Stamps honour iconic Canadian music stars

A single image of Joni Mitchell will be enough to get your letter to Fort McLeod, Alta., starting June 29.

That's when Canada Post issues four stamps featuring Canadian singers who established international reputations in the 1960s and '70s.

Mitchell, Paul Anka, Gordon Lightfoot andAnne Murray are to have their faces emblazoned on six million domestic stamps.

Canada Post says it is creating the stamps to honour the lives and achievements of these musicians,wholeft a lasting impression on the musical stage and paved the way for today's Canadian superstars.

It's rare for the post office to honour living artists, though Olympic athletes have been featured in earlier stamp series.

All four established careers in the 1960s and continue to perform today.

Fort McLeod-born Mitchell, inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame earlier this year, is known forsongs such as Both Sides Now and Woodstock.

Anka, born in 1941 in Ottawa, was a teen idol and had hits such as Lonely Boy and Diana.

Murray, of Springhill, N.S., was the first Canadian female soloist to reach No. 1on the U.S. charts and is known for songs such as Snowbird and You Needed Me.

Lightfoot, known as Canada's Folk Laureate, wrote songs such as Sundown and The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.