It is often said that you can learn much about a country's history
and culture from its postage stamps. Pierre Berton, for instance,
has written that on postage stamps "the great milestones of the
past" in Canadian history "have all been recorded in
miniature."1 A
closer examination demonstrates that postage stamps have usually
presented a selective reading of the public identity and that some
narratives are privileged and others are neglected. In a recent
study of the politics of commemoration, John R. Gillis has pointed
out that public memories and identities are socially constructed
and are embedded in complex class, gender, and power relations
that determine what is remembered or forgotten. Several groups,
including workers, minorities, young people, and women, have been
relatively slow to gain admission to the public memory.
2
As a rule postage stamps have rated low in the hierarchy of modern
cultural taste, and historians have devoted surprisingly little
attention to this widely circulated form of public
iconography.3 As
early as 1947, however, the Canadian artist Charles Comfort argued
that the postage stamp was "a valuable instrument of discreet
national publicity": "The stamp carries its message far
afield. A well-designed stamp does more than show that the sender
has paid the prescribed rate of postage. It brings to the recipient,
whether at home or abroad, something of the character, the national
dignity, the contemporary awareness of the state in which it had
its origin."4
Indeed if we understand stamps as a source of "government
messages" about a country, social historians have suggested,
then we need to consider "what kind of knowledge is produced"
by the experience of contact with and collection of stamps by
millions of people both at home and around the
world.5
This discussion offers a modest case study in the politics of
Canadian identity. It is prompted by a larger concern about the
representation of the worker in Canadian history in general and in
public culture in particular.6
It also contributes to the emerging work on images of labour in
Canadian visual culture. Researchers such as Rosemary Donegan have
pointed to the existence of an iconography of labour embedded in
the specific cultural artefacts produced by workers' organizations
and in the general body of work produced by Canadian
artists.7 In this
case, however, we are looking at a form of official culture
produced by the state, often through the use of staff artists
employed in the graphic arts industry, though by the 1950s the
designs were opened to the talents of a number of artists of
stature such as Emanuel Hahn, Charles Comfort, and A.J.
Casson.8
Historically, the selection of subject matter and designs for
Canadian stamps has been the prerogative of the minister
responsible for the Post Office. Since 1969 a more formal
structure has prevailed in the form of an appointed Stamp
Advisory Committee representing interest groups in the visual
arts, philatelic and, occasionally, historical community. It
considers proposals from various sources, including the public,
and its annual recommendations are submitted for approval by the
Board of Directors of Canada Post. The policy guidelines are of
a very general nature and suggest that stamps should "instil
pride in their country in the minds and hearts of all
Canadians" and "have popular appeal to broad segments of
the Canadian population." Stamps should also "evoke
Canadian history, traditions, accomplishments or natural
heritage," commemorate "deceased persons generally
recognized as having made outstanding contributions to
Canada" and "illustrate the social, cultural or economic
life of Canada."9
This discussion was also provoked in part by the first page of
Greg Kealey's chapter on labour history in the useful handbook
Writing About Canada that was published in 1990 by Prentice-Hall
Canada Inc.10 In
this book the designer used a Canadian postage stamp to
illustrate the first page of each chapter. Accordingly, the
Fathers of Confederation (1917) (#135) appear at the beginning
of Reg Whitaker's chapter on politics. For the chapter on labour,
however, the designer chose a 1957 stamp (#372)
celebrating the Universal Postal Union, an international agency
that held its meetings in Ottawa that
year.11
Canada Scott 372
Stamp reproduced courtesy of Canada Post Corporation
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But if this was not the right stamp for the occasion, what were
the alternatives? How many, among the more than 1,500 postage
stamps issued by the Canadian post office since the 19th century,
recognize the contributions of working people to Canadian history?
In short, what can we learn from postage stamps about the place
of workers in Canadian history?
This survey reveals the presence of working people on a large
and varied number of postage stamps. At the same time it is also
apparent that the presence of workers is in most cases incidental
to the main purpose of representation. Accordingly, the
discussion begins with the gaze of
exclusion. It then proceeds to an examination of what may be
called the gaze of inclusion,
which may also, we find, be a gaze of subordination or
marginalization. We then examine a more limited category, the
gaze of assertion, in which the working-class
presence is more directly represented. Here we find that
few if any of these stamps are commemorations of labour organizations,
labour leaders, or labour history. There is also a brief effort to
place the Canadian evidence in perspective
by reference to the labour stamps issued in Britain, France, Australia,
and the United States. The discussion concludes with some
suggestions for an agenda in this
realm of cultural politics.