McTaggart-Cowan, Ian (2005). The Law Stamps Of British Columbia And Their Uses 1879-1984.

The Law Stamps Of British Columbia And Their Uses 1879-1984 exhibit contains proofs, bisects and some quite rare imperforate examples of British Columbia Law stamps. Among the many documents are two presented to the Privy Council in London, and another pair processed by courts in France or Egypt before entering the Canadian judicial system. The collection was assembled by Ian McTaggart-Cowan during a period that coincided with the decision of the government of BC to do away with Provincial Registries. These had been maintained in the administrative and judicial centers of the province, most of which maintained County and Supreme Court records locally. Realization grew that little or no reference was being made to the majority of documents in the registries. At the same time facilities in Victoria, Vancouver and New Westminster were growing rapidly and required constant and growing attention. A few of the smaller registries, maintained in courthouse basements, had accidental floods that called for a realistic view of need and demand.Unfortunately the registries were mostly a local responsibility and there was little guiding philosophy from the provincial government in the matter. Bit by bit the larger registries were examined to identify the categories of records likely to serve a long-term legal purpose. The remaining documents were marked for destruction. It appeared that the provincial archives did not see these collections as a source of interesting historical documents; little or no attention was given to identifying papers of unusual historical interest. There seems to be no official record of what happened to the various local registries. Vancouver documents were incinerated under supervision, though some papers were made available to a local collector. A few people with an interest in identifying documents of special historical significance managed to have some documents preserved.Ian McTaggart-Cowan has been involved in Canadian philately for many years. In addition to his British Columbia exhibit he has also prepared a Gold-award winning exhibit of the Law Stamps of Yukon, published in 2004 as BNAPS Exhibit Series Book #33. Ian has written many articles on revenue subjects as diverse as the Weights and Measures, Gas and Light inspection stamps of Canada, and Federal, Alberta and British Columbia Wildlife stamps.