Robertson Davies was born on August 28, 1913, in Thamesville, Ontario. When his father purchased the Kingston Whig-Standard in 1925, the family moved to Kingston. Robertson attended Toronto’s Upper Canada College, then Queen’s University before receiving his Bachelor of Literature from the University of Oxford’s Balliol College in 1938. While in the U.K., he met and married stage manager Brenda Mathews.
As a cultural luminary who helped to form the Canadian identity, a portrait of him by Yousuf Karsh was essential. The stamp frames an all-knowing academic figure, with his trademark beard worthy of a mythic god.