On 29 June 1927, the Canada Post Office issued a series of five stamps to mark the 60th anniversary of Confederation. There was a desire to celebrate the anniversary in lavish style, given that the authorities had been content to issue just a single stamp for the 50th anniversary, which had fallen in the midst of the Great War in 1917.

The stamps issued in 1927 depict Sir John A. Macdonald, the Conservative Prime Minister at the time of Confederation (one-cent stamp); the Fathers of Confederation meeting at the Québec Conference in 1864, after a famous painting by Robert Harris (two-cent stamp); the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa (three-cent stamp); Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the first Liberal Prime Minister from 1898 to 1911 (five-cent stamp); and a map of Canada showing its transformation since Confederation (twelve-cent stamp). A twenty-cent Special Delivery stamp with the same features was also issued on this occasion, portraying all the modes of transportation used to dispatch the mail since Confederation in 1867. It depicts two aircraft, a dog sled, a horse, a steam train and a liner which is apparently the luxurious French steamship Île-de-France. A regular Canadian airmail delivery did not begin until a few months later, on 9 September 1927. Three other stamps were issued at the same time representing Thomas D’Arcy McGee (five cents), Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Sir John A. Macdonald (twelve cents), and Robert Baldwin and Sir Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine (twenty cents). This issue had originally been slated for release the year before, and was unrelated to the issue for the 60th anniversary of Confederation, even though it had the same release date. For the 60th anniversary, the idea was to present the stamps in the two languages of the founding peoples: English and French. This bilingual stamp issue was a first in the history of the Canada Post Office. In fact, however, only the words POST and POSTES are in both languages, since there is no accent on the word CONFEDERATION. This was justified by saying that it was customary at the time to omit accents on capital letters, but on the twenty-cent stamp the word EXPRÈS contains an accent grave. It is therefore erroneous to claim that this postage stamp series is completely bilingual. Yet, this was not the first time that French was to be found on Canadian stamps. In the Quebec Tercentenary issue of 1908, the values and official inscriptions (CANADA POSTAGE) are in English only, but the descriptions are in French only.

In 1928, an initiative led to the production of the first bilingual series of ordinary-issue stamps, namely the "escroll" series issued from 16 October 1928 to 6 January 1929. This is the series that contains the famous fifty-cent Bluenose. However, these attempts at bilingualism were confined to the words POSTES and POSTAGE; the other inscriptions continued to be in unilingual English. In fact it was not until 1 July 1947 that the other inscriptions on a Canadian postage stamp appeared in both official languages.

Technical Data

Various works and authors state that the stamps for the 60th anniversary of Confederation were engraved by the Canadian Bank Note Company Limited in Ottawa, except for the twenty-cent Special Delivery, which was engraved by the American Bank Note Company in New York. It should be noted that the Canadian Bank Note Company in Ottawa was not established until 1935, when it adopted this new corporate name to replace the American Bank Note Company in Ottawa. That made it much more "Canadian" in the eyes of the public. Thanks, however, to extensive research, and above all to the engraved proofs that have gradually come to light over the years, we now in fact know that all of these stamps were produced by the American Bank Note Company of New York, which was the head office of the Canadian Bank Note Company in Ottawa.

The dies were accepted on 20 April (one cent and five cents), 3 May (two cents) and 12 May 1927 (three cents and twelve cents). We still do not know the date on which the twenty-cent die was accepted.

We also lack the information to associate with certainty a given engraver with a given issue, as the majority of the known proofs are not signed. There is general agreement on the name of Edward Gunn for the one-cent and the two-cent. It would appear that Harold Osborn worked on the three-cent issue, since his name can be found on one proof. As for the other denominations, the work could have been done by Elie Thimothy, E. T. Loizeaux or William Ford. Since we know that, at the time, various engravers would work on the same project in their own specialty (such as design, numerals and letters), it will probably never be possible to say with certainty who did what.

With regard to the number of stamps issued, here again different authors suggest different figures, but our research leads us to believe that the quantities were as follows:

   One cent: 148 034 000 (6 plates of 400 stamps)
   Two cents: 333 757 000 (15 plates of 200 stamps)
   Three cents: 15 431 000 (3 plates of 200 stamps)
   Five cents: 26 627 000 (3 plates of 400 stamps)
   Twelve cents: 7 492 000 (2 plates of 200 stamps)
   Twenty cents: 671 400 (1 plate of 200 stamps)

Normand Caron