Globe, Alec (2022). Pioneer Mail Flights, the Semi-Official Air Post, and Canada’s Air Mail Development, 1918-1934.

Pioneer Mail Flights, the Semi-Official Air Post, and Canada’s Air Mail Development, 1918-1934, Alec Globe, September 2022, Spiral bound, 166 pages, 8.5 × 11, colour. World War I aeronautical progress led directly to the development of Canadian air mail from 1918 to 1934. ISBN: 978-1-989280-32-4. Stock #B4h923-114. Price: C$45.       The purpose of Pioneer Mail Flights, the Semi-Official Air Post, and Canada’s Air Mail Development, 1918-1934 is to study the development of air mail within Canada through pioneer mail flights and the Semi-Official Air Post from 1918 to 1934. It also shows how the Post Office Department (POD) phased out the Semi-Official Air Post by contracting air mail from 1927 to 1934.       Alec Globe was a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of British Columbia from 1970 to 2008. In 2009, he was researching a lavishly illustrated book by nineteenth-century Canadian writer Catharine Parr Traill and came across a wrapper enclosing printer’s proofs, franked with a single 2¢ Large Queen postage stamp. The beauty of the design and quality of the engraving had him instantly hooked. After exploring a number of areas, he settled on three areas where fine material was available—two-ring stamp obliterators, Railroad Post Offices of the nineteenth century, and—the subject of this book—air mail in the early twentieth century.