New Issue: Canada Post showcases five UNESCO World Heritage Sites

Canada Post has issued another five-stamp set as part of its ongoing series celebrating Canada’s UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

With this fourth issue of the UNESCO series, Canadians are being invited to discover the country’s early historic settlements while envisioning the origins of complex organisms on this planet.

“These sites are treasures for Canada and the world—and we hope that these stamps instill pride and arouse a sense of wonder in every Canadian,” said Canada Post President and CEO Deepak Chopra.

Three of the stamps feature sites that are new to the multi-year series, which has celebrated all 18 sites:

  • Mistaken Point, N.L., at the southeastern tip of Newfoundland, gives us some sense of what life looked like when organisms began to get larger than microbes and complex. Embedded along this gorgeous coastline are groups of the oldest known fossils of ancient soft-bodied life forms, dating back 560 to 580 million years. These strange multi-celled organisms ranged in size from as small as a fingernail to as long as a metre and had no legs or eyes. They are believed to be the planet’s first large life forms.

This stamp depicting Mistaken Point, N.L., is also part of the five-stamp set issued today by Canada Post.

  • The Historic District of Old Québec, Qué., founded in 1608 by Samuel de Champlain, is still bustling with activity, yet has maintained the integrity of essential historical buildings and spaces over more than four centuries. Fortified with walls, gates and bastions, this is the only colonial city north of Mexico to have preserved its ramparts.

The Historic District of Old Québec is depicted on this Permanent stamp.

  • L’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site, N.L., at the tip of Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula, contains timber-framed turf dwellings built by a Norse expedition more than 1,000 years ago. The settlement is the earliest known European presence in North America.

L’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site, N.L., is also being released today as part of the 2017 UNESCO World Heritage Sites series.

The remaining two stamps bear images of locations that previously appeared on U.S.-rate stamps issued in 2015. That year, Canada Post recalled a stamp for the first time ever after it was discovered the hoodoos shown on the 2015 $1.20 Dinosaur Provincial Park stamp were actually located in Drumheller, Alta., almost 200 kilometres away from Dinosaur Provincial Park.

This stamp issued in 2015 was recalled—a first ever for Canada Post—because it erroneously depicts hoodoos nearly 200 kilometres away from Dinosaur Provincial Park.

  • Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alta., was declared a World Heritage site for its exceptional fossil specimens of Cretaceous dinosaurs, as well as undisturbed badlands and riverside habitat.
  • Red Bay Basque Whaling Station, N.L., on the south coast of Labrador, is the most complete and extensive example of a 16th-century Basque whaling station in North America.

The fifth stamp of Canada Post’s latest issue depicts Red Bay Basque Whaling Station, N.L.

World Heritage Sites are chosen by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), which “seeks to encourage the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity.”

Designed by Lara Minja, of Lime Design, the 24 mm by 20 mm self-adhesive stamps are sold in booklets of 10 and 30. A gummed souvenir sheet of the five stamps, an official first-day cover cancelled in Trepassey, N.L., and postage-paid postcards of the three new stamp images are also available. Postage-paid postcards for Dinosaur Provincial Park and Red Bay Basque Whaling Station are also available.

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