the canon paper has a very nice, but also a very fragile surface and as you
say is amoung the more expensive papers.

by FAR the nicest paper of all though is the Ilford high gloss media
<http://www.ilford.com/html/us_english/prod_html/galerie/htm/prod/shg.htm>
and is surprisingly cheap given it's a polyester base material and not
paper.. given the relative cost of the old cibachrome over RA4 papers it
*should*  be 4 times the price but it's only fractionally more expensive
than the rest of the ilford range

the next best paper I've found for a clean gloss is the Konica QP paper, but
it's not widely distributed in aus (perth at least) and continued attempts
to glean info about it's distribution from the Koni rep proved futile.

It'd be work buying the ilford paper and cutting it down to size with a
rotary trimmer if it's not available in small sizes.

k