The Matchcover Storyteller

So  —  I  don’t know how I came into this great set of old covers, almost certainly 1950s.  As nice as it is (some are struck), it’s also the most frustrating to someone like me who loves to “know more”.  Maybe you have other, richer resources, but every bit of information on these covers is just not easily available.

There is nothing  available in normal sources about the “Imperial Tobacco Shop”   (or “Imperial Billiards”, or “News Stand”).  There is no 188 King Street W. in Kitchener; there is a 188 King Street NORTH with a modern apartment building that includes student housing.   There’s a Nick Angeloff, but he’s a contemporary professor at Waterloo University; as a 1950s proprietor of the Imperial Tobacco Shop, no.

I didn’t even bother with the 5-digit phone numbers. 

 And there is nothing on a horse named “Cadency”  —  well, actually, yes there is, but the horse therein is from the late 1980s and 1990s, including  Cadency” and one “Cadency Dancer”, an offspring of the great Canadian thoroughbred “Northern Dancer”.   But none of those are this horse on the matchcover!

I thought I might have luck with the manumark, but no  — “The Book Match Mfg. Co, Toronto” may have been a local jobber, but if there’s a record (and I’m sure there is), it’s not so readily accessible.

Look, I don’t really mean to pour my frustration out on you, but this is, to me, a cool set of old covers and I optimistically believe old covers like these have stories, histories; there’s a reason that horse is pictured on these, there has to be.  I just haven’t found it  —

Yet.