George Klein "Canada's Inventor of the 20th Century",
Alexander Graham Bell " An Inquiring Mind," and
Joseph-Armand Bombardier "Getting Around in Winter'.
This is the second time that the early work of Gesner on kerosene production has been highlighted by Canada Post - a 1988 stamp noted this 1846 accomplishment. The following section from Georg Hansen's August 1988 article in the Petro-Philatelist (p. 13) on this subject is included for the interest of our members.
"Well, what happened in 1846 and before? A man of various talents, Nova Scotian Dr. Abraham Gesner was aware of the acute need for new illuminating oils as the supplies of whale oil - which had been for about 200 years the most widely used illuminant - began to diminish. Physician Dr. Gesner, being also a geologist and chemist, utilized existing facilities of coal oil works to produce an illuminating oil from the so-called Trinidad pitch (asphalt from the famous Trinidad "Lake') which he decided to call "kerosene". Unfortunately that particular oil had a rather disagreeable odor. Then he remembered a recently discovered vein of asphalt near Hillsborough on the Petitcodiak River in Albert County, New Brunswick called "Albert Mineral." From it he prepared kerosene by heating it to a high temperature in a closed retort. Then he demonstrated the now essentially odorless, clean-burning kerosene at public lectures on Prince Edward Island in August 1846.
"For nearly a century the opinion was wrongly held that Gesner's kerosene was derived from coal. Investigations by Kendall Beaton, however, confirmed the hydrocarbon origin. Beaton published Gesner's patent of 1854 in which can be read "I, Abraham Gesner, late of the City and County of New York, now of Williamsburg, in the County of Kings and the State of New York, have invented and discovered a new and useful manufacture or composition of matter, being a new liquid hydrocarbon, which I denominate Kerosene, and which may be used for illuminating and other purposes ... I obtain this product from petroleum, maltha or soft mineral pitch, asphaltum, or bitumen wherever found, by dry distillation and subsequent treatment with powerful reagents and redistillation".
(in http://www.petroleumhistory.ca/archivesnews/2000/nov.html)