embodied – absorbed but not subsumed - in postal

communication although on its own, it continues to represent a powerful agency of

communication. The other driving engine of communication, is the desk or the table

supporting the paper. The desk signified a process in which a constellation of diverse

interests pushed directly for expanded postal linkage in order to make feasible the

conduct of business.

What kind of business are we talking about? The desk or table top is a writing surface

accommodating a variety of groups, usually the elite, or their literate footservants, who

earn their living by putting pencil to paper. The desk can be in a counting house, the table

in a coffee-house, in both cases serving the needs of a merchant. It might also be issued

to an officer of the crown, member of a royal administration, who is in charge of

organizing logistics, fiscal or military. In modern Europe, you couldn’t wage war let

alone manage the colonies without a bureaucracy in charge of logistics, ever exchanging

information and moving pawns across the geopolitical chess board. Noblesse d’épée and

noblesse de robe had to conjoin their efforts. And the clergy were busy at their desks too,

directing or receiving instructions from the Vatican and the Archbishop, from the old

world to the new.

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The voice in the street and the merchant’s desk eventually become interwoven in a world-

wide communication system or postal village. The resulting marriage de raison coalesces

into a robust communication network which, working along and in tandem with other

agencies lays the basis of our modern communication networks in which the written form

plays such an important role.

For the purposes of this presentation I will focus first on voice, and next on the

mercantile perspective in a global context. Both have bearing on the history of written

communication and therefore the post. I will argue that the post should be viewed as the

dean of communication networks whether on a world or a metropolitan scale. I will

situate the emergence of the Canadian postal network and conclude that there is abundant

evidence of voice and business running throughout and shaping our postal history. For

the most part the argument will wrest on secondary sources, as the task here is to

establish an interpretative framework, yet here and there some primary material will be

incorporated into the exposition.

The Human Voice

The human voice is a message carrier with meaning. However personal, it is invariably of

social significance for ultimately it constitutes an act of communication. There is an

etiquette underlying oral expression; there are always certain rules that must be followed.

Words were freely expressed in the salon of Mme de Rambouillet in the 17th century, but

the hostess, of necessity, used all her tact and vivacity in order to loosen tongues and

keep the conversation going. In Madagascar, Theodore Zeldin tells us, the men are so

afraid of speaking in public that that leave this privilege to the women. The latter, assume

their role, presumably with relish, however when they are upset, or when they articulate a

critical opinion, they verbalize not in their mother tongue but in the French language.

Men, for their part will express anger, also in the French language, solely in the company

of their livestock. 2

2 Theodore Zeldin, An Intimate History of Humanity, London, Vintage, 1998: p. 32.

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In other instances, other rules apply. Carlo Levi was a political prisoner banished to the

south of Italy during the 1930s. He describes the scene in his village of Gagliano at the

end of day. On one side of the piazza were the village “gentry” (notables), cigarettes

hanging from their mouths, seated on a retaining wall, taking in the evening breeze. On

the other side, their backs to another wall were the peasants. Their voices did not traverse

the street; they are not heard by the other crowd. In effect two parallel sets of

conversations occur within the village place. Dialogue was kept to a minimum; Socrates

would not have been pleased. 3

Instrument of conversation and communication the human voice is also a medium of

consolation. The mother rocks the cradle and hums a lullaby, which soothes the child’s

nerves. The men sing at their work, especially if they are sailors, for song and labour at

sea are inextricably linked. In Afro-American culture it was almost impossible to work

without singing. 4 Gangs of labourers lay down railway track following the vocal cadence

of their song leader, who imports rhythm, order, to the work. The leader occupies a

position of prestige amongst the group but he can be detested if he dares exaggerate the

cadence of the work and thereby exhaust his fellows. In British North America, the men

with the finest voices became the song masters (maîtres à chanter) aboard the canoes of

the fur trade voyageurs. The crew can reach into a veritable repertoire of songs, some of

which were intended to coordinate the work of paddling (c’est l’aviron qui nous mène);

others serving to generate esprit de corps as crews melodiously teased and chastised one

another. 5

Paris is the city that never sleeps in the 19th century. The calm of night is relative,

punctuated as it is by a population given to nocturnal activities of every sort. Cabarets,

cafés, theatres, modern department stores (les grands magasins), are settings conducive to

conversation. Observers found that the noise-level was noticeable and continuous, the

result of street traffic that would extend into the wee hours of night. Paris c’est Paris.

3 Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli, New York, Farrar Strass and Giroux, 1963: p. 11.4 Lawrence Levine, Black Culture. And Black Consciousness. Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom,New York, Oxford University Press, 1977: p. 208-209.5 Carolyn Podruchny, Making the Voyageur World. Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade, Universityof Nebraska Press, 2006: Chapter 4 “It is the Paddle that Brings Us Voyageurs Working in Canoes”: especially p. 157-165.

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Certain voices did rise above the din of horses and vehicles. These belonged to the

itinerant workers of the city. The Musée du Carnavalet in Paris has a large mural

consisting of four panels dating from 1633 to 1635 which illustrates the forty different

trademark cries of each of the city’s forty street merchants. The vegetable merchant will

bellow thus: « Chous blang, des Radis Nouvelle, mon bel oignon »; the scrap-iron

seller: « Vieu fer de Roue »; the following cry, « La mort au raz et souris” was a sure

sign that the rat-killing merchant was nearby. No doubt these itinerant merchants were

still shouting their wares and expertise in the 19th century much to the dismay of the

better sort, for whom the clamour, vulgar and popular was akin to the noise of a cat being

skinned. Parisian authorities, Simonne Delattre tells us, were more concerned with the

traffic problem caused by this sort of street commerce; for them noise was less of a

problem. 6 In any event how could anyone successfully extinguish a force as powerful as

the buzz, popular and verbal, of Paris?

The street is a way of living and work, but it is as well a theatrical setting and boulevard

or conduit of communication. During the 18th Century rumours carronade up and down

the pavements and sidewalks, ferried on the person of mobile youths who carry parcels

and messages both within and between the various quarters of Paris. A jabbering and

curious crowd of onlookers stands outside the door of a tobacco shopkeeper, rue Saint

Victor. They are there to take a peak at a nine-year old girl who was, reputedly

impregnated by a young man named Denis an employee of a cabaret, Le Petit Trou. 7 All

manner of impromptu happenings set tongues wagging in Paris whose common people,

gradually elaborated their very own political and cultural vision of things.

According to Arlette Farge, popular opinion was a veritable court in which the events of

the day were re-examined, and imbued with meaning. For example in the controversy of

the late 1720s that saw royal and religious authorities attack the Janséniste faction of the

church, the people of Paris weighed in with an opinion, aided not a little by a subversive

and popular newspaper known as Les Nouvelles. The discrete production of Les

6 Simone Delattre, Les douze heures noires. La nuit à Paris au XIXe siècle, Paris, Albin Michel, 2003 : p. 196 ff.7 Arlette Farge, Fragile Lives. Violence, Power and Solidarity in 18th Century Paris, Cambridge, Mass., HarvardUniversity Press, 1993: p. 229-230.

