Canada Post and UNESCO Release Stamps Celebrating World Heritage Sites

Canada Post and UNESCO (The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) announced a new series of stamps celebrating World Heritage Sites including many Canadian parks.

Together, one vast unbroken ecological unit covering 97,000 square kilometres is formed by the Yukon’s Kluane National Park and Reserve and British Columbia’s Tatshenshini-Alsek Park, along with Alaska’s Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve and Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. Home to the tallest peaks in North America and the largest icefield outside of the polar ice caps, it was the first transboundary site to be placed on the World Heritage List.

Dinosaur Provincial Park, located along the Red Deer River in the badlands of southeastern Alberta, the park has yielded the world’s greatest concentration of late Cretaceous dinosaur fossils. The area boasted a subtropical climate and lush forests 75 million years ago. Its buried remains were exposed about 13,000 years ago when glacial ice scraped off upper layers of accrued rock and sediment, leaving behind a stark landscape of hoodoos, isolated mesas and low-lying coulees.

Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park created “where the mountains meet the prairie,” it is the home of glacial trough lakes and rivers that run into three oceans. The park was formed from the combination in 1932 of Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta and Glacier National Park in Montana. It is the first such park in the world to promote peace and friendship between nations. A herd of elk migrates annually from summer mountain habitat in Glacier to winter prairie ranges in Waterton.

Wood Buffalo National Park Canada’s largest national park embodies the space and wilderness that symbolize northern Canada, containing some of the largest undisturbed grass and sedge meadows in North America and the largest free-roaming herd of bison in the world. The park is home to one of the world’s largest inland freshwater deltas and a diverse abundance of waterfowl.