Kids crease the mouth on Canada's $5 bill to make Sir Wilfrid Laurier look like Spock. The Bank of Canada asked people to stop, even though defacing currency is legal. Canadian bills hide weird design quirks: a devil's face on a 1954 Queen note and a misidentified Norway maple on the 2013 $20.
Chapters
The Bank of Canada has an announcement. They would really, really appreciate it if you people would stop Spocking the $5 bill. This is the Canadian $5 bill. This fellow is Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Canada's 7th Prime Minister, and an accomplished one too. The first French-Canadian in the role, he led the Liberal Party for 32 years. But most Canadians know him as 5 Buck Spock. I know he doesn't look like Spock, but that's because you haven't drawn it right. See? Spock! And if you're American and you're thinking, "You know, back when we had laws, it would have been illegal to deface our money." Not here! It is completely legal in Canada to deface bills. There's nothing in the Bank Act, nothing in the Criminal Code. They don't like it, but it's not illegal. We have a funny history with this bill. While some nation's school kids might have been doing that weird origami thing, Canadian kids were playing Happy Sir Laurier, sad Sir Laurier by putting a crease right in the centre of his mouth and then tilting the bill in whatever emotion you want. It's an optical trick that predates Canada entirely, but we act like we invented it. There's also a website called Where's Willy where people log the serial numbers off their $5 bills and watch them travel around the country. Some of our money got weird without any help from us. Some 1954 bills had a devil's face hiding in the Queen's hair, an accident of copying a photograph too faithfully, fixed by darkening the engraving 2 years later. The new polymer 20s launched in 2013 with a maple leaf on them that botanists immediately pointed out was a Norway maple. And Norway maples here are actually an invasive species from outside the country just pretending to be Canadian, much like Tim Hortons are today. Then there's the stuff that people make up entirely. When the new fancy bills came out, Canadians swore that the $100 smelled like maple syrup. They do not. Others worried that they might melt in a hot car. They will not. The plastic doesn't even soften until it hits 266 degrees, which only happens a few times in Ontario each summer. But my favorite story? In 2004, the Mint released the world's first colored coin, and some Americans lost their shit. Defense contractors traveling here filed actual espionage reports with the CIA, convinced that this coating was some kind of secret nanotechnology. Look, every nation's currency is supposed to say something true about who we are, ours does too! Just not always a thing we put there on purpose. Every week I put out stories like that on my free newsletter. You can find it at farandwide.news.