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Nouvelles was a study in successful subversive publishing in circumstances of political

duress. Nevertheless, public opinion was not to be denied. The authorities posted anti-

Janéniste signs about the city that were torn down in a fit of popular wrath. They fixed

placards explaining, in Latin, their position, confident that the language, in which they

were written, would confuse the popular audience. Yet invariably amongst the people

gathered before these placards one could find a few with a smattering of instruction

capable of translating in a voice loud enough for all to hear. 8

Words spoken and retrieved served as lubricants in Paris. They gush like running water in

a spring stream through the city. The research of Robert Darnton demonstrates the ease

with which rumours can travel back and forth between the royal court and the people,

between word of mouth and the written word. Rumours are transformed into popular

ballads, set to a melody, after which they change skin again and enter the columns of

newspapers or popular novels (romans à clefs). The police patrol the city writing down in

a written report what they have overheard. Popular entertainers are also listening and

recording hearsay. Some will pass from café to café and regale the audience with vivid

descriptions the current sexual accomplishments or shortcomings of King Louis (the

15th). They read from various scripts jotted down in bits of paper consigned to the depths

of their pockets. The scraps can be bartered and sold, but woe to the artist caught red

handed by the police with the words of the song written in honour of Mme de

Pompadour, “Qu’une batarde de catin.” 9

Paris was a hothouse of communication written and oral. Rumours extended their routes,

if not their consequences far into the written universe, and vice versa. Communication is

here an interactive process, socially constructed. Café and cabaret emerge as pivotal

points of exchange, inevitable and not unpleasant facilitators of talk, oral and written.

This was as much the case elsewhere as well.

8 Arlette Farge, Subversive Words. Public Opinion in 18th Century France, University Park, Penn., Pennsylvania StateUniversity Press, 1995: p. 46-47.9 Robert Darnton, “The News in Paris: An early Information Society,” in George Washington’s False Teeth, ed. R.Darnton (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003: p. 25-75.

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Throughout the 17th century the English coffee house functioned as an emporium of

communication. This included written communication, as well as messaging of the face-

to-face kind. Pamphlets, broadsides, handwritten newsletters, newspapers (English and

foreign) and business newspapers were all available in these establishments which later

also served as centres for collecting and dispersing mail handled by ship captains.10

Certain coffee houses in London might specialize in American commerce and news;

others would provide corresponding fare and trade for other parts of the world or perhaps

in some other line of business. There were Whig Coffeehouses and Tory ones. All kept a

replenishable stock of newspapers on hand and provided ample wall real estate for the

fixing of notices and advertisements. In London especially, the coffee houses functioned

as a single interactive whole in which were merged news reading, text circulation and

rumour. Some coffeehouses held onto their customers’ mail as a courtesy, others served a

quasi-post offices. The goings-on in one place were rapidly spread from one coffeehouse

to another.

The scale of population and business in London was such that the coffee house met the

need for the development of an elaborate division of labour within the communication

sector of this world city.11 In smaller colonial capitals similar institutions emerged to

serve similar needs. British merchants would rub shoulders during the evening with

professionals and public servants, also of the British stripe in the late 18th Century at the

London Coffeehouse in the Lower Town of Québec City, rue Cul de Sac alongside the

port.12 Perhaps they viewed the London as a haven, surrounded as they were by a

French-speaking majority of Canadiens.

During the 18th century colonial period, the tavern or public house fulfilled a significant

political and social role in Boston and throughout Massachusetts.13 The combination of

10 D.S. Shields, Civil Tongues and Polite Letters in British America, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press,1997: p. 60. See also J. Somerville, in History Today 47, 6 (June 1997), p. 8.11 Brian Cowan, The Social Life of Coffee. The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse, New Haven andLondon, Yale University Press, 2005: p. 169-177.12 Marc Lafrance et al, Histoire de la ville de Québec 1608-1871, Montréal, Boréal, Musée canadien descivilisations, 1987: p. 132.13 D.W. Conroy, The Public Houses. Drink and the Revolution of Authority in Colonial Massachusetts, (Institute ofEarly American History and Culture) Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1995: Chapter Six “The PublicOrder of the Revolution”.

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men and rum, sprinkled with fiery and seditious rhetoric (again oral and written) helped

mould a public opinion that was dangerous in the eyes of the British and powerfully

patriotic in the view of the revolutionaries. The tavern would play an important role in the

escalation of the fight between the British authority and the Patriots after the passage of

the stamp act in 1764, for it was here that ideas were brewed, plans laid and ultimately

carried out.

In this instance as in so many others, voice, mobile, working above and below board,

pulls at all the strings and attachments it has to the rest of the world whether popular,

immediate or literate. Voice by itself remained a powerful tool of communication. It

enthralled the American evangelical spirit preparing the ground for the Great Awakening

of the 1740s; itself a cultural break with political consequences. 14 But other means and

methods need consideration as well. The New World was in many respects a child of

Europe; a projection as it were of the old continent’s literate imagination and particularly

the appetite and culture of its merchants.

2. The Merchant’s desk: Globalization, business and the post, since the 16th

century.

A desk can be moved, from place to place, or perhaps a little closer to the window. Yet

nothing travels so well and so far as the paper upon that desk. The history of the mails of

merchant capital is one that ultimately embraces the entire face of the earth. The

merchant’s paperwork is necessarily fleet of foot, for otherwise he would have no raison

d’être. The capacity, the appetite for generating, handling and transmitting paperwork,

was developed first with the European horizon in mind and subsequently spread to the

furthest Atlantic and Pacific corners of the globe.

A Bigger Picture

14 H. S. Stout, “Religion, Communications and the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution”, in William andMary Quarterly, 34, 4 (October 1977), p. 519-541.

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Let us begin first with the global reality in which the merchant operates. Globalization is

a theme that of late has firmly entered the public mind and historical consciousness.

Gradual realization of the global breadth of reality is leading historians away from a

parochially-inspired Eurocentric approach. Interdependence between distant units is

gradually being realized. Looking solely at the French Atlantic there is a realization that

national vision has locked respective historiographies firmly upon the eastern and

western shores of the Atlantic. French historians follow the ships down to the sea and

await their return. Colonial (i.e. Canadian) historians pick them up on their

methodological radar upon their arrival.15 What happens in the in-between is sometimes

left by the wayside.

As if the challenge of coming to terms with intersecting Atlantic spaces were not enough,

the Pacific now cries out for attention from scholars. In Let the Sea Make a Noise

McDougall chronicles the history of the North Pacific since the 16th century.16 He sets out

a geo-political dramatis personae of powers, now interacting, now not interacting with

one another. Interdependence, juxtaposition, or mutual indifference are of material

interest to the destiny of this hugely important and vast region. Coclanis argues that the

Manila-Acapulco trade, which began in the late 16th century, was no sideshow in the

world economy for it established a link between Spanish silver in South America and

silks and all manner of goods originating in China, not the Philippines.17 The value of the

trade on this route alone exceeded the total value of Atlantic trade between Spain and her

colonies of the western hemisphere. The implication with Coclanis as with the McNeill’s

is that up until the 18th Century, China, not Europe, was the center or the world

economy.18 History looks different when viewed from the Pacific, from left to right,

instead of from right to left via the Atlantic first.

15 Alexandre Dubé, “S’approprier l’Atlantique : Quelques réflexions autour de Chasing Empire Across the Sea, deKenneth Banks », in French Colonial History Vol. 6, 2005, p. 35.16 Walter McDougall, Let the Sea Make a Noise: A History of the North Pacific from Magellan to McCarthur, NewYork, Basic Books, 1993.17 Peter A. Coclanis, "Pacific Overtures. The Spanish Lake and the Global Economy, 1500-1800", Common Place Vol.5, 2 (January 2005).18 J.R. McNeill and William H. McNeill, The Human Web. A Bird’s Eye View of World History, New York,W.W.Norton, 2003: p. 200-202.

