While your vehicle does have a serial number, the British assigned it a registration number before it was sold to Canada. Canada wrote that as the serial number when it assigned a Canadian Army Number (CAR). That number later became the Canadian Forces Registration number when the Canadian Army, Navy, and Airforce unified in the late 60s.
The Canadian number of 54-82559 has some meaning. The 54 is the year it was accepted into Canadian service, and the 80,000 was a block of numbers saved for armoured vehicles. The ferrets ran from 82500 to 82623.
Your number 82559 would have been on license plates when the Cdn forces began using their own plates instead of provincial plates.
If you go to the ramtank page (
http://ramtank.ca/ferret.htm ) you will see photos of many of Canada's ferrets.