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Barbara Ann Scott honoured in Canada Post’s 2014 stamp program

From celebrating some of this nation’s most prominent country music stars and female athletes to recognizing significant moments in our history, Canada Post’s 2014 stamp program will demonstrate the diverse combination of achievement, progress, culture and tragedy that helps define Canada.

In a new series to be issued in July, country music stars Tommy Hunter, k.d. lang, Renée Martel, Hank Snow and Shania Twain will appear on stamps for the first time. Distinguished athletes – curler Sandra Schmirler, figure skater Barbara Ann Scott and freestyle-skiing pioneer Sarah Burke – will be featured in February in a set of stamps commemorating Canadian Women Winter Athletes.

At the age of 10, Barbara Ann Scott, the Ottawa-born skating sensation became the youngest Canadian to earn the Gold Medal Test. The Canadian Junior Ladies champion in 1940, she held the senior crown from 1944-1948. In 1945, Scott won her first North American Championship title. In 1947, she won the European title and earned Canada’s first-ever World Championship crown. She famously had to return the City of Ottawa’s gift of a car that year, to ensure she maintained her amateur status as an athlete.

The following year, 1948, she was the first Canadian figure skater to win an Olympic gold medal and the first to win back-to-back World titles. With her win at the European championships, along with the World and Olympic titles, she became the first North American to win all three in the same year.

The Barbara Ann Scott stamp will be released in February of 2014.