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History

New stamps unveiled of Canada's UNESCO world heritage sites

  • May 30, 2014
  • 327 words
  • 2 minutes
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A lot of snail-mail may be bills and packages from Amazon, but there’s something undeniably special about getting a letter in the mail, particularly if its envelope is adorned with one of Canada Post’s new UNESCO world heritage stamps.

The new stamps celebrate five of Canada’s 17 UNESCO sites and are a result of requests by Canadians for more stamps featuring Canadian landscapes, according to Jim Phillips, director of stamp services at Canada Post. In the next three to four years, Phillips says Canada Post will issue commemorative stamps of all the current and future sites.

In the current package of five, there are two international-rate stamps: one of totems from British Columbia’s SGang Gwaay and one of Ottawa’s Rideau Canal. The remaining three United States-rate stamps feature landscapes in Lunenburg, N.S., Grand-Pré, N.S. and Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, Alta. Phillips says collectors should buy them quickly as less than one million were printed.

But if you miss your chance to buy them, don’t worry. Phillips says they will eventually be reissued as smaller “definitive” stamps (the standard sized stamps used for national mail). For the curious, there are already booklets of definitive stamps of a future batch of commemorative-sized UNESCO stamps on sale now.

If you want to spruce up a letter to a history buff rather than a nature lover, Canada Post just issued two new stamps commemorating the 100th anniversary of the loss of the Empress of Ireland. The stamps were unveiled Thursday at the opening of the Canadian Museum of History’s new exhibit about the ship’s sinking.

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Stamp of SGang Gwaay, B.C. (Photo: Courtesy of Canada Post)
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Stamp of Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, Alta. (Photo: Courtesy of Canada Post)
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Stamp of the landscapes of Grand-Pré, N.S. (Photo: Courtesy of Canada Post)
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Stamp of the Rideau Canal in Ottawa. (Photo: Courtesy of Canada Post)
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