Another in a series about local items selling on eBay.
A vintage QSL card from Trail radio station CJAT sold last month for $104.50 US.
The front showed photos of the station’s studio and transmitter, while the back, postmarked February 12, 1936 was addressed to F.E. Simpson of Montclair, New Jersey. It read: “Dear Frankey, Sorry cannot verify your report of Jan. 24th. On every night to 2 a.m. EST. Try again.”
Radio stations issued QSL cards to listeners, usually in far flung locations, to confirm — or in this case deny — they had received the signal.
An identical card mailed two days before the one above, sold in April 2006 for $51. It was sent to Arthur L. Robb of Topeka, Kansas, confirming he had in fact heard the station.
By 1936, CJAT, formerly community station 10AT, was a commercial venture that offered a mix of network and homegrown programming.
That fall, it fed a live dramatic series to the Dominion Network, The Ghost Walker, produced and directed by Mercer McLeod, who later worked on the London stage.
Today the station is known as EZ Rock.
• A nice bird’s-eye-view postcard of the Boundary ghost town of Phoenix yielded $34 US, despite some surface damage. Published by McRae Bros. Ltd. of Greenwood and Phoenix, it was mailed from Grand Forks to Mrs. E.C.W. MacColl of Port Moody in 1909.
The message read: “Dear Folks, Am staying here overnight … Saw the church and manse. It’s a peach. Next week I’m going out the Crow’s Nest and there will go up to Arrowhead and Revelstoke after I go to Spokane then to Port Moody. With love, your son Evan.”
Scottish-Canadian poet Evan MacColl, who died in 1898, was known as “the Gaelic Bard of Canada.” Was the postcard writer a descendent?
• An unused postcard from the Bank of British North America’s Kaslo branch, dating from between 1900 and 1909 sold for $16 Cdn.
The bank had its head office in London, and six branch offices in BC: Kaslo, Rossland, Greenwood, Ashcroft, Vancouver, and Victoria. It merged with the Bank of Montreal in 1918.
A few former branch buildings survive in Dawson City, Winnipeg, and Toronto.
• An 1896 stock certificate from the May Flower Gold Mining Co. sold for $46 US.
This company operated the May Flower mine, also known as the Olla Pordrida (after a Spanish stew), south of Rossland.
The company was incorporated that same year with a head office at Spokane. Its president, George F. Crane, was a New York banker and capitalist.
The claim, now part of the Maid of Erin group, has been drilled and poked at as recently as 1995.
The stock’s seller was in Fernley, Nevada.
This story will appear in the May 10 edition of the West Kootenay Advertiser.
