Printing

As stamps have a monetary value, they are printed in accordance with strict production and security criteria. Until the end of the 1960s, the majority of stamps issued in British North America were printed using an engraving process called steel engraving or intaglio, which made counterfeiting the stamps difficult. This is the process that was used for the Jacques Cartier stamp. However, this process did not provide artists with much flexibility and could generally only produce monochrome or bicoloured stamps. With the introduction of photogravure and colour offset photolithography in Canada in the 1960s, it became possible to print more detailed multicoloured stamps. Today, the majority of Canadian stamps are produced using these two processes. Colour offset photolithography was the process used for the Historic Land Vehicles pane.