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Canada, Hong Kong Release Coral Joint Issue

On May 19, Canada Post issued a souvenir sheet of four 48¢ domestic letter-rate commemoratives in a joint issue with Hong Kong, now a special administrative district of China.

Canada Post and Hong Kong Post each designed two of the four stamps, featuring corals native to the waters off their respective coasts. Canada’s corals are not as noticeable as tropical coral reefs because they are in deeper water, but they have a similar structure and richness of marine life.

Geoff Kehrig and Bonne Zabolotney of Signals Design Group created the Canadian stamps, using photographs courtesy of Derek Jones and Bill Austin. The Hong Kong Post stamps and overall souvenir sheet were designed by Bon Kwan. Backgrounds are deep sea blue black for the Canadian stamps, and a surface water azure blue for the Hong Kong stamps.

Eight million of the stamps will be available for sale May 19th, 2002. Lowe-Martin printed an order for 8 million stamps (2 million souvenir sheets) on Tullis Russell Coatings paper using six-color lithography. The Canada Post first-day cover was canceled in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Five species of corals found off the coasts of Canada are featured on the two lower-left stamps in the souvenir sheet.

The stamp depicting three corals shows the North Atlantic pink tree coral (left), the Pacific orange cup (center) and the North Pacific horn coral (right). To the right of this stamp, on the second Canadian-designed stamp, are depicted the North Atlantic giant orange tree coral (left) and a so-called black coral (despite its white color, which appears as green under water).

The Hong Kong-designed stamps feature the Dendronepthea gigantea (red), Dendronepthea (pink), Tubastrea and Echinogorgia corals.