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We will return to the subject of the Pacific below, the point made here is that Europe,

beginning in the late 15th and 16th centuries functioned as one segment of a larger world-

wide human web. This web, in its 1450-1800 incarnation, brought together Africa,

Europe, the America’s and the Pacific. Among scholars the Columbian exchange is

become the metaphor with which to describe the flow of pathogens, crops, settlers and

labour throughout the system. From the European point of view, the van of the enterprise

was provided by that floating cannon platform known as the modern naval vessel. These

vessels, aptly nicknamed Mongols of the sea, became the eyes and ears of European

powers as they explored the coastlines of the world. Equipped with cannon, a naval

vessel can send a powerful message to the natives on shore.19 It can also carry back (and

forth) reports, charts, and letters. It is a moving vessel of communication, written

communication. Communication will come to have this global attribute. And the

merchants were in the forefront of this exercise in globalization.

Business and the Information Age

The year 1430 saw the advent of Gutenberg’s printing press. Books could be copied far

more cheaply and in greater abundance, newspapers would eventually follow as early as

1605; the first woman’s magazine dates from 1693.20 Printing presses entered the various

colonies of Europe, Spanish America in 1553, later on in British America, but not New

France. Versailles turned down such requests despite the argument that such a device

would ease the work load of clerks employed in the civil administration.21 The printing

press altered the information landscape of Europe and colonies, significantly lowering

information costs and facilitating the dissemination of ideas. The Protestant Reformation

and the ensuing counter-Reformation kept the pressmen busy. Information on scientific

discoveries, as well as broadsides and pamphlets on religious matters flowed throughout

the European dominated portion of the world economy with relative ease. These treatises

did not have wings of their own; they very likely traveled the mails, whether formally or

on the person of travelers, a fact not often underlined.

19 McNeill and McNeill The Human Web : p. 165.20 Ibid. p. 179 ff.21 P.L. Fleming and Y. Lamonde, The History of the Book in Canada, Volume One. “Beginnings to 1840”, Toronto,University of Toronto Press, 2004: p. 46.

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Although churchmen and scientists had a vested interest in the world-wide system of

reporting and correspondence, the increased exchange of communication on paper

wrested as well upon the developing needs of business. Business needs paper and paper

tools to achieve its purposes. As the ability to communicate in writing increased so did

the volume of information flowing between partners and perfect strangers. The

emergence of newspapers in the 16th and 17th century and the increasingly regular postal

service in Europe both help illustrate the marriage de raison between business and

written communication. The result during these two centuries was a, “gonflement de la

circulation des papiers porteurs d’ordre ou d’informations de toutes sortes.”22

News is something that can be conveniently exchanged face to face when one need only

make the rounds of a single town, village or district. When, however, one much reach for

an understanding of developments further afield, some system of transmission is

necessary, for the answers do not lie close at hand. They must be brought in, by a

messenger, who has memorized the news or more likely by a messenger bearing letters.

The conveying and processing of news took time. The management of time-distance

differential, Braudel explains, was integral to how the merchant operated throughout the

Mediterranean in the 16th century. Merchandise circulated slowly throughout the

economy, as did the corresponding process of payment. Commodities moved slowly,

traveled at different rates, and originated in different places. This created logistical

challenges. The trade in saffron based at Aquilla (Abruzzi region of Italy), required linen

bagging, made in Germany, and leather pouches, in which the bags were packed, brought

in from Hungary. Payment was made in copper bars minted into coins at Aquilla; the

copper plate was imported from Germany. In this instance merchants had to coordinate at

least three different schedules – linen, leather and copper - in order to be able to properly

put the product in circulation.23

The Mediterranean, in this era, embraced a host of localized economic units existing in

some degree of isolation from one another. The cheap resources of “poor regions” were

22 Jacques Bottin, «Négoce et circulation de l’information en début de l’époque moderne », in M. Leroux Histoire de laposte, de l’administration à l’entreprise, Paris, Éditions rue d’Ulm-Presses de l’École normale supérieure, 2002 : p. 54.23 Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean in the Age of Philipp II , Volume 1, New York, Harper Row, 1972: p. 376.

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essential to the success of merchants. Commodities purchased inexpensively were then

sold or transformed in a market that bought a better return.24 The ability to capitalize

upon a price-distance differential, required knowledge of the possibilities, i.e.

communication. Communication was carried out face-to-face or by post. In both

instances writing became paramount.

Large fairs were the solution to the inherent sloth of trade and communication in the

business world. The more powerful commercial houses, many of them Italian during the

early modern period, gathered at the fairs in order to set the terms or rates of foreign bills

of exchange. The fairs served as financial clearing houses for this most complex credit

instrument. A good deal of negotiation occurred prior to and during the actual

bargaining sessions known as a conto. Once the members of the conto arrived at a

decision, the chancellor of the fair’s task it was to have multiple copies of the price list

prepared by his clerks and distributed. At the Lyon fairs of the mid 16th century the fair

chancellors started a new practice of printing the results of the conto. These became

known as an Exchange Rate Current. They were in fact business newspapers which

could be sold and distributed far and wide. In the long term this form of newspaper would

eventually spread to Northern Europe and England, as documented by John McCusker.25

In the short term this and other forms of business paper would feed into the postal

system.

In the 16th century delays were what the mails were all about. A fast letter is a source of

astonishment, “if it had been a trout, wrote one Spanish correspondent, it would still have

been fresh.”26 Delay in this case was exacerbated by the penchant of the Spanish

sovereign to deliberate long before making a decision. Generally-speaking delay was a

function of the recourse to certain safe, but indirect routes. Phillip the Second would

route his news, orders and bills of exchange to the rest of the empire via the French postal

system. Merchants of the Iberian Peninsula would similarly send or receive

correspondence that traveled via a safe but indirect route: one itinerary went from Spain

24 Ibid. p. 382-386.25 John J. McCusker, “The Italian Business Press in Early Modern Europe”, in J.J. McCusker, Essays in the EconomicHistory of the Atlantic World, London and New York, Rouledge, 1997: p. 130-133.26 Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean in the Age of Philipp II : p. 358-365.

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to Italy via Bordeaux. Another linked Rome and Portugal via Antwerp. The time it took

for a letter to travel had less to do with the distance than with the frequency and security

of existing mail routes. Braudel found that the indice of variability in terms of time-travel

was greatest over short distances.27 The implication here is that there were many ways for

the correspondent to get his mail to its destination, including the regular posts as well as

other less formal means.

The view dovetails with Bottin’s argument that historians of the modern period should

write a history of the post that encompasses not just the royal posts but as well the

plethora of public-private arrangements that saw to the transport of mail.28 Whatever the

means of conveyance, by the end of the 17th century, in the correspondence Bottin has

consulted, - exchanges between businessmen in Hamburg and Antwerp, or others

operating along the Hamburg-Lubeck-Bordeaux axis – one encounters a diminishing

level of dissatisfaction in the speed and delivery of the mails. There are other signs, some

banal, some more spectacular of postal progress. Accounting textbooks of the early 17th

century include references to the cost of postage as a regular expense. In 1563 was

published in Rome the Itinerario delle poste per diverse parte de mondo. The postal

guide was later reissued in Venice and in Lyon. Another guide was published in Milano

in 1611.29 These were small but revealing indications that postal habits were spreading

still more.

Natives of Bergame and Cornello, Jenaeet and Francesco de Tassis began carrying mail

on behalf of the Hapsburg Emperor circa 1500. The route extended from the North of

Italy to Malines and Brussels (Belgium) via Innsbruck and the Tyrol region of Austria.

Carefully laid out with way stations, the route, covered the total distance of 764

kilometres in 5,5 days (6,5 days in winter) at the exceptionally quick pace of 139 km a

day. The network, which would endure until 1867, expanded elsewhere through Italy,

France and Spain, with links via Calais to England. The Emperor managed to negotiate a

lower postage rate during the 16th century. This, Bottin argues, shows that the Tassis were

27 Ibid. p. 130-133, p. 358.28 Jacques Bottin, « Négoce et circulation », p. 46.29 Ibid. p. 42-43, 50.

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taking in revenues from other sources, in other words they were carrying mail for other

parties, likely merchants, on a private basis. 30 This piece of information Bottin intends as

an illustration of his overarching argument regarding the increased circulation of paper

throughout European business networks. Our inclination would be to fashion a similar

argument, this time on a larger world-scale.

