On January 5, 2007, Canada Post issued two new stamps for the Lunar New Year of the Pig, which begins on February 18th. The 52c pink on orange domestic rate, and $1.55 red on green international rate, in a Souvenir sheet, Boar stamps, do not actually pay the new postal rates until January the 15th. The Chinese Cultural Center of Greater Vancouver hosted a Canada Post stamp launch, which was attended by a number of dignitaries and the local Signals Design team of Kosta Tsetsekas and John Belisle, who also recently designed the Canadians in Hollywood issue.

The 52c stamp shows the pig at the beginning of the race in the Lunar New Year animals origin story, while the lantern shaped $1.55 souvenir sheet shows the pig at the end of the race. Because the pig stopped to eat and rest in the race across the river, he is a likeable Zodiac animal. Likewise pigs are food, trade items, and symbolize the good life in Chinese Culture. The Chinese character for family shows a pig under a roof.

The Lunar New Year pig is generous, honourable, and happy, and heralds a year of contentment, security, and optimism. People born in the Year of the Pig (1911, 1923, 1935, 1947, 1959, 1971, 1983, 1995, and 2007) are supposed to be kind, caring, jovial, easygoing, resilient, and tenacious. Pig people make sociable, yet self-reliant, honest, dependable, and determined friends. Of course, pigs like luxury and so people born in the Year of the Pig can be prone to hedonism.

Buy one here.

Newsletter #88
Royal Canadian Mint to circulate Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Quarters and Dollars

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