TORONTO – Famous performers, noted female athletes and Canadian tragedies are among the new illustrations set to adorn Canadian postage stamps in 2014.
To coincide with the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, a series of stamps will be issued in February commemorating notable Canadian athletes.
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They include Saskatchewan curler Sandra Schmirler, who skipped Canada to the first gold medal in women’s curling at the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan.
Another stamp will honour freestyle-skiing pioneer Sarah Burke of Barrie, Ont., who died in a training accident in Utah in 2012.
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Figure skater Barbara Ann Scott of Ottawa, who won an Olympic gold medal in 1948 and who died last year, will also be honoured with a stamp.
Several country music stars will be featured on a new series of stamps to be issued in July – Tommy Hunter, k.d. lang, Renee Martel, Hank Snow and Shania Twain.
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Another stamp will highlight the Komagata Maru, a Japanese steamship carrying 376 people from India which was refused landing rights in Vancouver in May 1914.
Another stamp will mark the 100th anniversary of Canada’s worst peacetime maritime tragedy, also in May 1914. Just over 1,000 people died when the RMS Empress of Ireland sank in the St. Lawrence River, near Rimouski, Que., after colliding with a Norwegian vessel.
Other new stamps will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Royal Ontario Museum, the 75th anniversary of the National Film Board, the return of the CFL to Ottawa and the UNESCO World Heritage Site series.
Canada Post’s Black History series will add two stamps in 2014 to recognize two neighbourhoods with significant links to black history – Africville in Halifax and Hogan’s Alley in Vancouver.
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