Gathering Information on a World Scale

As discussed above the English coffee house was a great emporium of communication,

written and oral. In the 18th Century one coffee house, Lloyd’s, became a favourite repair

of the marine insurance industry; it was also home to no small amount of gamblers. The

owner of the coffee published a business newspaper, a marine list that on one side

provided information on the arrival and departure of ships at various ports in Britain at

home and abroad. On the flip side was found data on the latest prices on bills of exchange

and stocks. Central to the success of the enterprise was the network of reporting agents

throughout the UK and abroad that reported information back to the headquarters in

London. In 1829 350 agents worked on behalf of the Lloyd’s. Those working overseas –

whether in Newfoundland or in the U.S. - hastened to report back on the safe arrival of

the outward bound ships. 31 Lloyd’s was quartered on Lombard Street, near the General

Post Office. Letters from the agents – they were simply addressed Lloyd’s – traveled free

of charge through the mails. The company paid an annual fee of 200 pounds for the

franking privilege. Upon arriving at the GPO the letters were sorted with dispatch and

held especially for pick up by the Lloyd’s clerk, who then carried off the news for

subsequent processing and publication in the Marine List. 32

30 The practise may have begun as early as 1519. See: Phillip Beale, A History of the Post in England from the Romansto the Stuarts, Aldershot, Ashgate, 1998: p. 160. See also J. Bottin, Négoce et circulation: p. 44-45, F. Braudel TheMediterranean : p. 358 ff.; G. North, « Le facteur aux milles visages », in La poste. Lien universel entre les hommes,Lausanne, Vie-Art-Cité, 1974 : p. 14. Danish Postal historian Christian Pedersen underlines the interest of merchantsfor the royal mails in various European states. Merchants were active as in the administration of the Danish post officeand helped give it a more public function so it could be of service to all merchants. Private communication: June 8,2006.31 According to one study of business mails between Britain and Guiana the primary object was to confirm the safearrival of ships overseas. Transatlantic communication, from Guiana to Britain, in the reverse direction was so slowthat ships might arrive before colonial agents had occasion to convey their report. Seija-Riita Laakso, “Managing theDistance: Business Information Transmission Between Britain and Guiana, 1840”, in International Journal of MaritimeHistory 16, 2 (December 2004), p. 238-239.32 John J. McCusker, “The Business Press in England before 1775”, in J.J. McCusker, Essays in the Economic Historyof the Atlantic World, London and New York, Rouledge, 1997: p. 162-167.

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The post was of capital importance to the timely transmission of business information

under this system. There was no telegraph in sight and yet here was a coordinated

international system of information-gathering feeding into a business newspaper that

would then broadcast the information to interested parties. The benefactor of a

convenient arrangement with the British postal system, Lloyd’s was in a position to keep

the government apprised of strategic information on world shipping. French royal

officials read Lloyd’s for pretty much the same reason.

In the case of Lloyd’s the appetite for world knowledge was as insatiable as the capacity

to print and convey the information. This business trend was part of a more general

development by which the world was increasingly canvassed for its resources. The late

18th century was known as the age of the Imperial meridian when maritime surveys were

conducted by the major powers on a global scale.33 As well, France and Britain

systematically amassed botanical specimens from the world over with a view to exploring

their economic potential. In 1788 supporters were found to outfit an expedition – among

them the head of the Royal Botanical Gardens, a veteran of expeditions to Newfoundland

and Labrador and president of the Royal Society, Joseph Banks – to the South Pacific

under the command of Captain Bligh a navigator who traveled with Cook to the Pacific

aboard the Resolution ten years earlier. Their mission was to travel to Tahiti to fetch a

particular species of plant, Artocarpus incise (bread plant) which was to be transferred to

London and thence dispensed to the West Indies for cultivation on a commercial basis.

The object of the exercise was to bring back as many plants as possible; the comfort of

the crew was not a priority. The voyage of the Bounty was not successful, owing to a

certain mutiny.34

The British taste for specimens was matched by the French who established a botanical

garden in Rochefort, in 1741, that worked in tandem with the Jardins des plantes in

Paris.35 Meanwhile Bougainville’s Pacific expeditions would commence in 1766. At

home as overseas the French, as depicted by Daniel Roche showed themselves to be avid

33 As cited in Michael Bravo, “Geographies of Exploration and Improvement: William Scoresby and Arctic Whaling,1782-1822”, in Journal of Hisotorical Geography 32, 3 (July 2006), p. 519.34 Carol Alexander. The Bounty. The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty, London, Penguin Books, 2004.35 Michel Sardet, Le jardin botanique de Rochefort et les grandes expéditions maritimes, Le Croit vif, 2000 : p. 11-20.

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collectors of knowledge.36 They measured and counted everything, with a view to

tallying up the resources. Roads were built, terrain was mapped. Royal decrees were

passed in 1729 and in 1730. The latter measure was intended to confirm of the fermiers

généraux des postes outlining penalties for those carrying mail in violation of their

monopoly.37 Accordingly a thick instructional textbook was published entitled: Usage

des postes chez les anciens et les modernes. The publication was a compendium of edicts,

rules, letters-patent and ordinances pertaining to the operation of the post: “c’est

pourquoi, wrote the author, l’on ose se flatter que ce receuil sera regardé comme une

espèce de code par ceux qui sont employés dans les Postes…”.38 The post, past and

present, had come under the scrutiny of the siècle des lumières. Royal officials and

philosophes expounded a world view predicated on scientific and economic appetite and

sustained by a world postal communication system.

3. The New Networks: the 19th Century and Beyond.

During the 19th century and up to 1914, the world wide web entered a second phase. The

geography and intensity of inter-relationship was such that no corner of the earth and no

indigenous people was left untouched. The west steamed ahead of the rest of the world,

powered by industrial and military might. British gun ships ripped into China with a force

of 41 war ships and 17,000 men in 1860, plundering the Forbidden City and thus

concluding the Arrow War. Six years earlier Commodore Perry of the U.S. Navy, with

the assistance of 9 warships, established a diplomatic beachhead in Japan that would

mature into a commercial link.39 Migratory currents huge and complex pushed

themselves about the world. Chinese and Asian coolie labour invested the western

hemisphere appearing at railways and other large work sites, responsible, like the Irish

for the dirty work of construction. Between 1840 and 1914, 50-60 million people

migrated from Europe, the trend peaked at fin de siècle, circa 1890-1914. There ensued a

36 Daniel Roche, France in the Enlightenment, Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press, 1998 : Part One: “TimesSpaces, Powers”.37 Paul Charbon et al, Le patrimoine de la poste, Paris, Flohic Éditions, 1996 : p. 47.38 Usage des postes chez les anciens et les modernes, contenant tous les édits, déclarations, lettres patentes, arrêts,ordonnances, et règlements que nos rois ont fait jusqu'à ce jour, pour perfectionner la Police des postes, Nouvelleédition, Paris Chez Louis(Sieur?) de l la Tour, 1730. Avec approbation et privilège du roi.39 Walter A. McDougall Let the Sea Make a Noise: p. 282-287, 267-276. See as well: McNeill and McNeill The HumanWeb: Chapter 7 “Breaking Old Chains: Tightening the new web: 1750-1914”.

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process of métissage, cultural and linguistic, as all sorts of people were transplanted and

mixed together. 40 The Pacific coast of North America, represents one interesting

example of the new world frontier with strong communication ties to the rest of the web.

