Sheila Watt-Cloutier to be featured on postage stamp

Sheila Watt-Cloutier will be featured on a Canadian postage stamp in May 2012. (FILE PHOTO)

Inuit activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Sheila Watt-Cloutier will be featured on a Canadian postage stamp.

Canada Post will feature Watt-Cloutier as one in a stamp series called “Canadians who make a difference,” alongside athlete Paralympian Rick Hansen, actor Michael J. Fox and former Supreme Court of Canada justice Louise Arbour.

Watt-Cloutier’s stamp will be issued sometime in May 2012.

Originally from Kuujjuaq, Watt-Cloutier is now based in Iqaluit. She is currently a visiting scholar at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, where she teaches Arctic studies. She continues to work on social and environmental issues affecting Inuit, including pollutants and climate change.

Watt-Cloutier has received a number of honorary degrees from Canadian universities, the Order of Greenland, Norway’s Rachel Carson prize and was nominated in 2007 for the Nobel Peace Prize.

“Siila has done a lot of work and has put a lot of effort into her work in areas related to global warming or regarding pollutants that affect the world, especially the Arctic,” Premier Eva Aariak told the legislative assembly June 7. “She has been involved in very important issues and has been recognized.”

Watt-Cloutier’s name was recommended to Canada Post by the corporation’s stamp advisory committee.