This is the first installment of a four-part series.
By Ian Robertson
With last year’s production increased, collectors’ albums will require more space for all versions of 2024 Canadian stamps.
For one in every format – totalling 75 – the pre-tax cost was $77.14, compared with $52.28 for all 2023 definitives and commemoratives, $91.02 for the 2022 stamps.
With one exception, all of last year’s stamps were included as singles in Canada Post’s four quarterly packs, which are sold at face value.
Having a full set includes booklet stamps with four-sided die-cut perforations and self-adhesive polyvinyl gum, mini sheets with moisture-activated gum and four-sided pin perfs, oversized souvenir panes with four-sided pin perfs and moisture-activated gum, plus coil stamps with self-stick adhesive.
Since postage rates increased last May 6, nine new small-format horizontal “Far and Wide” definitives were released that day, the fourth set in a series. With one exception, all measure 24 by 20 millimetres.
The photographic images “take Canadians on a cross-country journey to nine scenic locations,” a Canada Post news release states.
A $1.15 Far and Wide coil stamp with four-sided perfs, available in strips of 10 from the philatelic department, measures 26 by 22 mm, the release added. It described a smaller 24-by-20-mm stamp, available in strips of four and 10, which was not included in the quarterly pack.
All nine stamps were printed on 70,000 souvenir sheets, which cost $12.51.
Five definitives with P denominations representing the new first-class 99-cent mail rate – increased from 92 cents – were in booklets and rolls.
They feature:
• Tongait KakKasuangita SilakKijapvinga, also known as Torngat Mountains National Park, in Newfoundland, photographed by Michael Winsor;
• Tehjeh Deé – South Nahanni River – in Nááts’įhch’oh National Park Reserve, Northwest Territories, photographed by Colin Field;
• sunflowers in Altona, Man., photographed by Mike Grandmaison;
• a shoreline view James Stevenson photographed through a cave on British Columbia’s Galiano Island;
• and Quebec’s Abbaye de Saint-Benoît-du-Lac, photographed by Ladislas Kadyszewski.
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