| Pre-Provincial Porcelain License Plate!?!? |
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So, what do we have here? Obviously something that resembles a porcelain license plate, but is that what this actually is? |
While it shares many some of the characteristics of the first porcelain plates made for BC by the McClary Manufacturing Company in 1913, such as the white-on-cobalt blue colour scheme, gromets in the bolt holes, and even the font used on the numbers, the actual dimensions are somewhat smaller, measuring only 6 inches by 4 inches as opposed to the 8 inches by 5 inches that the 1913 BC motorcycle and 1913 City of Victoria porcelain plates measured. |
The absence of a jurisdiction or any other identifiying does not actually mean anything as it is not common for plates from the early pre-provincial era to display these - and if this is actually a three-digit plate, it would have been issued in May of 1908. |
Interestingly, the provincial motor vehicle register for this period indicates that the No. 323, was issued to S.C. Parker of Nanaimo. While it is not possible to prove that this is the actual number of the plate, Sidney C. Parker was the Manager of the Parker Electric Company of Church Street. The person who unearthed this plate resides in Nanaimo, however, the property on which it was found is understood to have belonged to the gardener at the Canadian Industries Limited (C.I.L.) explosive factory at some point in the past. |
Which brings us to another possibility, the plate is actually a sign, and possibly one used on a house. Among the many items that McClary made were house, street and seat number signs in the familiar white on blue background.
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What makes us here at BCpl8s.ca discount this option, apart from the use of gromets - whose purpose we assume would have been to reinforce the holes and ensure they were not torn apart while being used on something that vibrated - is that porcelain house numbers tend to be a little more elaborate in their design (such as the inclusion of a border line) as can be seen in the pages of the McClary catalgoue above, and in the photos below:
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HOUSE NUMBER |
HOUSE NUMBER |
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While we will probably never know the purpose of the porcelain plate dug-up in Nanaimo, we leave you with an image of a purported pre-provincial plate from Alberta from the collection of Woody1778a on Flickr:
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