Canadian dollar

The Canadian dollar, CAD or C$, is the unit of currency of Canada. One hundred cents (¢) add up to one dollar.

Canadian currency rumours

A number of urban legends have circulated regarding Canadian currency.

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• An American flag is flying over the Parliament buildings on Canadian paper money. This is not the case. The Birds series bills depict a Union Jack flying over Parliament on the $100; a Canadian Red Ensign (a former Canadian flag) on the $5, $10, and $50; and the modern maple-leaf flag was on the $2 and $1000 bills. (The $20 depicts the Library of Parliament, with no flag visible.) When a bill depicts a past Prime Minister, the Parliament buildings behind him are flying whichever flag Canada was using at the time of his tenure; Borden is depicted with the Union Jack because of his wartime government. Where a bill depicts the Queen, the current flag is used. Those "taken" by the rumour were likely fooled by the bills with the Red Ensign, as the flags are not shown in full colour and the contrasting upper-hoist corner somewhat resembles the American flag.
• The new series $10 bill is being recalled because there is a misprint in the poem In Flanders Fields. The first line as printed, "In Flanders fields the poppies blow," startled many people, who believed the last word should be "grow". John McCrae wrote two versions which were both published, but his original manuscript, the one used by the government and widely used for Remembrance Day ceremonies, reads "blow", meaning to bloom. (The last two lines are, "We shall not sleep, though poppies grow/In Flanders fields.")
• You can pop the centre out of a toonie. This is (or was) in fact true. Many toonies in the first shipment of the coins were defective, and could separate if struck hard or frozen, as the centre piece would shrink more than the outside. This problem was quickly corrected, and the initial wave of "toonie popping" blew over a few months after the coin's introduction.
• The 50¢ piece is no longer minted and/or has been withdrawn from circulation. The 50¢ coin is indeed so rare that many people have never personally seen or handled one. Shop proprietors have been known to refuse to accept them as payment because they do not recognize them as Canadian currency. However, the mint continues to produce the 50¢ coin annually in small numbers; most of them are purchased by coin collectors. The remainder go to banks, though most do not give them out unless the customer specifically requests so. Given enough notice, any bank should be able to obtain them in a significant quantity for their customers.
• The crown is wrong in the Queen's portrait. When the new coin portrait was first issued in 1990 (see above), a legend surfaced that the artist had simply added the image of a crown to a portrait of the Queen, and that she was never meant to be seen wearing that headgear. This is patently false; she posed personally for the portrait wearing one of her usual crowns.
• Canadian coins are minted in Regina, Saskatchewan. The expression D.G. Regina appears on the obverse of Canadian coins, leading to the (wrong) idea that the coins were minted in Regina. As noted, the Royal Canadian Mint branch in Winnipeg, Manitoba is responsible for minting Canadian circulation coinage. The expression D.G. Regina is Latin for by the grace of God, Queen, referring to the effigy of Elizabeth II. The city of Regina takes its name from the same Latin word, creating its nickname, "the Queen City." (Prior to the Winnipeg facility, all coins were minted at the Royal Canadian Mint in Ottawa, Ontario. The Ottawa branch mainly deals with numismatic and collector coins as well as bullion. Foreign circulation coins are handled at the Winnipeg Mint.)