Canadian Currency - It's a Little Loonie

The next time you travel to Canada, leave your pennies at home.  This month our neighbors to the north discontinued their smallest currency after realizing that it is as stupid as it is worthless. 


Pennies, both Canadian and American, are impractical on many levels.  For starters they cost almost 2.5 cents to make.  Then when they go into circulation, they don't circulate.  Most make it through one or two transactions before ending up in jars, couch cushions, or discarded on the sidewalk.  Without them being spent the mint has to make more for banks to distribute to stores, which then end up in jars and cushions and the cycle continues. 

Canada has finally decided to break the cycle, but efforts to do the same in the U.S. have run into a brick wall called special interests.  A penny advocacy group called Americans for Common Cents (a name that is as stupid as their goal) claims two thirds of Americans want to keep the penny for it's historic and cultural value.  You know that figure can be trusted too, because the group is funded by the zinc industry that helps the government make the pennies.  It's reasons like this why contries like Canada think our money is a joke.  And remind you, that's coming from a country that calls it's dollar the Loonie.

It's not just the Canadian dollar that's loony.  All of the money is a little funny.  Their dollar is a coin that gets it's name from the loon bird on the back.  It has become so popular they starty circulating a two-dollar coin called the... wait for it... Toonie.  Canadian bills aren't much better.  No silly names like the coins, but they do come in a variety of Monopoly colors and they include anti-counterfeit features that seem the stuff of science fiction.

Starting two years ago Canada began introducing new plastic polymer bills to replace the old paper ones.  The bills have a smooth silky feel, which I'm sure is a relief to strippers who suffered with a stuffed g-string chaffing.  Dancer benefits aside, the polymer lasts twice as long as paper bills and is a lot harder for counterfeiters to duplicate.  Other security features include clear windows with magnetic reflective holograms, raised ink and braille marks for the blind, and I kid you not.. a scratch and sniff maple leaf.  That's right the science that has been entertaining Kindergarten students is now keeping criminals from money laundering.  

Even with Canada's innovations there is one thing that makes U.S. bills superior.  They, unlike those of our Zamboni driving neighbors, don't have the queen's face on them.  I like to tease my Canadian friends with this fact, but as one of them pointed out to me on my last visit, if you squint your eyes at George Washington he looks a lot like her highness.