Ralph Lavers’ hobby is in the mail
It’s amazing what can be done these days with the click of a button.
People from all over the world can communicate instantaneously thanks to the help of technology.
Ralph Lavers, who lives just outside of Island Brook, has an interest in pre-email communication. He is a gold medalist in postal history. “My collection includes all ways and means,” Lavers said, from postage delivered by horse-drawn carriage, hot air balloon, and even dogsled delivery.
Lavers has been collecting stamps and bits of postal history for close to 60 years.
After being laid off from his job at Massey Ferguson in Brantford, Ont, Lavers moved to Barnston and considered buying a farm in the area. While there, he joined the Stanstead Stamp club.
His first acquisition was a letter from the Texas Rangers.
“I bought it for a quarter,” he said, and has been collecting ever since.
The oldest correspondence in his collection is a letter from England, postmarked 1676.
Lavers said he has around 5,000 postcards from the Townships alone.
His collection even includes mail that travelled all the way around the world, and mail that has been to the moon.
For Lavers, each article in his collection carries with it a piece of history.
Even a simple, seemingly insignificant correspondence intrigues Lavers, knowing it has crossed the desk of a Canadian Prime Minister, or been initialed by one of the Fathers of Confederation.
Referring to postcards featuring photos of Orville Wright and Charles Lindbergh, Lavers pointed out that postage trends, either stamps, postcards or the subject matter of correspondence offers a great snapshot of a given time in history.
One of his favourite stamps in his collection is from the 1980s when people could create their own personalized stamps.
Lavers had one made of himself with a picture of his wife.
“I sent it to myself,” he laughed.