Antique 1900s - 1910s Dominion Park Fan Postcard 🃏 Montreal, Quebec

Size: 5 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches when closed ~ Little to no wear. They vary a little one to the next.

🍁 A Fan That Opens Into a Night at Dominion Park

This is a chromolithographed "Fan View Card" published by Valentine & Sons of Dundee, Scotland - a "WITH BEST WISHES" greeting card with gilt urns, autumn maple leaves, and Canada's own coat of arms at the foot of the panel. Slide the little brass-riveted tab and the card fans open into photographs of Dominion Park, Montreal's big amusement park on the St. Lawrence: the entrance archway, the Water Chute, Myth City, the exit from the House of Nonsense, Ye Olde Mill, and the Johnstown Flood show. The back is printed simply "Fan View Card," with "Valentine's Series - Printed in Great Britain" running up the left edge.

I can date this one with more confidence than most postcards in the shop: the Pointe-à-Callière museum in Montreal - the city's archaeology and history museum - holds the identical card in its Christian Paquin postcard collection, and dates it to 1906, calling it "one of the finest examples of pop-up fan card design," made by Valentine & Sons "for the Quebec market."

🎢 Dominion Park's First Season

Dominion Park was built by the American promoter Harry A. Dorsey. The land at Longue-Pointe was bought in December 1905 for $85,000, Dominion Park Ltd. was federally chartered that January 2 with $250,000 in capital, and Dorsey spent roughly $500,000 building the park before its gates opened on June 2, 1906 - 10,000 people came through that first day, 40,000 the next, arriving by streetcar over the Suburban Tramway & Power Co.'s line. Dorsey wasn't a one-park man: he'd already co-founded Wonderland in Minneapolis the year before, and he'd go on to build Scarboro Beach Park in Toronto the year after, on the same formula each time - a water ride, an old mill, a house of nonsense.

Every attraction pictured on this card's fan was running that first 1906 season: the Water Chute (La Ronde's La Pitoune log ride, 1967 to 2016, would echo it decades later), Ye Olde Mill's canoe ride through an artificial cave, Myth City, the House of Nonsense funhouse, and a walk-through show re-creating the 1889 Johnstown, Pennsylvania flood.

🔥 Three Fires and a Closing

Dominion Park burned three times: an off-season fire on November 6, 1907, that did over $100,000 in damage; a fire on June 28, 1913, that took the House of Nonsense with it; and a fire on August 10, 1919, at the Mystic Rill boat ride, that killed eight people. The park itself closed in the late 1930s, worn down by the Depression and the competition of the rival Belmont Park. It was demolished in April 1940, and the city bought the land that November. Today the site is Montreal's fire department training centre.

🖨️ Valentine & Sons

Valentine & Sons was founded in Dundee in 1825 and printed its first postcard in 1896; "Valentine's Series" was simply the firm's trade name for its view-card line, which by 1904 the company was advertising as "upwards of 50,000 different views" - not a limited run of any kind. The firm opened a Canadian office in Montreal under George Clark in 1903, and by 1909 had been bought out and reorganized as Valentine & Sons United Publishing Co. The same fan-card format went out for American resorts too - a sister card in the series covers the Casino at Asbury Park, New Jersey.

🛡️ The Arms on the Card

The coat of arms printed at the base of the card is Canada's own 1868 arms, combining the four founding provinces: Ontario's maple sprig under the cross of St. George, Quebec's fleurs-de-lis with a lion and maple leaves, Nova Scotia's thistles and a salmon, and New Brunswick's lion over a galley ship. It was Canada's only coat of arms until a new one was proclaimed in November 1921 - though the park photographs on the card's fan place it squarely in 1906.