Canada Post sweetens spring with maple sugar stamps

By Ian MacKay

Two new postage stamps celebrate making maple sugar.

Canada Post issued both stamps in the shape of maple syrup cans, “just as the scents, sounds and tastes of the season come to life at sugar shacks,” a Canada Post statement said. Revealed at Cabane Panache, a festival in Montréal, “the stamps celebrate sugaring-off season and pay tribute to Quebec’s iconic sugar shacks,” the statement said.

“Indigenous peoples of the Eastern Woodlands, including the W8banakiak (Abenakis), the Anishinaabeg (Anishinaabe), the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and the Mi’gmaq (Mi’kmaq), were producing maple products long before the arrival of European settlers,” the statement noted. “They shared their ancestral knowledge with early French colonists, who adapted their methods over time.”

People in Quebec and eastern Ontario began boiling sap from maple trees in small shacks during the 1850s and, although sugar bushes have grown in size, artisanal techniques are still in practice, the statement said. Quebec produces 90 per cent of Canada’s maple syrup and more than 70 per cent of the world’s supply.

Illustrator Gérard DuBois and Montréal graphic design firm Paprika created the stamps and associated products.