Canada Post continues Truth and Reconciliation series with Sept. 29 issue

Oct 7, 2025, 8 AM

By David Hartwig

Canada Post continues its Truth and Reconciliation series with three stamps in a Sept. 29 issue.

The issue date comes ahead of the Sept. 30 National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, which recognizes those who never returned from Indian residential schools, those who survived and the families and communities involved.

Beginning in the 1830s up until as recently as the 1990s, more than 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis children across Canada were taken from their families and placed in Indian residential schools.

Students at the schools were forced to abandon their languages, cultures and spiritual traditions. In some cases they faced unsafe conditions, disease, and physical, sexual and emotional abuse. Thousands of them never made it home.

The three permanent-rate (currently $1.24) stamps in the 2025 set come in booklets of six and are presented in horizontal se-tenant (side-by-side) strips of three.

The stamps feature different sides of a Bentwood box, which is a traditional artifact made from bent and carved wood and traditionally used by many Indigenous communities in Canada’s Pacific coast for storage and cooking.

The specific Bentwood box pictured reflects First Nations, Inuit and Metis cultures from across Canada, along with the children who attended the residential schools.

The stamp with a pink background shows the front panel of the box. According to Canada Post, the crosses at the top represent the churches that ran residential schools, and the raised hands and black tears of the figure below symbolizes the helplessness felt by the parents whose children were taken away.

The right side panel of the box is featured on the stamp with the green background. The Inuk man depicted acknowledges Inuit experiences at residential schools, according to Canada Post in its Perspectives blog. Behind the man are diagonal stripes meant to portray northern lights and stars to represent Inuit ancestors and teachings.

The stamp with the yellow background shows the left side of the box, which depicts the experiences of students in eastern Canada. The top of the panel shows the infinity symbol from the Metis flag. The face below is of a boy with hair cut short with a red hand covering his mouth. Canada Post says these features symbolize the removal of culture and the silencing of languages, respectively. However, the war paint on the boy’s face symbolizes strength.

Part of the back of the Bentwood box can be seen on an official first-day cover included with the Sept. 29 issue. The FDC shows a carving of a mythological bird-like spirit called a thunderbird, which Canada Post said “proclaims the strong voices of Indigenous Peoples.”

The stamps on the FDC are canceled in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where the Bentwood box is housed at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.

Luke Marston, a master carver from the Stz’uminus First Nation on Vancouver Island, created the Bentwood box from a single piece of red cedar in 2009. The box then traveled throughout Canada, and people placed personal, and often sacred, items in the box.

“Bentwood boxes are a really sacred thing to our people,” Marston said. “I remember at the time when I had finished the box, an elder had said to me, ‘You’ll never understand how important this is to Canada. You could go your whole life and never carve anything else as meaningful as this.’ ”

Canada Post began the Truth and Reconciliation series in 2022 to encourage awareness and reflection on the need for healing and reconciliation due to the tragic legacy of Indian residential schools in the country.

All of the stamps in the series have been designed by Blair Thomson, the founder of the brand design agency Believe in.

Lowe-Martin printed the 2025 Truth and Reconciliation stamps in 200,000 booklets of six. Canada Post serviced 7,000 first-day covers. The Canada Post ordering numbers are 414300111 for the booklet of six and 414300131 for the FDC.

The new Truth and Reconciliation stamps and FDCs are available from Canada Post’s website at www.canadapost.ca/shop. At the time of publication, some features on the Canada Post website are not available due to a national strike of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.

The stamps are also available by mail order from Canada Post Customer Service, Box 90022, 2701 Riverside Drive, Ottawa, ON K1V 1J8 Canada; or by telephone from the United States or Canada at 800-565-4362, and from other countries at 902-863-6550.

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