O the New Canadian Money

There was nothing wrong with the old Canadian money, with its depiction of naked white women across from topless First Canadians:

But we make progress:

Unfortunately, our new money was made with Australian technology and designed by a Canadian committee.

1. The new money is made out of an Australian polymer, which is said to melt. It's great that when you leave a 20 in your pocket and throw your pants in the wash, the water doesn't destroy it any more  . . . unfortunately, however, the dryer will. And a teller in Kelowna BC claimed that when her notes melted "in a heat wave," she received an $800 reimbursement from the Bank of Canada. Australia, however, notes (rather huffily, I thought) that it is a much hotter country than Canada and that our problems must be due to a manufacturing defect.

2. The bills stick together. The other day I gave a supermarket check-out clerk $ 100 when I meant to give her 60. And apparently there has been a rush to ATMs because it was rumoured they were dispensing lots of extra money. Now, at any rate, ATMs don't dispense the new money.

3. And then there is the Maple Leaf. Dear Reader, the Canadian maple leaf is from a sugar maple, which is found in Ontario and Québec, but not in Western Canada.

And so it is now thought that this symbol is a little bit disrespectful of the West. Accordingly a committee was struck to design a composite image. You see it to the left of the Queen on the 20 above. 

 

Sadly, botanists have exposed this composite as a spot-on accurate rendition of the leaf of the Norway maple, a nasty 19th century invader. So now we don't even have a Canadian symbol on our money. No, that woman is NOT Canadian. (She's half German, half Scots.) And the signature on the bill, just below the big 0: that is the new Governor of the Bank of England.