The View from the Pacific

The California gold rush attracted streams of adventurers in 1849. The suddenness of

events is captured in Marianne Babal’s study of the inauguration of the government

postal service on the west coast. The first Pacific Mail Steamer departed from New York

in October of 1848. There were perhaps a half a dozen passengers on board one of whom

was a special agent appointed by the U.S. Postmaster General. His task was to formally

establish postal service on the west coast, California having just entered the union. By the

time the vessel pulled into Panama City, in January 1849, news of the California gold

strike had flashed around the world. More than 300 passengers boarded the steamer at

Panama City, many of whom were anxious to dig for gold. Upon arriving the entire crew

deserted. Meanwhile the postal agent found that a post office had already been set up on

San Francisco.41 The collective weight of those lining up to dig the gold, not to mention

the others whose business was to service or fleece the gold-diggers, created a demand for

postal communication which was met before the U.S. Post Office showed up.

A history of British Columbia reports that the California and subsequent Pacific Rim gold

rushes, including B.C., were sustained by the appetite for quick wealth and the resources

of mass mobility and mass communication provided by the telegraph, newspapers and

steamers.42 The author could have mentioned that the post was part of this process but did

not.

40 McNeill and McNeill The Human Web: Chapter 7 “Breaking Old Chains: Tightening the new web: 1750-1914”.41 Marianne Babal, “A Distant Shore: Steamer Mail to and from Gold-rush California”, in J. Willis (ed.), More ThanWords: Post Transport and Communication. (CPM Mercury Series), Gatineau, Canadian Museum of Civilization:forthcoming in 2006.42 Sharon Meen, “Colonial Society and Economy”, in H.J.M. Johnston (ed. ) The Pacific Province. A History of BritishColumbia, Vancouver, Douglas and McIntyre, 1996: p. 108.

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In 1858 prospectors began attacking the gold deposits on the mainland portion of what

would become British Columbia.43 The first wave of diggers and adventurers consisted of

20-30,000 people. Eventually British authorities, anxious to take charge of public order,

and demonstrate firmness of resolve on the international scene, especially vis-à-vis the

American neighbours to the south, created a specific colonial jurisdiction with a capital

based in New Westminster. The Royal Engineer’s were brought in to build roads,

infrastructure and, among other things a post office, part of a cluster of government

buildings set back from Columbia Street, one of the main thoroughfares of the town.

Meanwhile the Vancouver Island House of Assembly began discussing the need to

establish a postal system circa 1859-1861, one that would ensure better communication

with the mother country (Britain).44

The more or less regular passage of mails to British Columbia from San Francisco, and

up the Fraser River in the direction of the gold mining areas was regular news in the

Victoria British Colonist.45 The ability or inability to receive mail, was worthy of

reportage in private correspondence as well. A Frenchman from the Béarn residing or

passing through Victoria in the late spring of 1859, complained thus, to his father at home

in France : “…ici la poste est très mal faite ceux qui ont écrit directement pour l’Europe

ne recoivent jamais de réponse ou s’ils reçoivent c’est avec un grand retard…”46 For

Antoine Casamayou, who spent the better part of the late 1840s and 1850s in California

before arriving on Vancouver Island in 1858 in the midst of the mainland mining boom,

San Francisco served a pivotal role in the exchange of mail and money with family in

France. The port anchored by the golden gate was ideally suited to provide access to

Europe, around the Horn or through Latin America, not to mention the huge and only

recently chartered world of the Pacific.

43 Jean Barman, The West Beyond the West: A History of British Columbia, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1991:p. 61 ff.44 See Minutes of the First House of Assembly of Vancouver Island, 17 May 1859: p. 101. Minutes ofhte Second Houseof Assembly of Vancouver Island, Second Session, 26 June 1861: p. 281.45 See for example: May 30, 1859: p. 2; July 25, 1859: p. 2; September 12, 1859: p. 3.46 Association pour la Maison de la Mémoire de l’Émigration, Collection des lettres de la famille Casamayou : AntoineCasamayou, ile Vancouver, à son père, à Ose (France) 26 mai 1859.

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Among the 12 ships arriving in the harbour of Victoria B.C. in late August of 1859, seven

came from or via a U.S. harbour (mainly San Francisco and Port Townsend) and two

others hailed from Melbourne.47 Casamayou himself would travel back and forth between

Victoria and San Francisco, which suggests that navigation links between the two were

well enough established although in 1860, his nephew Jean-Baptiste did have to wait ten

days for a ship to carry him on the final leg of his journey out from Bordeaux, from San

Francisco to Victoria.48 The link to the U.S. west coast is not surprising; the Australian

connection reminds us of the fluidity of relations throughout the Pacific.

The connection between British America and Australia dated from the 1840s when a

series of settlement booms established the colony of Victoria in Australia. The booms

drew the attention of the Liverpool shippers Green and Company. In the winter of 1841

Green decided to remove their ship from the West Indies run and send it instead to

Montréal and thence to the settlement of Port Philipp (Melbourne). Loaded with salted

meat, fish and alcohol, - with iron from England and French champagne, the William

Salthouse, cleared the port of Québec in July of 1841 arriving in Melbourne in November

of that year where, unfortunately, it sank inside Port Philipp Bay with a cargo worth

12,000 pounds.49 The captain and crew no doubt left some paperwork behind, perhaps

some lists of goods, or even some letters. The first trip of a central Canadian merchant

vessel thus ended in fiasco but it was indicative of the expanding horizons of the day.

Telegraphs and Other Networks, Including the Post

The web was tightened during the 19th century by virtue of the mechanization and speed-

up of transport – railways and steamships- and the introduction of electronic

communication: first the telegraph and later the telephone. Brand new territories were

opened up, for example California and B.C. . The trend, in the literature is to emphasize

the advent of new electronic devices and downplay the role of the post. The approach

47 Victoria British colonist, 24 August 1859: p. 3.48 Association pour la Maison de la Mémoire de l’Émigration, Collection des lettres de la famille Casamayou, Jean-Baptiste Casamayou (Victoria) à son grand père (France), 25 octobre 1860.49 Mark Staniforth, “Early Trade Between Canada and Australia and the Wreck of the William Salthouse (1841):, in C.Roy et al (eds.), Achéologiques. Mer et Monde: Questions d’archéologie maritime, Québec, Association desarchéologues du Québec, 2003 : p. 212-227.

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underestimates the importance of the post in this process, and it overlooks the multitude

of agencies, devices, networks that together constructed the communication world.

The thrust of argument in The Human Web, is that communication was become

instantaneous. Speed sums it all up. A contemporary poem ran: “For man hath grasped

the thunderbolt, / And made of it a slave/ To do its errands o’er the land / And underneath

the wave”.50 The most distant places were brought in contact with one another over the

wire. Messages could be transmitted to India in five hours, instead of eight months. For

the British investor the New York Stock Exchange was just a few minutes away. During

the late 1860s twenty American banks were linked into common communication system

by The Gold and Stock Telegraph Company.51 The Company was eventually taken over

by Western Union, who made it their business to secure a monopoly of market

information. The telegraph made possible the advent of the private communication

utility, a business in and of itself.

