For centuries, love-sick couples have written missives, commemorating the date of Valentine's Day – but the practice holds a fluctuating popularity in Nanaimo.
"There's some themes that persist," explained Steph Kveton, the Nanaimo Museum's program coordinator. "That's things like flowers and hearts and the colour pink or the colour red, and sending sweet thoughts to someone on that day."
On Feb. 12, 1887, almost a decade and a half after Nanaimo was made a municipality, the Nanaimo Daily News warned its readers that it appeared the post office would not be able to meet the demand for postage stamps, as "St. Valentine has run the blockade" due to the massive amount of cards being sent.
"We believe there are scarcely any one-cent stamps in stock and the balance are in the blockage," the article notes.
Shortly after the big day, another article stated that "Mr. Postmaster Earle was kept quite busy" from the traffic. The entire stock of one-cent stamps had been used up, resulting in customers purchasing two-cent stamps to use instead, "thus adding materially to the dominion revenue."
Over the following decade, that interest would dry up. By 1894, a lengthy editorial from the paper dismissed the practice of sending valentines entirely.
"In accordance with a somewhat time-worn and now rapidly decaying custom, a number of more or less inartistic 'valentines' were distributed through the mail, here and elsewhere today, Feb. 14," the writer mused. "Valentine's Day was, many years ago, quite an important event in the lives of the youths of both sexes in certain parts of England and France."
By 1899, the blurb for Valentine's Day was considerably shorter, simply reading, "Today is St. Valentine's Day and Postmaster Horne has hardly realized it."
Yet, despite this decline, families continue to recognize the holiday across Nanaimo into 2025.
"It's interesting to see these fluctuating patterns," Kveton told the News Bulletin. "I think it continues today where people were buying their cards from the store, just like they were [in the past], and people have also been making their own. We heard from the editor here about these 'inartistic valentines,' kind of making a judgment call on people's artistic skills."
To commemorate the occasion, on Friday and Saturday, Feb. 14-15, the Nanaimo Museum will be displaying several vintage valentines, provided by the Nanaimo Community Archives. Craft supplies will also be provided for families to make their own vintage-inspired valentines.
Love poems will be available in the reading corner, and hidden hearts and groundhogs are scattered throughout the museum for an 'I Spy' scavenger hunt.
