Stamp honours Laura Secord
200th anniversary of her heroic trek
She’s the ultimate heroine of Canadian history, a very real but much-mythologized figure who famously rushed through the woods with her cow in tow (or not) to save the nation from invading American troops during the War of 1812.
No one knows what Laura Secord actually looked like at the time of her fabled 20-kilometre dash on June 22, 1813, an urgent mission through bush and swamp to warn British commanders of an impending enemy attack near present-day Niagara Falls. But a stamp issued Thursday by Canada Post to commemorate Saturday’s 200th anniversary of Secord’s shining moment has spawned a new mystery after an unidentified museum worker in Montreal inspired the latest reimagining of Canada’s most celebrated woman.
The stamp is one in a series of four by Canada Post to recognize the best-known heroes of the War of 1812.
British general Sir Isaac Brock and his key aboriginal ally in the war, Chief Tecumseh, were depicted in the first pair of stamps issued last year.
The Secord stamp was released Thursday along with one featuring Charles de Salaberry, the French-Canadian commander at a key Crown victory over U.S. forces in the October 1813 Battle of Châteauguay near Montreal.
The designer of all four stamps, Montreal illustrator Susan Scott, explained how the image of Secord was the product of many hours of reading, a research trip to view a statue of her in Ottawa, discussions with the curators of several archival collections of 19th-century clothing and — finally — a chance meeting at a Montreal museum with the woman whose face would become Secord’s on Canada’s newest stamp.
“I’m just a little bit nervous about the privacy part,” said Scott, who is constrained from naming the woman due to Canada Post rules about how models are used to help create stamp images.
Scott, who worked on the project with fellow Montreal illustrator Suzanne Duranceau, recalled how her colleague “had already made a few attempts with other models” that didn’t pan out.
During her background research, Scott noted, she had “seen some photographs of Laura Secord’s daughters at about the age Laura Secord would have been in 1812. And they had similar features to this person who I saw during the research at the museum.”
Scott said it was the woman’s “strong bone structure” that first caught her artist’s eye. The woman’s age and her dark hair seemed right. Secord was 37 in June 1813.