In Canada the infrastructure of the telegraph was established, in the east, during the 1840s

and 1850s. The St. Lawrence Great Lakes lowlands were entirely wired. Links were also

made to the U.S. system in the south, and toward Europe with the laying of the first

successful cable across the Atlantic in 1865. Looking westward, Canadian politicians,

investors and railwaymen based in the country’s governing triangle, Ottawa-Toronto-

Montréal, were kept informed of the latest developments of the Métis rebellion of 1885 in

the Canadian West - by means of the telegraph – which was extended from Winnipeg to

Edmonton in 1879. The telegraph operator at Clarke’s Crossing (near Saskatoon) was

told by the commanding general of the Canadian force sent to quell the North-Western

Rebellion, not to wire news of Riel’s capture in May (1885). Newspaper correspondents,

aware of the capture, swarmed his telegraph office nonetheless. One of them, upon being

50 Quoted in Ibid. p. 217.51 Patrice A. Carré, Le téléphone. Le monde à portée de voix , (Découvertes Gallimard), Paris, Gallimard, 1993 : p. 17.See also W.B. Carlson Review of P. Israel From Machine Shop to Industrial Laboratory: Telegraphy and theChanging Context of American Invention, 1830-1920, in Journal of Economic History 54,3 (Sept. 1994), p. 716-18.

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denied access to the wires, sent a courier to the next telegraph office in Humbolt, whence

the news was eventually sent.52

The telegraph introduced quasi-instantaneous communication capability; no doubt the

willingness to spread news rapidly was there all along. Telegraphy conquered distance

and facilitated in the creation of markets on a continental scale. A recent study of the

Swift Meat Packing company establishes that by virtue of telegraph connections the

company was able to coordinate from its headquarters in Chicago activities that were

dispersed in space from the cattle stockyards and abbatoirs in the west to the branch

distribution houses that supplied retail butchers mainly in the eastern U.S.. 53 Canadian

companies also relied upon the telegraph. Store notes for T. Eaton and Co. in Winnipeg

refer to the heavy business over the wires in October of 1917, especially at the end of the

business day, between 4:30 and 5:30 in the afternoon.54 Rules were implemented to

relieve the problem of telegraph congestion – too many employees were using the wires,

the mail-order department was singled out as one of the main culprits. Perhaps in the

long run, recourse to the telephone to communicate with suppliers or customers would

alleviate the situation. What the data do suggest is that in the huge retailing operation that

the Eaton’s built, no single mode of communication could handle all the necessary

information. Telegraph, telephone and the mail were all brought into play.

In far more primitive settings several forms of communication were used concurrently,

including the post. James McLeod of the North West Mounted, stationed in Southern

Alberta, exchanged letters with his wife, domiciled in Winnipeg, during the 1870s.

Exceptionally, if no mail was forthcoming or if he needed more news, he might telegraph

her. In which case he had to travel down to Helena Montana (U.S.A.) or over to

Battleford, Saskatchewan, the closest telegraph stations. While in Montana he could put a

letter or two into the mail. Not a few pieces of mail from him to her bear a Fort Benton,

52 J.S. MacDonald, “The Dominion Telegraph”, in Canadian North-West Historical Society Publications, 1, 6 (1930),p. 38-39.53 G. Fields, “Communications, innovation and territory: the production network of Swift Meat Packing and theCreation of a national market”, Journal of Historical Geography, 29, 4 (October 2003), p. 599-617.54 Archives of Ontario T. Eaton and Co. Collection, F 229-196 B 273441 Store Notices T. Eaton and Co. Winnipeg,January 1913 to January 1921: Notice no. 353 27 October 1917, no. 354 31 October 1917. On the telephone see no.489: 3 June 1920.

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Montana postmark, there being no official Canadian postal system in the West at the

time. During this period, one of McLeod’s fellow Mounties (Walsh) sent letters to the

New York Herald about McLeod that were most unflattering.55 Curious indeed that Walsh

should feel driven to tell the Americans about the doings of his colleague, interesting as

well that the news he was doing so could get back to the person he was targeting, by mail.

Mail, telegraph and newspapers could work together, to help disseminate news to people

more than willing to share it. In 1911 a ship sunk off Chegoggin Point, near Yarmouth,

Nova Scotia.56 As rumours of the disaster became known, clusters of people gathered in

town. The crowd questioned two survivors when their carriage stopped in front of the

post office. Thereupon, the Yarmouth Times reported, the telegraph office was alive with

persons anxiously conveying the news. The Times newspaper– which subscribers could

receive through the mail - was able to establish the correct identity of one of the deceased

victims over the telephone. Various media, including the post collaborated to convey the

terrible news.57

The sense of gravity or excitement encouraged the recourse to several media at a time, for

of themselves the newfangled machines did not always capture Man’s attention. One

example: the telephone was first introduced in Chicoutimi, Québec on 13 February 1893.

However Alfred Dubuc, bank clerk and regional notable, preferred to sit at his desk and

write a letter to his fiancée (Anne-Marie). Ten days later he was all excited about this

new invention when a Monsieur Roberge, a tinkerer of sorts, managed to simultaneously

broadcast a musical concert, over the phone line, to a number of households in the

vicinity. Roberge simply hooked up his phonograph to the telephone transmitter. There

were two media at work here, plus an interested audience.58 And of course Dubuc had to

tell his bride to be all about it, in a letter.

55 Glenbow Museum and Archives, (online) Collection of James McLeod: See James McLeod to Mary McLeod:September 28, 1874, April 21, 1875, July 29, 1878.56 Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management, MG 100, 21-21 d, History of Barrington, Yarmouth Times 12November 1911.57 I Europe post, telegraph and telephone were administered as a common department of government. Convergencebetween the three was thus institutionalized.58 Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. Fonds Vincent Dubuc (P60), Correspondance J.E.A. Dubuc avecAnne-Marie Palardy, 12 February 1893, 20-23 February, 1893.

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A proper study of urban communication might turn up a similar pattern of media

complicity as the societies of major metropolitan eras were increasingly networked. In

her study of the advent of the telephone to Montréal during the late 19th early 20th century

period, Claire Poitras emphasizes that the telephone should be viewed as a sine qua non

of urban existence, as influential as street railways, street lighting and water systems. In

her book she documents how telegraph service in the home paved the way for the spread

of the telephone. Subscribers of the Canadian District Telegraphy company, during the

1870s, needed only to press a button in order to call a taxi, arrange for a messenger boy to

come, or signal a fire alarm. The harbinger of networked communication in Montréal was

the fire alarm telegraph, first introduced in 1863. 59 Some of these boxes, rather ornate in

design, could still be found in the streets of Montreal in the 1960s.

The modern industrial city is a collage of communication networks. And the concept of

network was integral to the expansion of postal service in big cities. The handling of mail

in central post offices was complemented by the work of satellite post offices in order to

bring service closer to customers and to remove some of the strain on the main postal

establishment. By 1891 the city of Montréal counted two branch offices in addition to the

central one at Place D’Armes and postal authorities were considering opening a third.

Since 1874 three wagons collected mail from the city’s letter boxes and receiving

stations. This was all straightforward and simple. By the year 1916, Montréal and

suburbs were served by 1 central post office, 11 postal stations, 55 sub-post offices and

35 accounting post offices, a total of 102 establishments all functioning in coordinated

fashion.60 The postal network was as much a part of daily life in the métropole, as the

trams that carried passengers, and letter carriers, about the city.

By the turn of the 20th century, there emerged a constellation of networks, including the

postal service, moving, commanding, instructing, coordinating, carrying, and sometimes

just breathing life into words, spoken and written. The words are written on the back of a

59 Claire Poitras, La cité au bout du fil. Le téléphone à Montréal de 1879 à 1930, Montréal, Presses de l’Université deMontréal, 2000 : p. 65-67. Specimens of these boxes could still be found on the streets of Westmount in the 1960s.60 Data for 1916 from the Annual Report of the Postmaster Genera for that year. The 1891 information can be found inLibrary and Archives Canada (LAC) Records of the Post Office (RG-3), D-3 Post Office Inspector’s Reports: MontréalPost Office Inspector (Microfilm Reel T-2398) file 127-830. Montréal Inspector to Postmaster General, 5 June 1891.

