A recent MaxSold auction here in Kingston included at least five stamp lots. Three comprised card file boxes with a few stamps carefully mounted on cards, with Scott numbers pencilled in, filed by country. I thought, "Wow, that was an organized, meticulous collector!" I was unsuccessful on those three, the highest bid was $33. By contrast, I won these two - the shoebox lot on paper (below) for $23 and the mint Canada lot (above) for $29 - interestingly, when I added all the mint Canadian postage I've found so far, there is at least $32! Feast your eyes on this spread - doesn't that look like a huge, fun sort? As much as I wanted to view that philed philately, I really looked forward to the messy mélange looming in this lot:
Mint Canada 1976 Olympics. Some had been removed from the commemorative presentation books put out by Canada Post that year. Surprisingly, I was lacking one of these stamps, had several Used, and most of the rest of the Olympic stamps in my collection were Mint Hinged. I put these in mounts and albumized them already, so my complete 1976 Olympics collection is now MNH. Thank you, collector!
The binder at centre of the top photo caught my eye - check out this label on the inside front cover. When we made things here! DuPont, hmmm. A lot of Kingstonians have been employed there since the plant opened during WWII.
I became curious about some of the interesting covers...so many addressed to Montreal addresses, many from Estonia, and many of those bore Russian stamps! Utsal is an Estonian surname.
More covers - addressed to the same addressee but now in Oakville. As a former Quebec resident who also moved to Ontario, I can identify:
Yet more covers, now to two addresses in Kingston:
By now I was really curious, and I did an online search to find out more about the Utsals. If I could, I would write a small note beside many of the notable stamps I've collected over the years...where they came from, who sent them to me, but unfortunately that would visually clutter the albums.
Nonetheless, I'll present several data points here. Jack Utsal arrived in Canada as a child, graduating from Grade 9 at Montreal West High School in 1954, then McGill University in 1961. They moved to Kingston in 1998. Mr Utsal was a prolific Letter to the Editor writer to the Kingston Whig-Standard, on topics ranging from wind turbines to the scarcity of downtown housing, to recycling. There was even a Whig photo that made it to the wire services showing him dropping off his leaves at the Kingston recycling centre! Carol also made it to the editorial page, and was a sorority member. Other auction lot photos were taken in the f
ormer mill at the foot of Gore St., with the Block D condos visible in the background, though I picked up the lots at a different location. It's obvious that the Utsals were prolific correspondents!
The Utsals had three children. Interestingly, their children Kate and Michael gave them grandchildren within a month of each other in 1995! Their youngest daughter Helen was married in 2002. In the mid-nineties, Jack's parents died within two years of each other in the Toronto area. Also interestingly, his mother Salme was a professional artist in Montreal, exhibiting in Westmount. A contact in the UK continued sending Jack mint British issues in the 1980s. These will be enjoyable to go through, and I know several of these sets are Used in my UK collection - they too will now be MNH. Look at those interesting British baggies:
Here are the many, many mint UK sets!
Several of the newspaper notices I read revealed that the Utsal family was in tune with the environment, natural life and art. The Utsals' daughter Helen is a professional artist to this day on Vancouver Island, and her nature art is really impressive.
One of the most touching, personal parts of this collection that I am now proud to be part of is that tiny piece of red construction paper you can see in the top photo. Written in a child's script is the inscription, "Merry Christmas Dad! love, Katie". Then, the red paper is wrapped in scotch-taped Saran Wrap, with five Canadian stamps floating around inside! His daughter definitely knew what he liked.
