BNAPS website is a must-see for all collectors of Canada’s stamps

Computers and Stamps - By William F. Sharpe

If you have any interest at all in Canadian stamps, you should visit the British North America Philatelic Society‘s website.

The site is very well organized. You can navigate easily by hovering your mouse over the topics listed on the top horizontal menu on the home page.

One convenient feature is the “What’s New” choice, which will bring you up to date on what has been added to the site. You can locate items added back as far as 2002.

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BNA Topics, the official journal of BNAPS, is published quarterly. By following the link to the Horace W. Harrison online library, you can view issues of the journal back to 1944. However, issues from the most recent five to six years, are available only to society members.

You can browse the issues of BNA Topics or search them for topics of interest.

The online library includes a set of PDFs (Portable Document Files) that display the table of contents for each issue of the journal.

You also can view the cover of every issue BNA Topics. If you notice something of interest on the cover, click on the thumbnail image to open that issue.

In addition, you can do an online search of the journal of the Canadian Philatelic Society of Great Britain, Maple Leaves; and the Postal History Society of Canada’s publication, PHSC Journal.

The British North American Philatelic Society has 24 active study groups and 13 dormant ones. Newsletters are available online for many of these, including that of the BNAPS Fancy Cancel & Miscellaneous Markings Study Group. The newsletters of the inactive groups also are on the website.

The society includes regional groups located throughout Canada and the United States.

The Golden West group covers California, Nevada, and Oregon. This group will meet at 1 p.m. on Saturday, April 29, as part of the Westpex show at the San Francisco Airport Marriott hotel. This year’s program includes a presentation titled “An Overview of the Canadian Centennial Definitives 1967-1975.”

Upcoming regional group events through September are listed on the website.

The Pacific Northwest group, which includes British Columbia, Yukon, Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, publishes a newsletter that can be read online or downloaded.

The Prairie Beaver group, covering Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana, also publishes a newsletter available online.

Membership benefits include a sales circuit, plus a 40 percent discount on BNAPS books, along with the ability to view more recent publications online.

From the main page of the BNAPS site, you can download Canadian Philately — An Outline, a 96-page book that provides an overview of British North America collecting.

You also can download a perfin handbook, Canadian Stamps with Perforated Initials, which illustrates perfins (perforated initials) used by companies on Canadian stamps. Chapter 1 of this book explores the origins of perfins in Great Britain. Use of perfins in Canada started in 1887.

Links to online resources, both at the BNAPS site and elsewhere on the Internet, can be found by clicking the first topic under the Publications and Online Library main menu.

The group holds an annual convention, usually in Canadian cities, although several conventions have been held in the United States.

The 2017 convention will take place Sept. 1-3 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, in conjunction with the Calgary Philatelic Society’s Caltapex.

You can join BNAPS by completing the online application, found as the first selection under the Society menu near the top of the home page. You also can join by downloading the PDF application, printing it, completing it, and mailing it to BNAPS.

The cost of membership depends on where you live, when you join, and whether you want a one-year or three-year membership.