Exhibition Report from Anthony Presgrave, MAP
Accord Judge

Royal *2009* Royale was held at St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada from 12 to 14 June; the 2009 exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the granting of the Royal title for the Royal Philatelic Society of Canada in 1959.  The exhibition was hosted this year by the St. Catharines Stamp Club.  St Catharines is a city of some 132,000 people situated on the southern shore of Lake Ontario about an hours drive from Toronto and within a short drive of Niagara Falls.

There were 225 frames of exhibits in the following classes:

• Postal Class (Traditional, Postal History, Postal Stationery & Aerophilately) - 27 entries

• Revenue Class - 1 entry

• Thematic Class - 2 entries

• Illustrated Mail Class - 1 entry

• Display Class - 5 entries

• One Frame Class - 21 entries

• Cinderella Class- 1 entry

• Youth Class - 1 entry

The Display Class is equivalent to our Social Philately Class.

The jury consisted of six members and two apprentices. The chairman of the jury was Mr. Jim Taylor and the judges, Mr. Richard Malott, Ms. Arlene Sullivan, Mr. Tim Bartshe, (USA), Mr. Joel Weiner and myself as the Australian Accord judge.  The apprentices were Mr. George Constantourakis and Mr. Stephane Cloutier. We used the points scoring system that is used in Australia, and is now being introduced in the USA and Canada, and all exhibits except the youth were judged to the same scale of points. Although we were divided into three teams we actually all judged all exhibits as individuals and then our scores were averaged to give the final figure and award. Large Gold, Large Vermeil and Large Silver medals were not provided for in the awards list.

The standard of exhibits was high with 15 Gold, 23 Vermeil and 15 Sliver medals. I took three exhibits to the exhibition and all were in the Postal Class (details listed below); . A critique was conducted on the Sunday morning and this lasted 2 hours leaving little time to discuss individual exhibits in the frames.

There were around 35 dealers present, 8 from USA, 1 from UK and the rest Canadian, and business was brisk every day with quite high attendances and many viewing the exhibits.

Australian Medal Results:

For more information about the exhibition including details of all entries and medal results, visit the exhibition website.