Canada Post / Komagata Maru

On May 23rd, 1914, the Japanese steamship Komagata Maru arrives in Vancouver’s Burrard Inlet with 376 passengers aboard, most of them Sikh originally from Pendjab in India. Under the terms of the Canadian government’s policy of exclusion, they are prohibited from entering Canada and the steamship is forced to return to India. For the Asian Heritage Month, Canada Post issued a stamp to shed light on this event and show the progress made since then to build a more tolerant and diverse society. To commemorate the incident, we opted for a simple and classic charter. Worthy of freedom and united, the human beings at the heart of this unfortunate incident dominate the image and evoke a ship’s prow. Reproduced with the help of archive images, the illustration made in collaboration with Mark Summers conveys well its historical character by respecting the passengers’ clothing details and the details of the boat arriving on the continent.