Make Cents?

Saturday, October 13, 2017

We got up bright and early and travelled to our final destination today.  We are staying at the Arrowhead RV Park in Ile des Chenes, just south of Winnepeg as we finish up the last few days of the tour.  We didn’t have much time to settle in at the campground before our scheduled tour of the Canadian mint.

This facility is quite impressive!  It stands out with its unique architecture. (It’s supposed to make you think of a mountain on the prairie!)  The drive into the mint is lined with flags of the 75 countries for which it produces coins.  No US coins are produced here, because it is illegal for anyone except a US mint to stamp a coin for the United States!   The Canadian mint manufactures 15 million coins per day; 40% of their overall production is Canadian coins, while 60% is for other countries.

We saw this 99.9% pure gold bar on display (complete with a guard who was standing just outside the picture).  It is worth about $750,000!  Also on display were Olympic medals that were made at this mint for the Olympics held in Vancouver.  We were not allowed to take photographs of the machinery used to make the coins, but we were able to see it and a guide talked us through the manufacturing process.  It is amazing that the facility produces so much in the relatively small place.  There are 300 employees who work in the fabrication operation and an additional 100 employees for security!  All maintenance of the machines is done at the plant…nothing is taken off site for repairs for security reasons.  Some interesting tidbits we learned…metal in coins has its unique signature.  Thus, a canadian coin can’t be used in a coke machine designed to accept US coins..the coins have a different metal content that is readable by the machine!  The cool tooney with the Northern Lights on it was made at this facility.  The face of each Canadian coin has the likeness of the reigning monarch.  They have changed Queen Elizabeth’s likeness about 5 times, as she’s changed over the years.  Canada discontinued pennies in 2012.  Every cash purchase is rounded up or down to the nearest nickel.  So, the Canadian mint doesn’t make cents!!!