For the first time since Canada began issuing stamps in 1851, one has been completely redesigned due to an artwork error. After five small first-class letter-rate stamps went on sale Dec. 27, a lighthouse keeper who had operated the Pachena Point lighthouse on Vancouver Island's mid-west coast tipped a Victoria paper that the house shown on its left was in the wrong position.

When the story broke in January, B.C. Senator Pat Carney called for a correction.

Canada Post apologized for the error and said the photo was "flopped" printed backwards from the original negative or digital image supplied by a stock agency. It blamed a firm hired to scan the image onto its website.

With 800,000 stamps featuring the century-old lighthouse already printed and distributed to post offices across Canada, no recall was ordered. Instead, a reprint was announced.

The corrected image appears in the latest edition of a promotional magazine sent to collectors and post offices.

The reprint will start rolling off the security printer's presses in May and likely will be on sale by July.

Only the edge of the house appears, to the right, shadows from the lighthouse now appear on the right instead of the left. A Maple Leaf flag is on the upper left of all such regular-issue stamps, which are sold for 52 cents plus GST.

The lighthouse was built in 1908, two years after 117 people died when the Valencia, an American ship, sank nearby in 1906. It ranks as one of the north Pacific coast's worst ocean-going disasters.