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The Canadian Meter Study Group

In June 1981, The Canadian Meter Study Group, CMSG, was formed as a group of the Postal History Society of Canada. Clay Rubec was the editor of the Canadian Meter Stamp Newsletter until about 1986. He edited 18 issues of the Newsletter. The Group had about 30 active members. Another short-lived group began at this time and CMSG suspended operation. At CAPEX in 1988, Leland Brown, Ross Irwin and David Cooper agreed to restart CMSG. Ross Irwin became Editor of the Newsletter and Dave Cooper was Associate Editor and business manager. They have continued in those roles since. From his first issue (No. 19) in the Spring of 1988 Professor Irwin has used the newsletter to develop the CMSG catalog by providing a few pages at a time with the objective of having members record missing items. These pages are interspersed in the Newsletter issues. This library includes all issues of the CMSG Newsletter and an Index compiled by Irwin. The CMSG Catalog is also assembled separately.

In 1972, Ross Irwin published Canadian Meter Postage Stamp Catalog, 28 pages which sold for 95 cents. This issue was reprinted and in 1975 he published a second edition of 68 pages which sold for $3.00. It included postage meters issued to 1969.

In 2004, Ross Irwin published a revised Canada Meter Postage Stamp Catalog based on the CMSG catalog. Where the CMSG Catalog numbering system (as with earlier Irwin Catalogs) was roughly based on the year the meter type first appeared, the 2004 edition is based on manufacturers.

Since 2006 Canada Post has standardized the appearance of postage meters, the only difference being the serial number which can be associated with a meter model. The challenge has gone out of the collection of metered mail.

The type collection of Canada and Newfoundland, formed by Ross Irwin, is now at Archives Canada and is available as a pdf file. The information included here can also be found at this site. Although the PHSC study group is inactive at this time, more current information is available at the Meter Stamp Society website.

The CMSG Newsletter and Index

The seventy issues of the CMSG Newsletter, issues between 1981 and 2005, are available here. A static index has been compiled. This can be consulted to locate a desired issue. The newsletters themselves can be found in a table on the Archive page. We hope to be able to provide a searchable index sometime in the future.


An example of a Type 7.3 meter produced by a Pitney-Bowes Model HX or HT machine. Used by Western Freight Lines in Chatham, Ontario.