Selling Smoke
Selling Smoke

How Canadian Cigar Boxes Pitched Their Wares  1883-1935

Credits

 Tony Hyman

Tony Hyman is an American cigar box scholar who has been collecting and researching cigar packaging for more than five decades (he bought his first box when he was 12). Mr. Hyman’s knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject are as vast as his collection: his books and web site are essential resources for anyone interested in the history of cigar packaging. In 1999, with the help of a repatriation grant from Canadian Heritage, the Canadian Museum of Civilization (CMC) purchased Mr. Hyman’s collection of Canadian cigar boxes. The museum’s holdings in this area of Canadian social history are now the largest in the world.

 Friends of the collection

George Barnhill
George Barnhill, now at the Canadian War Museum, was Registrar of Collections at CMC in the early days of the cigar box research and acquisition. He took a much appreciated interest in the project and was instrumental in the purchase of several important boxes.

Cynthia Mcmenemy
Cynthia McMenemy, Waterloo, Ontario went out of her way to find boxes for the collection.

Eddie Echenberg
Eddie Echenberg, Magog, Quebec donated a goodly number of rare boxes by former cigar makers in Quebec's Eastern Townships, home of such luminary makers as J. Bruce Payne.


Sheldon Posen Curator
Charles Whalen Web Design and Development
Paula Sousa French Editor