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park bench, on a theatre marquee, on the front page of the daily newspaper, on the

staircase leading up or down from the métro. In Alberta, the front page (or big news

items) of the Edmonton Journal, were transcribed onto a giant outdoor sign giving onto a

busy city street corner.61 The words tell you where and when to go, what to see or buy

and ultimately, what to think. But they also left room for considerable creativity.

Impromptu speaker’s corners and conversation pieces adorn the street corners, taverns,

and union halls of the city. Bible thumpers, strive to catch the attention of passers-by.

The result, to borrow an expression from Peter Fritzsche is the word city.62

Communication becomes a cluster of concurrent networks of news, sales pitches and

dissent and art. The post is part of this. It is or was, along with the press, perhaps the dean

of urban networks. A lot of postal history transpired prior to the advent of electronic

media and would continue to do so after their advent.

Building the Postal Network in the Early 19th Century

Richard Kielbowicz lays out a provocative agenda in his study of the press, the post

office and public information from the 18th century to the 1860s.63 The exchange of

printed information via the post constituted the foundation of public information in the

late colonial and ante-bellum U.S.A. Newspapers benefited from postal service by virtue

of the free exchanges of copy between publishers, express delivery services for big news,

and access to the readership, through the mails. Peter Goheen has similarly documented

the complicity between press and post in mid 19th century Canada.64

A cursory look at John and Samuel Neilson’s Québec Gazette offers a ground-level

portrait of the marriage between press and post. The paper was printed on Côte de la

Montagne, just down the street from the city post office. Two hundred of the 210 thrice-

weekly editions of the Gazette were distributed to subscribers throughout the province,

61 D.G. Wetherell, C. Cavanaugh, M. Payne (eds.), Alberta Formed, Alberta Transformed, Calgary, Uiversity ofCalgary Press, 2005 (Volume 2): p. 407. The sign of the Edmonton Journal was fixed on the outside wall of theDominion Cigar Store shop on Jasper Street.62 Peter Fritzsche, Reading Berlin: 1900 Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1996.63 Richard B. Kielbowicz, News in the Mail. The Press, Post Office, and Public Information, 1700-1860s, New York,Greenwood Press, 1989. See for example p. 1-3.64 Peter Goheen, “Communications and Newsmaking Before the Telegraph: The Story of the 1845 Québec City Fires”,in The Canadian Geographer 37,3 (Fall 1993), p. 230-242.

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most by mail I expect. In or around 1833 40 copies were distributed to postmasters in

Lower Canada. The idea was to turn these postmasters into de facto agents for the

newspaper. How many thus became agents is a not yet known but some did become

willing servants of the Gazette. The Neilson papers contain ongoing correspondence

between the postmaster of Trois-Rivières and the owners of the Gazette. The postmaster

passed along requests from newspaper customers. A gentleman from the nearby village

of Bécancour asked for a copy of the newspaper; two others did not receive their copy;

another would like to cancel his subscription… The postmaster concluded in his of May

24th, 1826, “I will thank you to publish in your Gazette the enclosed list of letters

remaining in this office.”65 The postmaster did favours for the newspaper and the Gazette

returned the politesse. They were birds of a feather.

Newspapers circulate and a public information highway is carved out upon the landscape.

Yet all is not calm and bright, for once put in circulation different ideas rub up against

one another, they collide. Kielbowicz stresses that the public information exchange can

have both a binding and a divisive effect. The ambient circulation of posted newspapers

and ideas could create a national constituency of like-minded followers of a particular

political or religious belief.66 Concurrent if not hostile constituencies could and did

emerge. Richard John makes this precise point in his study of the U.S. Post office from

1775 to 1844. Especially poignant is the discussion of the controversy over the

distribution of abolitionist newspapers via the mail throughout the Southern States. The

debate erupted in 1835 and made manifest the sectional divisions within the U.S.

republic. Southern state governments, notables and officials were dead against the idea of

allowing the abolitionists to distribute their literature through the mail system. The

members of the Jackson administration agreed and prevailed.67

The underlying point, made by John throughout is book is that the post is not immune to

pressure economic, social and political originating in the rest of society. It can serve as

65 Library and Archives Canada, John Neilson Collection, MG 24 B 1, Microfilm Reel C-15613, Volume 174: QuebecGazette Correspondence 1796-1835: Thomas Bignell to publishers of Quebec Gazette, 24 May 1826. See also Neilsonto Cowan February 7 1833.66 R.B. Kielbowics News in the Mail: p. 5-6.67 Richard R. John, Spreading the News. The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse, Cambridge, Mass.,Harvard University Press, 1995: p. 257 ff.

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communication catalyst, but as well it can be bent or warped to assume a particular

shape: The Jacksonian post office was as much a creature of politics as communication. It

could become a battleground for conflicting voices, or for competing business strategies.

The lobbying of stagecoach companies, for example, had a lot to do with the geography

of mail conveyance.68

What of the Canadian postal network? Clearly its formal roots lie in the late 18th and

early 19th century period for there was no formal postal system during the French regime

a situation most unlike the one prevailing in the 13 colonies where the genesis of a postal

system was gradually if sometimes tentatively set in place. Throughout the colonies of

British North America, beginning in 1763 a postal administration was set in place, postal

roads laid out and post offices opened.

The story was not all one of unbounded progress and ever-increasing postal mileage. As

indicated above, newspapers emerged as avid users of the mail, but they did not all

broadcast the same message. Dissenting or dissimilar visions were published and

circulated. La Minerve and the Vindicator (in Lower Canada), the Colonial Advocate and

the Canadian Freeman in Upper Canada espoused views that were quite hostile to the

crown, if not frankly supportive of the movement that would eventually foment rebellion

in 1837 and 1838. Staunch supporters of the British establishment might read such

newspapers as the Montreal Gazette, the Courier of Upper Canada and the Quebec

Mercury. The Roman-Catholic bishop of Montréal, a fierce opponent of Rebellion

seriously considered purchasing the entire presses of a Québec City newspaper and

moving them to Montréal under clerical direction and control. Newspapers were, he

expressed on another occasion “un puissant moyen pour former et maîtriser l’opinion

publique.”69 In effect the bishop and the rebels were reading from the same script. Their

68 Ibid. p. 92 ff.69 J.-J. Lartigue, Bishop to Montréal to Msgr Panet, 20 February 1832, as cited in J. Willis, Selling God by Post inFrench Canada”, R.B. Klymasz and J. Willis (eds.), Revelations. Bi-Millenial Papers from the Canadian Museum ofCivilization (CCFCS Mercury no. 75), Gatineau, Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2001: p. 266. Reverend Strachan,Anglican priest and eventually bishop of Upper Canada, helped finance the Montreal Herald during the early going,shortly after it was founded in 1811. Church and press were not separate things. See Jean Hamelin et André Beaulieu,Les journaux du Québec de 1764 à 1964, Québec, Presses de l’Université Laval, 1965.

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political premises were at odds, but their assumptions vis-à-vis public information were

similar.

Caught up in the ongoing dispute between colonial and metropolitan interests the post

was also affected by the growing scale of colonial society – oweing to demographic

growth and the integrative forces which resulted from or capitalized upon this process.

From 1800 to 1850 the population the three Maritime colonies (Nova Scotia, New

Brunswick, Prince Edward Island), rose from 80,000 to 500,000. Meanwhile in the two

Canadian provinces the combined population rose from 638,000 in 1825 to 1,8 million,

25 years later. Throughout the early 19th century a web of trade, transport and

communication was gradually spun around the principal towns of British North America.

