Robert A. Bartlett

Recognized as the greatest ice captain of the 20th century,Robert Abram Bartlett (Captain Bob) worked mainly as a sealer but was also known as an Arctic explorer, ice captain and scientist.
Born in Newfoundland on August 15, 1875, his mother hoped he would become a minister but the sea was already in his blood at a very young age.

From 1898 to 1909 he accompanied renowned American explorer Robert E. Peary on 3 separate attempts to reach the North Pole.

On the third voyage, he led the expedition farther north than anyone had reached before him.

In 1969, Bartlett was designated a person of national historic importance by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada.

Represented here is an awesome sheet of 16 dedicated to this great Canadian explorer. The middle strip tells us about his far reaching exploits and on the right selvedge of the sheet we can see his signature.

To learn more about this man and his exploits visit www.bartlett2009.com

Full sheet of 16 from Canada

Here is an awesome sheet of 16 for the IPY 2009 from Canada.

The margins have the "Ice Crystal" logo as agreed to by all issuing nation for this special closing year issue. Interesting to note is the colour symbols use to print these stamps. If you look closely you will see that they are all like the logo.

Below, I give you 2 close-up scans of the UL corner and LR corner. Here also you can see more details in the margin.

Issue from Canada

On April 9, Canada issued its contribution to the International Polar Year. Although it is a beautiful sheet I regret the fact that no glacier has been depicted on the sheet.

What we see represented are wild animals from both end of planet Earth.

Representing the Arctic, we see the Polar Bear and the Arctic Fox. From the Antarctic, we see a group of Penguins and the Arctic Tern.

Why an Artic Tern in antarctica? Very simply put this bird migrates yearly between the two poles. It was therefore decided by the designer of this sheet (Tiit Telmet) to use the Tern as a symbol showing that both poles are united.

The stamps have also been issued in sheets of 16 with marginal inscription. The post office was already out of the sheet when I went, so as soon as I get it I will upload it.

The stamps have been issued at 2,000,000 examples while the issued quantity for the souvenir sheet is 225,000.