The Loonie: Only Canada turns a government screwup into a cultural icon

Did you know that Canada got its most iconic coin because a government bureaucrat was too cheap to pay for an armored guard? In 1986, the Royal Canadian Mint was about to launch a new dollar coin. The design was a classic: a French-Canadian fur trader and an Indigenous guide paddling a canoe. The same image that had been on our silver dollar since 1935. Now, to print coins, you need a master die. This is the tool that they use to stamp every coin. They are, let's say, Slightly important. The Mint had the master dies in Ottawa because that's where HQ was, but production happened in Winnipeg, so they had to ship them. Instead of using the usual armored service like Brinks or something, some hosehead bureaucrat decided to send them using a regular courier service. Why? To save $43. Days pass. Eventually someone from Winnipeg calls Ottawa to say, "Look, did you guys send these? 'Cause we don't have them yet." Everyone who is involved starts looking. The courier company, the RCMP, nothing. Now you might say, "Why didn't they just make another set?" The problem is that whoever had the master dies could theoretically make coins that looked completely real. The only way to address this counterfeit risk was to change the design completely. So they opened up a filing cabinet and pulled out a loon design that a wildlife artist had submitted back in 1978 for some Canadian Unity competition. It didn't even win the competition, but the Mint rushed it into production. The Loonie, as we call the coin, entered circulation in 1987, and more than 800 million have been made since. We've made stranger things work. It's basically all we do.

For more information on the hosehead bureaucrat, write the Canadian Wildlife Service, Spark Street, Ottawa.