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David Williams

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Featuring everything from Anne of Green Gables to bygone Hollywood movie stars and a 100-year-old coin, Canada Post was busy in June issuing new stamps that should be popular with more than just collectors.

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Courtesy Canada PostThis souvenir sheet containing two stamps from Canada Post celebrates the centenary of the first publication of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s novel ‘Anne of Green Gables.’ One stamp features a painting of Anne; the second shows her beloved Green Gables house.

It's been 100 years since Lucy Maud Montgomery's novel about irrepressible Anne Shirley was published. To mark the anniversary, the post office has issued a pair of bright and colourful stamps.

Both feature original paintings, one of Anne holding some flowers and another of her beloved Green Gables. The frames of the stamps have been fashioned to resemble the pages of a book with deckle edges, like those printed in 1908.

The stamps were issued in booklets of 10 self-stick stamps and a souvenir sheet of two gummed stamps. The stamps in the souvenir sheet are the third issue from Canada Post to feature the maple-leaf shape perforation between the two stamps.

And, not, surprisingly, this was a joint issue with Japan, where Anne has been extremely popular since after the Second World War, when the first copies of Akage no An (Anne of the Red Hair) began to circulate. Today, thousands of Japanese travel to Cavendish each year to visit Anne's fictional home.

Canada Post also created a cancellation mark for the town of Avonlea for the stamp's official first day cover. This is the first time the post office has produced a cancellation for a fictional place. It is paired with an official cancel from Cavendish.

On June 30, Canada Post issued its second set dedicated to Canadians in Hollywood. The quartet of stamps features Norma Shearer, Marie Dressler, Raymond Burr and Chief Dan George.

Portraits of these stars were done by Neal Armstrong, the artist who painted the images in the first set of Hollywood stamps issued two years ago. The background connects the actor to their best known work, with Burr's, for example, showing the Perry Mason courtroom and Chief George's depicting a plains scene from the milestone film Little Big Man.

Earlier in June, the post office issued stamps to mark the 100th anniversaries of the Canadian Nurses Association and the Royal Canadian Mint.

The stamp saluting the mint shows one of the first coins it minted, a 100-year-old 50-cent piece. And it is a well-used 50-cent piece, not a mint-edition copy. To further accentuate the coin, the stamp has a high-relief image achieved through special embossing techniques.

And here's a reminder to collectors that you can now order corrected booklets of the lighthouse definitive stamps. First issued in December, a lighthouse depicted on one of the five stamps in the booklet got flipped so that everything was backwards. A version with the correct image has been reprinted and can be ordered through the National Philatelic Centre in Antigonish, N.S.

David Williams madwill@nbnet.nb.ca is a stamp collector in Saint John. His column appears the second Saturday of the month.