MN1002 GLADSTONE - PUBLIC SCHOOL

The lettering is the same as on the Leclerc cards from St. Boniface, also the products of O.K. Press. Does this one have the same distinctive back, with the "wavy" dividing lines and the two flower-like adornments on either side of the words "Post Card"?

Absolutely. Are you psychic? How many fingers am I holding up?

Just a wild guess! You have some of those Leclerc cards too, no? It's kind of interesting because it's a case of a local publisher using its own very distinctive back and presumably printing the whole card itself. Bulman Bros. would have been the first, I think. De Nobele and Justement didn't print the cards, and neither did C.S. Co., possibly with the exception of those very early ones with the sailboat in the Assiniboine. Anyway, will have to think more about this later.

Good guess! Yes, I have a dozen Leclerc cards and relish every new one that I stumble upon (so infrequently). Yet another "... think more about this later" for the (growing) list.

I think I have four or five. Until vendors started having colour cards made in Germany, the local guys could compete with their own monochrome cards, so there were quite a lot like this from 1899 to about 1905 or so. My impression is that the German lithos (cheap and in colour) crushed the Winnipeg monochrome litho and RPPC markets by about 1907, accounting for the long RPPC lull in the city from 1907-11. RPPCs continued to dominate in rural areas where the volumes of cards that had to be ordered from the litho producers made them less economical. Then RPPCs made a comeback in 1911-13 in Winnipeg (with Lyall) because there was so much being built in those years. Meyers got in just at the end of this period, during which lithographed cards couldn't be produced quickly enough to show all the wonders of the city. After 1913, RPPCs were dead except in the niche market of "events" (parades and disasters) where their immediacy was an advantage. That's basically what I've learned in my first 9 years of collecting!