Stamps were perfinned in Canada as early as 1889. In 1895 the process received official sanction. Fifteen years later the Post Office ordered perfins to be approved prior to their use on stamps and specified limits on hole size (not more than 1/32 of an inch) and total space covered (no more than ½ inch square).

Over 330 different dies have been identified on Canadian stamps. On the 1935 Silver Jubilee issue there are 96 commercial and 4 official known perforation dies. There is one known perfinned example of the 1c 'weeping princess' variety (International Harvester C(HI)).

Detailed information on usage of different dies can be found in the below pdf file.

Canadian Perfins (46kb)

Perfins are not only listed according to their design but also with respect to the position of the perfin to the stamp.

Some interesting examples of perfin usage are shown below

- Double Perfin

- Multiposition Double Perfin

- Block of Perfinned Stamps

Stamp perforating machines were set to accommodate to regular size stamps (stamp on left). Three of the 1935 Silver Jubilee stamps (3c, 10, 13c) were double size. Thus it is common to have double perfins on these stamps (stamp on right). Both stamps were perfinned in the Montreal Office of New York Life Insurance Company (dot between 'N' and 'L' opposite the 3rd lowest dot of the 'L').

Some perforating machine allowed sheets to be folded before being fed into it. This resulted in one row being normal perfins and the next row mirror image perfins. In this example the placement of the stamps within the machine was slightly off with the result that multi-position perfins (position 5 and 7) are noted. Perfin die of Lake Superior Corporation in Sault Ste Marie, Ontario.