Goods, services, labour and mail, not to mention disease, were shunted about on

steamboats, sailing vessels, railway lines, coaches, carriages and sleds of every

description. The mails were carried under contract to the post office. They were quite

often also carried informally on the person of willing travelers, prepared to convey mail

by favour. Whether formal or informal, the conveyance of mail, newspapers, business

mail, personal letters, created an integrative dynamic that was of no small consequence

for in the manner of the blind leading the blind, it lead British North Americans to

articulate a more self-conscious vision of themselves if not as independent then at least as

an existing entity alongside the imperial link. Confederation was not necessarily the

inevitable result, but as it turns out, momentum in that direction was, slowly, starting to

gather70

From an indigenous political perspective the growth of a public information sector,

wresting upon press and post, in the early 19th Century, created a domestic postal

constituency, that would help push for the takeover of the colonial mails in 1849, an

ancillary but tangible benefit of the achievement of Responsible Government. The fact

that postage collected on newspaper circulation to subscribers, was treated as a personal

70 John Willis, “The Canadian Colonial Posts: Epistolary Continuity, Postal Transformation”, in D. Pollard and G.Martin, Canada 1849. A selection of papers give at the University of Edinburgh Center for Canadian Studies AnnualConference May 1999, Edinburgh, University of Edinburgh Center of Canadian Studies, 2001: p. 224-254.

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emolument of the Deputy Postmaster General of Canada an imperially-appointed official

up to 1851 – and was not ploughed back into the administration of the system - certainly

added some newspaper-publishing momentum to the exercise in the repatriation of postal

responsibility. Once the British American colonies took over their postal affairs, new

possibilities, new opportunities are seized upon.

According to Osborne and Pyke, the takeover of the domestic posts laid the foundation

for an ensuing communication revolution which began during the 1850s and persisted

after the turn of the century.71 Private interpersonal communication (letter mail) was

considerably facilitated, following the introduction of the standard three-penny postage

rate, in 1851, which represented a substantial saving in the average cost of posting a

letter.72 It was now possible, as well, for a greater variety of organizations (including

businesses) to access the public via the government-owned postal service. Commodities

both commercial and cultural could flow with greater ease from sender to receiver and

back again. The postally-derived communication revolution created expectations that

were catered to by the post office in the short term. It also assisted in the advent of other

communication systems directly and indirectly. The emerging urban civilization was a

highly networked one, the post office furnishing one substantial cog in the networking

wheel which was ultimately global in scope.

The modern post office thus construed is an achievement, a force for change. Yet it

cannot be studied as an institution aloof from society. It is anything but indifferent to

certain fundamental social and human needs of communication. The merchants,

newspapermen and politicians that formed the backbone of the colonial elite played a

prominent role in the making of the Canadian post office. But somewhere in the

background, one can hear the echoes of not a few voices in the street gathered in the

makeshift vestibule of a post office waiting to receive or send their mail. It is as if, once it

71 B. S. Osborne and R. Pike, “Lowering the Walls of Oblivion: The Revolution in Postal Communications in CentralCanada, 1851–1911, Canadian Papers in Rural History, vol. 4 (Gananoque: Langdale Press, 1984), p. 201, 220-221.72 Prior to 1851 postage rates varied according to the distance the mail had to travel. Average postage on a letter wasworth nine pence. See: William Smith, The History of the Post Office in British North America, 1639-1870, Cambridge,At the University Press, 1920: p. 275. Richard John similarly stresses that rate reductions in the U.S. contributed to theexplosion of letter-writing in the U.S.: See R. John Spreading the News: p. 161.

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reached a certain generalized plateau, the post could not ignore the plurality of

constituencies, of voices, calling out for service.

Perspective

The Dominion Post Office Act was passed in 1868. It established a Post Office

Department headquartered in Ottawa. The legislation laid down the rules and regulations

for sending mail and codified certain established postal practices; this included the

institution of the railway mail service, which dates from 1854, and the concept of postage

based on the weight of mail and not the number of sheets (1844). The postal network

would be expanded by virtue of the growth in the number of post offices across the land,

the introduction of letter carrier service and eventually the introduction of rural mail

delivery. The post office was an institutional complex that was integral to the Canadian

communication infrastructure throughout the late 19th and 20th century period. Yet while

possessed of considerable institutional élan, the post office ultimately cannot be

considered to be the sole arbiter of its destiny. Ultimately the post owes its existence to

two underlying agencies: the voice in the street and the merchant’s desk. There is ample

evidence of each throughout Canadian history.

Business has had a long association with the mails. In fact the mercantile imperative

predates the formal establishment of postal service in Canada. There was no formal postal

system moving mail across the Atlantic between France and New France, Jane Harrison

shows, and yet the letters flowed due to the initiative and diligence of merchants, captains

and correspondents. 73 The business elite of British North America sent letters through the

mails or via their own messengers to correspondents overseas and elsewhere in North

America. New York represented a new and significant window upon the world economy

for colonial businessmen beginning in the late 18th century. Newspapers in both of the

Canada’s and throughout the Maritimes did business through the mails. The Howe

family, which published inter alia the Nova Scotian, and held office in the colonial postal

service of Nova Scotia, had a foot firmly planted in both camps.

73 Jane Harrison, Until Next Year. Letter Writing and the Mails in the Canada’s, 1640-1830, Hull, Canadian Museumof Civilization-Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997.

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The association between press and post carried well into the late 19th and 20th century

period for how else could publishers arrange to ship the newspapers to their subscribers.74

Meanwhile the postal thrust of business extended into mail-order retailing, a form of

enterprise that employed thousands in many of the major urban centers of the country.

Mail orders to and from Eaton’s, Simpson’s Woodward’s, Army and Navy and Dupuis

Frères, generated and consumed huge amounts of mail. They represent one recurrent item

in the sea of business correspondence enveloping Canadians as the 20th century unfolded.

Canadian households were thus awash in mail, but their members are not drowning, for

they too were acting in the postal manner.

Voice has never been far from postal communication. It is present, as an accessory, in

thousands of country post offices, where face-to-face interaction between postmaster and

public obtains on a daily basis; and where patrons share the latest news while waiting in

line for the mail. Voice is on the paper and between the lines of innumerable letters

received and sent by immigrants come to settle in Canada during for example the late 19th

and early 20th century period. Relations with kin, back in the old-country may have been

a face-to-face affair. Now it was necessary to talk, but in writing, on paper. Words may or

may not have come easily. They were supplemented with snapshots and picture

postcards.

The geographic range of the personal postal economy is considerable. Greetings are

exchanged here and there across the world, with the entourage back home in Japan, or

the inhabitants of the Molise in Italy, who are sent money, or requests to come out and

join the family; to father and mother in England: could they, the Canadian correspondent

asks, send some copies of the parish weekly newspaper? Conversations are directed back

and forth across the Canadian-American border by Canadiens and Acadiens errants.

They are anxious for news from home: has someone attended to their temporarily

abandoned house and farm; did Papa and Maman know that their son had injured his eye

with an axe, or that he was going to get married. Oh and did they receive the money?

74 Jean de Bonville, La presse québécoise de 1884 à 1914. Genèse d’un média de masse, Québec, Presses del’Université Laval, 1988 : Chapitre 1 « Population, économie, transports et communications » : p. 9-38.

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Voice, at times suppressed but always full of life, and not exempt of practical concerns is

present in the millions of letters that traverse the Atlantic, and Pacific, between home

front and battlefront during both world wars. A letter then as now signified a tangible

link, for it was an object that, unlike a long-distance phone-call, could be folded, fondled,

and worshipped. The voice in these interpersonal corresponding networks, in war as in

peacetime, when taken in the aggregate, amounts to a significant volume of mail, of

communication; a huge body of raw material warranting further study and reflection. The

voice is an important one for us as historians of communication and as human beings. It

is implacable, it demands attention, for it comes straight from the heart.