The Canadian Dollar, like its name suggests, is the major currency of Canada. To tell it apart from other dollar denominated currencies around the world, the Canadian dollar adopted the letter ‘C’ in front of its dollar ($) sign. Currently, the Canadian Dollar is amongst the top-ten most traded currency in the world.

Dating back to 1858, the first Canadian coins which was struck in 1 cent, 5 cent, 10 cent, and 20 cent denominations, were issued by the Province of Canada. Other coin denominations like 50 cents, 1 dollar, 2 dollars, 5 dollars, and 10 dollars were issued much later to meet the public demand. Canadian Coins are minted and produced by the Royal Canadian Mint. The facility is located  in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and currently issues coins in denominations of 1 cent, 5 cent, 10 cent, 20 cent, 50 cent, 1 dollar, and 2 dollars. These coins are also called, in respective order, a penny, a nickel, a dime, a quarter, 50¢ piece, a loony, and a toonie.

The designs on the reverse and obverse side of these coins also usually revolves around Canadian symbols, like wildlife and the effigy of Queen Elizabeth the Second, although some pennies and dimes of the yesteryears, which are still in circulation, carries the image of King George the Sixth.

Issued between 1813 and 1815, largely due to the War of 1812 where it was used during the emergency, the first form of paper money issued in Canada were the British Army Bills. These were denominated between 1 and 400 dollars. The first banknotes, however, were issued in 1817 by the Bank of Montreal. Other chartered banks around the country also followed suit thereafter and began issuing these notes for several decades to come. Prior to the year 1858, many notes were issued in currencies like shillings, pounds and dollars, resulting in varied denominations such as 1 dollar, 2 dollars, 3 dollars, 4 dollars, 5 dollars, 10 dollars, 20 dollars, 25 dollars, 40 dollars, 50 dollars, 100 dollars, 500 dollars, and 1000 dollars. This ceased after 1858 though, and only dollar denominations were used from then on.

The Province of Canada began issuing paper money beginning 1841, and these notes were produced for the government by the Bank of Montreal between 1842 and 1862. The notes were issued in denominations of 4 dollars, 5 dollars, 10 dollars, 20 dollars, 50 dollars, and 100 dollars. The Province of Canada began officially issuing its own paper money in 1866, and these came in denominations of 1 dollar, 2 dollars, 5 dollars, 10 dollars, 20 dollars, 50 dollars, 100 dollars, and 500 dollars. After the year 1896, denominations of 500 dollars, 1000 dollars, 5000 dollars, and 50,000 dollars were issued and used for bank transactions only.

In 1935, the Bank of Canada was founded and began issuing notes in denominations of 1 dollar, 2 dollars, 5 dollars, 10 dollars, 20 dollars, 50 dollars, 100 dollars, and 500 dollars, and 1000 dollars, officially ceasing the currency issuing operation of the chartered banks in 1944. As part of the fight against money laundering and organized crime, in the year 2000, the Bank of Canada stopped issuing 1000 dollar notes and began withdrawing them from general circulation.

To date, Canadian dollar banknotes issued by the Bank of Canada remains of legal tender in Canada. Just as American Dollars are accepted by many Canadian merchants and businesses in cities which are near the American/Canadian border, the Canadian Dollars are also accepted by some businesses in the northernmost cities of the United States.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 26th, 2008 at 3:02 am and is filed under Dollar Bill History, Dollar Coin, Economy, Facts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.