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Painted over licence plate a mystery
Chris Clegg
for Spotlight
The mystery rages on!
A 1933 licence plate collected by the Goutier family is one of the rarest in Alberta and one which contains a mystery.
The plate, issued in 1933, was later painted over with an expiry date March 31, 1940.
Why did this happen or what it a prank?
The Alberta Licence Plate history provided by canplates.com/Alberta.html provides an answer but with one glaring abnormality.
“From 1938-52, plates were marked to expire 3/31 of that year,” reads the website.
That claim coincides with the painted expiry date of March 31, 1940.
However, the website adds the following:
“For many years, if you lost one of your plates, a replacement one was made up from a blank with the numbers painted on.”
While the numbers are clearly painted on and match the font and size with photos of plates on the websites, the plate is not a blank, however. The old numbers are clearly visible underneath the black lettering.
Therefore, the practice of issuing a plate with numbers painted on applied only to blank plates. This one is clearly not “lost” but yet still painted over.
So, it is a prank or did the office registering the plate simply allow the “painting over” since they had no blank plates? Probably the latter.
Camille and Antoinette Goutier have a large collection of vintage licence plates which can be seen and purchased at Picture the Memories in High Prairie. Cost is $20 each. Antoinette says it’s a family collection they’ve had since 1968.
Here are some other interesting facts about Alberta licence plates provided by the website:
* vehicles were required to be registered in 1906. The province assigned a number and the motorist was required to provide the markers. These were usually made of leather or sometimes painted directly on the vehicle.
* Joe Morris was assigned No. 1 and displayed his number using a broomstick. After being dragged into court he won his case by arguing that the broomstick was in the shape of the number one.
* in 1912 the government began issuing annual licence plates.
* porcelain licence plates were issued in 1912-13.
* in 1914 the first steel licence plate is issued
* in 1937 a windshield sticker is used to validate the 1936 plate. The same occurred in 1945 for 1944 plates. There is no dated 1937 plate.
* in 1952 beaded reflectorized numbers appear on plates for the first time. This marked the first Canadian province to issue all plates in this fashion. Ontario had similar plates in 1939 but only for doctors.
* a plate sticker is used to validate 1973 plates.
* reflectorization is abandoned in 1992 because of cost.
* Many number and letter combinations have been used over the years and many slogans such as “Drive Safely” from 1941-42 and “Wild Rose Country” from 1973-1984 to the wild rose graphic we see today.
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