Prairie Lily, Saskatchewan

The hidden date for this stamp can be found near the base of the prairie lily. The date is printed with many small dots.

The floral emblem stamps of the twin prairie provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan, which entered Confederation in 1905, are appropriately being issued together. This history of these prosperous provinces is linked in many ways. In 1691 the verse-writing explorer, Henry Kelsey, became the first white man to reach Saskatchewan and the eastern part of Alberta. In 1754-55 Alexander Henday explored the North, and in 1792-93 Peter Fidler explored the South Saskatchewan River. Both branches of the Saskatchewan from Canada's fourth longest river. In 1821, the feuding Hudson's Bay Company and Northwest Company joined to continue a peaceful but systematic and more profitable fur trade in these western lands. Sovereignty over the Northwest Territories, as the areas of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba were then known, was transferred from the Hudson's Bay Company to the Government of the new Dominion of Canada in 1870. Twelve years later, the Districts of Saskatchewan and Alberta were created. Then, in 1885, the Northwest rebellion broke out and the march toward provincial status began. The completion of the Canadian Pacific Railroad in 1885 heralded the beginning of an inrush of settlers to the prairies which reached its peak in the years before World War I. With the homesteaders came the more insistent cry for provincial status. The federal government the created in 1905, the two provinces which celebrated their Diamond Jubilee in 1965, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Saskatchewan's capital, Regina, became the headquarters of the North West Mounted Police in 1882 and the provincial capital in 1906. From this city is administered a province rich in wheat and other grains, copper, zinc, petroleum, natural gas, uranium, salt and potash. The prairie lily, Lilium philadelphieum was officially adopted as Saskatchewan's emblem in 1941.