The Canadian and British version are very similar to each other, which makes sense seeing as the Canadian publication was done in partnership with Bloomsbury by Raincoast, and kept the text in its original British form rather than editing it like Scholastic had with the US version. The design of the cover, the artwork, the typeface etc. are very similar. key differences include the highlighting of accolades won by the already published British text on the front (winner of the 1997 Smarties Award), the removal of the original reviewing quotations on the reverse to emphasise the synopsis which remains unchanged other then being given more spacing, and the removal of the Bloomsbury logo from the outside and replacement with a Raincoast logo on the spine and the Raincoast website link under the barcode and ISBN. That ISBN, also, is the same for both versions, unlike the US version which was issues a new ISBN to reflect the substantial changes and the new title.
Most of the graphical changes, it’s important to note, are present on the British edition that was printing when the Canadian edition entered print, and was not unique to the Canadian version apart from the Raincoast wordmark on the spine.
The texts are so similar that early mistakes are present in both editions. Above, you can see that “1 Wand appears twice in the Canadian and British editions, even though it had been removed in the US version prior to the printing of the Canadian edition.
Another interesting note about the British and Canadian version is the origin of the young wizard which would later be replaced with dumbledore’s image. The artist, Tomas Taylor, says he was told to draw a wizard for Rowling’s book before it printed, and was not given a specific character. Many assume that it is a young Dumbledore, or Nicolas Flamel, two prominent characters in the text, however, according to Taylor it was actually his father who he was thinking of when he drew it, saying “He was based on none other than my own wonderful, magical father. Yes, my somewhat eccentric, embroidered skullcap-wearing dad is the wizard on the back of Harry Potter.” Taylor said fans called the publishers enough complaining that the depiction on the back looked nothing like the depiction of Dumbledore, thinking that was the idea behind it, so Taylor redrew it to reflect the fans’ wishes. The British and Canadian covers were altered to reflect that change.