Canadian DPM prototype?

Hi, I ran into a bizarre set of DPM this morning. Guy claims to have got them from a Peerless employee, the uniform is identical in style to the plain Canadian OD Mk II combat uniform, with the slanted chest pockets and oversized buttons, but they were printed in a type of DPM camouflage, identical to this:



Camopedia claims that it's a Tanzanian print, which was made by Peerless for the Tanzanian army, but the tags are blanks with hand-written size numbers in sharpie pen.

Would these be the elusive Tanzanian uniforms or some sort of prototype. Maybe even a Canadian Forces trial uniform?

Your help would be greatly appreciated.

I have a "Tanzanian" jacket and it is, indeed, identical to the standard OD type. Mine is badged correctly for a Canadian para. No tags on it.

From a reliable source it would appear these were trialed in the 1970s by the 5 CMBG (Valcartier, Quebec). The trials did not result in a Canadian contract, obviously. The manufacturer either had surplus items it sold off to Tanzania or it made a new contract for Tanzania based on what they had done for the Canadians. Either way, it appears this started out as a Canadian Trials.

Steve

That's very interesting, thanks for the input.

Is there any way to distinguish the trial uniforms from Tanzanian contract pieces? I'm guessing the hand-written tags would be used on the trial prototypes rather than series production uniforms...

I have no idea. There are so few out there and it's possible they are exactly the same items for both uses. These things didn't last long in use. The fabric is terrible. Even worse than the type used for the Mk II OD uniform.

Steve