Includes a serialized booklet that is full of fascinating images and facts about the Sable Island Horses.
Each set includes two 2-dollar stamps (one mint condition, one cancelled)*
2006 $5 Coin and Stamps Sets-Sable Island Horse
Off the coast of Nova Scotia, about 300km (186 mi) southeast of Halifax lies Sable Island, a 42 km (26 mi) long sandbar that’s about 1.5km (1 mi) wide, It’s a place of shifting beaches, in-land fields, freshwater ponds and horses. The horses are the only terrestrial mammals on the island. They share their home with seabirds, seals and a vast array of invertebrates and vegetation. How they got here has been the subject of much speculation-with the hundreds of shipwrecks that have been caused by the island since 1583, the notion that these horses are descendants of shipwrecked cargo is irresistible. Truth is, horses were deliberately being sent to the island to graze. The first ancestors of the current herd can be credited to Thomas Hancock, a Boston merchant and ship owner who transported Acadians to the American colonies during the deportation of 1755-1763. Apparently he took some of the horses that Acadians had to abandon and brought them to the island. Until the early 1900’s, small shipments of other types of domesticated horses were occasionally brought to the island in the hopes that a profitable new breed would result.