Looking through some boxes the other day I came across part of my childhood stamp collection, including a weathered album with pages arranged by country, several devoted to Canada.  This album, dating to 1953, originally belonged to my mother when she was a child and, at some point, had been handed down to me.   As I paused to consider the many stamps haphazardly pasted into the album, I realized that my first exposure to Canada came through these artistic little pieces of paper.

The earliest Canadian stamp in the album is a green-tinted square from 1898 that is graced with the dour visage of Queen Victoria.  While the British royal family appears to be the most popular subject matter among these stamps, there are also many richly tinted tributes to various aspects of Canada’s history and culture.  Several selections from my well worn collection appear below.

Lastly, here are a couple of U.S. stamps, one from 1967 and the other from 1968, commemorating Canada and both from my early collection.  I think it’s fitting that on the centennial stamp, the simple lines of the landscape appropriately harken back to the style of the Group of Seven’s Lawren Harris.