Canada celebrates Pride Month with 4 beautiful LGBTQ+ postage stamps

While the U.S.A. government removes symbolic gestures that honour LGBTQ+ Americans, Canada’s government is acknowledging LGBTQ+ history with a series of Pride Month postage stamps.

According to ‘LGBTQ Nation’, Canada Post introduced the new “Places of Pride” stamps earlier this month, including one that honours Hanlan’s Point Beach, a gathering spot for LGBTQ+ people for nearly a century. Situated on Centre Island in the Toronto Islands (in Lake Ontario), the beach gained a reputation as a gay meeting place since the 1930s, close enough to Toronto for accessibility yet requiring a boat ride, which reduced but didn’t eliminate police harassment.

During the 1950s and 60s, efforts such as the demolition of nearby cottages and the removal of trees were made to deter gay visitors, according to the Friends of Hanlan’s website, yet the LGBTQ+ community continued to frequent the area. The beach hosted the Gay Day Picnic in 1971, considered Canada’s first LGBTQ+ Pride event.

Police carried out undercover operations and mass arrests at the site in subsequent decades.

Now, it is being acknowledged for its historical significance in queer history with a postage stamp designed by queer artist Tim Singleton. The design features two men, one shirtless, at the beach with pink balloons.

“Beyond the obvious, the shoreline and the skyline, the stamp had to depict something more intangible: community,” Travis Myers from Friends of Hanlan’s explained to CityNews. “As the drafts came along, Tim was able to bring that to life spectacularly. For anyone who has been to this place in the present or in decades past, you can feel your experience reflected in the vibrant look of the stamp.”

This stamp is part of four Pride Month stamps released by Canada Post this year. The others celebrate Club Carousel in Calgary, the city’s first gay bar; Truxx in Montreal, which was the scene of a police raid in 1977 leading to widespread protests; and the 3rd North American Native Gay & Lesbian Gathering in Beausejour, Manitoba, where the term “Two Spirit” was introduced to describe a gender variant or queer social role in Native American tribal life.