Laurence Hyde

Laurence Evelyn Hyde (6 June 1914 – 8 August 1987) was an English-born Canadian film maker, painter, and graphic artist, known for his work with the National Film Board of Canada, stamp designs for the Canadian Postal Service, and the wordless novel Southern Cross.

Life Hyde was born in the United Kingdom at Kingston upon Thames (near London), but immigrated to Canada with his parents in 1926. Settling in Toronto, Hyde was drawn to the arts by exhibits at the Art Gallery of Toronto (now the Art Gallery of Ontario) and especially seeing Lawren Harris' North Shore, Lake Superior. "That was the first one that made a great impression on me and it's then that I became really serious about art." Using 118 wood engravings, Hyde tells a story based around the tests of the hydrogen bomb made by the United States at the Bikini Atoll in 1946. The inspiration of book was clearly political, and the book has been called "a political marker of the Cold War years". It is—as Rockwell Kent says in his introduction the book—the work of "a master of the difficult and infinitely laborious art of wood engraving". A reprint edition of Southern Cross has been issued by Drawn & Quarterly and the entire novel has also been republished in Graphic Witness, edited by George A. Walker Stamp Design - 15 cents, gannet 1954; 5 cents, Alberta and Saskatchewan 50th Anniversary as provinces, 1955; 5 cents, Boy Scout World Jamboree, 1955; 5 cents fishing, 1957; 5 cents swimming, 1957; 5 cents, hunting, 1957; 5 cents, skiing, 1957; 5 cents, common loon, 1957 Southern Cross - Laurence Hyde, Southern Cross, 1951, Ward Ritchie Press, Los Angeles.