Commonwealth Day, 1983/03/14

"More than any other group of nations in the world today," according to one Third World leader, "the Commonwealth binds together in friendship and in likemindedness an astonishing variety of nations great and small, without distinction between them and without discrimination amongst them." Commonwealth Day celebrations will take place in Canada and throughout the Commonwealth on 14 March 1983. Canada proposed this annual observance, which started in 1977, to make the Commonwealth better known to its citizens, especially schoolchildren. At the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Melbourne, Australia, in 1981, the final communiqué revealed that "in order to foster wider awareness of the Commonwealth among its peoples and as a contribution toward the financial stability of the CFTC [Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation], heads of Government agreed in principle to the proposal for a special Commonwealth stamp issue every five years." Therefore, on 14 March 1983, some forty-five member countries and approximately ten associated and dependent territories will issue Commonwealth stamps. Sets of these stamps will be assembled into limited edition collections and sold by the CFTC to help build up its operational reserve. The relatively high value of each country's stamp or stamps should ensure a large contribution to the CFTC as envisaged by the Heads of Government. The Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation is the multilateral aid agency of the Commonwealth Secretariat. Canada contributes significantly to the CFTC and provided a Canadian diplomat as its first managing director. The fund, which came into existence in 1971, provides technical assistance to all developing countries within the Commonwealth and as such furthers the Commonwealth's objectives of building a global community and of developing "habits of consultation and co-operation that transcend the limits of race, region, and economic level." Using a Goode's homolosine equal-area projection of the world, Montreal designer Rolf Harder has shown the global spread of the Independent Commonwealth countries as of 9 July 1982, when the addition of the Maldives (situated off the southeast coast of India) increased to 47 the number of independent members. The red highlight on Canada draws attention to its geographic location within the Commonwealth.