Estimated Read Time: 8 minutes (so worth it)
Loon(ie)
What makes the loon so special that it deserves to be on the Canadian one-dollar coin? Glad you asked!
So, here’s a fun story.
Back in the 1930s, Canada had a one dollar coin. One side celebrated the then-monarch, King George V; the other two paddling voyeurs.
How old-school Canadian.
The coin was old-school in other ways too. It was silver and large and heavy.
In other words: No one liked it, so no one used it.
Fast-forward to the 80s and people wanted an easier way to pay for parking than carrying around countless quarters. Since no one thought to create an app for the non-existent smart phone, some bright light in Ottawa thought this would be the perfect time to revitalize the dollar coin.
They just needed to make it smaller and lighter and update the monarch’s head to that of Queen Elizabeth II. The two voyeurs in a canoe could still work as the design on the other side of the coin – no need to pay for new artwork…said no artist ever.
But the Royal Canadian Mint’s cheapness didn’t end there. They had one more great idea.
The master design was made in Ottawa and then shipped to Winnipeg for production. But to save $43.50 on shipping, the Mint decided to, essentially, ship the only copies of the coin’s die cast in one parcel and without security or tracking. Seriously, you can’t make this up.
They then proceeded to lose the package.?
To this day, no one knows where or how the package disappeared, but astoundingly it was the third time in five years the Mint lost a coin design in the mail. (And you thought Canada Post was bad).
Of course, with fears of theft and counterfeiting dancing in their heads, the Mint had to come up with a new design quickly to help anxious Canadians feed their parking meters more easily.
And so the same people who literally couldn’t figure out how to ship a package decided our one-dollar coin would henceforth be graced with the loon.
Which begs the question: Why should the loon get such a spotlight? It’s not like the loon is our national bird.
(That would be the grey jay, though in fairness, our national bird selection process was self-determined by a magazine who, in trying to boost subscription numbers, had an online poll that allowed for unlimited votes and, well, as the grey jay lobby saying goes: vote once, vote often! No wonder the grey jay won.)
The loon is found in every province and territory (grey jay lobbyists will have you believe only the grey jay is truly Canadian; not true!), so there’s that.
Loons aren’t ducks, which is probably a good thing, since we rarely hold ducks in high regard. I mean people like shooting ducks and you don’t want to associate death with a currency.
Though we do shoot beavers.
And caribou.
And that animal on the twoonie.
The bluenose once sank.
Come to think of it, the Canadian dollar has sunk a few times too. A lot of times, actually.
Okay, maybe the loon, protected from hunting, is the odd one out. Anyway…
Even though the loon isn’t a duck, it is a water bird. And nothing unites Canada quite like their water. With three coast lines, 25% of the world’s remaining wetlands, and part owners of some of the world’s largest freshwater lakes, Canadas like water. (Unless you live in an Indigenous community and then apparently our country has no idea where all the clean water disappeared to, but I digress.)
So, an animal that is found across Canada and can fly across our vast land and can walk on our vast land and can swim our vast waterways? You can see how that tickled someone’s fancy at the Mint.
Except, it should be noted here, that what evolution giveth, it also taketh.
Yes, the loon can fly and, yes, the loon can swim, but to make it really good at the latter, it evolved with legs quite far back on their bodies. Not quite like humans, but not far off. But, you see, we have arms and can walk upright. The loon? Their legs can paddle like no one’s business, but let’s just say they didn’t inspire Nancy Sinatra to write a song about them.
In fact, loons are so useless on land, they always try to build their nests close to water – on islands, ideally, where they can be far away from predators (or not, because predators can swim and fly, but whatever you want to tell yourself, loon) – so they don’t have to stumble far to reach water.
I mean they can fly 120km/hour, but why do that to get to safety when body shimmering is an option?
Moving
on.
Once in water, loons are mint (pun intended).
They have ridiculous eyesight to spot their prey in water, so long as it’s clean water, and those silly little legs of theirs act like propellers in the water and enables the loon to dive upwards of 80 metres in search of fish.
Also helping their diving ability is that, unlike ducks, a loon’s skeleton is made of solid, heavy bones. That means they have the real heft to get deep into the water after their prey.
Now, making your currency synonymous with a bird that sinks like a stone (and eats stones to help digest food because they have no teeth) might not be a marketing dream, but in fairness to the Canadian Mint, the ‘ideal’ image was lost to save $43.50. (Albeit in 1987 dollars…er…loonies!)
Here’s something that might help the loonie’s image: This bird’s bone structure has helped scientists discover that it’s more closely related to the penguin and the albatross than to the duck or goose.
Now, you definitely don’t want any evolutionary cousin of the albatross being associated with your nation’s currency, but referring to the loon as Canada’s penguin sounds like a fun re-branding exercise!
And since penguins look like they’re wearing tuxedos, you can see the loon’s Canadian tuxedo as, possibly, representing wealth.
“Penguins loving VI” by Aztlek is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
Waved Albatross pair by D. Gordon E. Robertson is licensed with CC BY-SA 3.0.
Here’s another reason the loon is a good fit for the loonie: