Blog posts
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March 30, 2016
Museum Reconstruction - Part 4
It seems a pretty strange building but now it has a solid roof, glass walls and doors. Doors? Ah, there’s your clue. It’s no skateboard park—it’s the entrance portico for the Bank of Canada Museum.
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March 15, 2016
Decoding E-Money II
This has been an extremely challenging exhibition to develop. We are taking, for us, the unprecedented step of interpreting something that is not only current but continually changing.
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February 18, 2016
New Acquisitions
In late April of 2015, the National Currency Collection finally succeeded in acquiring a Spanish gold cob—famous in legends and tales of pirates and their buried treasures!
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December 17, 2015
What’s in Your Stocking?
Every prop in the holiday drama generally has some sort of symbolic meaning—evergreen trees: life in the dead of winter, holly: Christ’s crown of thorns, the dreidel: Jewish resistance to oppression. Money, on the other hand, only seems to symbolize itself.
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November 10, 2015
Money from Space
Do you notice anything peculiar about this bank note? It’s blue; it’s denominated as 5-dollar; it has handsome portraits of Sir Wilfred Laurier on it…hold on a minute!
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October 29, 2015
Royal Canadian Numismatic Association
Nova Scotia has long been a centre of trade that connected Europe, New England and the West Indies. Following the American Revolution, Halifax became the primary British port in North America and a hub of financial activity.
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September 28, 2015
Unpacking the Collection 3
Before banks were established in remote regions of Canada, paying employees involved shipping currency long distances into wild and often lawless locations. The alternative to this risky enterprise was for the company to issue its own money. Called scrip…
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September 15, 2015
The 2015 Commemorative $20 Bank Note Revealed
It’s a historic day for us as well. It isn’t every day that the Bank of Canada introduces a new commemorative note.
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August 19, 2015
Unpacking the Collection 2
During 1952, Comfort produced a number of pencil and watercolour design models for the face of the new notes. Some were updates of the traditional style while others were radically modern treatments.
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August 5, 2015
Swindle! Canadian Phantom Banks
In exchange for pizza and a day out of the office, several Bank employees were persuaded to dress up in period costumes and re-enact three key moments from the history of this shady “bank”.
