Thursday, July 4, 2013

A Stamp for Toronto from 1967


1967. A very big year for Canada. The Centennial Year, celebrating a century since Confederation. Expo in Montreal. Toronto's first modernist skyscrapers rising above the city. Yorkville in the Summer of Love. And also, much less famously, the year the post office made a stamp to commemorate the 100th anniversary of our city becoming the capital of Ontario. It's a mix of new and old. A pair of Torontonian Victorians stand by an early streetlamp and look out at the city of the future. Old City Hall. New City Hall. The Royal York Hotel. The Bank of Commerce Building. And towering above them all: one of those brand new sleek black modernist bank towers Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe had just designed for the Toronto-Dominion Centre.

I like this black and white version best, but there's also one in red and green. It was designed by a fellow by the name of Henry Thomas Prosser and engraved by Yves Baril (a Montrealer who spent 40 years as the head engraver at the Canadian Bank Note Company and was apparently involved in making more Canadian stamps — 144 — than any other artist ever).

The Postal History Corner has compiled some of Prossser's drafts, which kinda give you a neat look at his process. (They've got lots more information in their post here.)





 
 



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