Bank of Canada Museum

✨It’s a golden weekend 💰🪙 Almost ten years before British Columbia joined confederation, it planned to mint its own gold coins. It did so to attempt to keep BC’s gold rush treasure from leaving the region. Read all about it on the blog. 👉 bit.ly/4eguvLM

✨ It’s a golden weekend 💰🪙 Some of the earliest British guineas were made of gold mined in, you guessed it, Guinea. It was imported into England in the 17th century by “The Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading into Africa.” #SaturdayArtifact

✨ It’s a golden weekend 💰🪙 The original design of the US $20 gold coin was directly influenced by then-President Teddy Roosevelt. He asked for coins of classical design and of such extreme depth that they each had to be struck several times and wouldn’t stack properly.

The Royal Canadian Numismatic Association’s annual conference begins today in Winnipeg. If you are there, come see our display of all sorts of Manitoba-related artifacts from the Museum’s collection. 👉 rcna.ca/2026/

Today is #BastilleDay #OTD in 1789, revolutionaries stormed the Bastille, a notorious prison in Paris often used to hold political prisoners. It was actually slated for demolition but had great symbolic meaning. Louis’ head, which he lost in 1793, is on this coin. #TriviaTuesday

💵 Our exhibition #MoneyInTenQuestions is running now at the Yarmouth County Museum and Archives. 📚✨ It makes learning about money and personal finance fun. Really—we’re not kidding! 👉 yarmouthcountymuseum.ca

Who says games can’t be used to grow #economic thinking? 🎲 Got bored kids on your hands? We discuss 14 games that stimulate kids’ mathematic, economic and finance brains on the blog. 👉 bit.ly/3SX8tVl #SundayReading

This coin is in fact not a coin, but technically a gold ingot. Issued during the California gold rush⛏️, these tokens were circulated in place of government-issued coins which were in short supply then. This one was worth $1, so is only a centimetre across. #SaturdayArtifact

St. George has been slaying dragons on gold British sovereign coins since 1817. On the early coins he was holding a broken spear, the point stuck in the dragon.🐉 Later versions gave him a sword.⚔️ #FridayFunFact

Hey #Ottawa, #OttawaBluesFest2026 starts today at LeBreton Flats. 🎷🎶 Check out the schedule and enjoy. We don’t have any blues-themed artifacts, so here’s our own bluesfest. 😂 ottawabluesfest.ca

Need something to keep little explorers busy? Set your kids up with an activity where they get to make a treasure chest and fill it with paper copies of doubloons and pieces of eight! 🏴‍☠️ Download the templates. 👉 bit.ly/44GfbDR

🏗️Arizona and Nevada’s Boulder Dam was begun #OTD in 1930. At the official start of construction, the Secretary of the Interior unilaterally proclaimed it the Hoover Dam, in honour of the day’s president—who is on this Charms Candy token. #TriviaTuesday

🍁Canada Day Week: A Penny a Day🪙 Our penny was never worth a penny—just a cent. But it used to mean a lot to us. Read a little history on the copper coins we said goodbye to more than a decade ago—on the blog. 👉 bit.ly/3VaLh7g #SundayReading

🍁Canada Day Week: A Penny a Day🪙 Check out this pattern coin on the left, a test sample for the first government one-cent piece of the Province of #Canada. The design on the right is the official design that was in circulation until 1920. #SaturdayArtifact

🍁Canada Day Week: A Penny a Day🪙 The purple pitcher plant was on Newfoundland’s cent from 1865 to 1947. But the original wreath of pitchers was felt to be unnatural looking, so a very realistic version was created for the smaller coin of 1938. #FridayFunFact

🍁Canada Day Week: A Penny a Day🪙 Memento of a Derailment.🚂 After an 1897 train wreck in New Brunswick, some of the scattered cargo of 5.5 tonnes of pennies went missing—only to turn up later as hand-marked souvenirs of the event.😲

🍁Canada Day Week: A Penny a Day🪙 Coins were so hard to come by in 1830s #NovaScotia that even counterfeits of the unlawfully issued provincial government tokens freely circulated—including ones dated 1382! 😲

Hasn’t our 50-cent piece been the same since forever? 🤔 No, actually, and you don’t need to look that closely to find out. 👀 Our changing coat of arms and the coin that’s carried it since 1937—on the blog. 👉 bit.ly/45htWiH #SundayReading

Today is #CanadianMulticulturalismDay, a day to celebrate diversity and inclusion in Canada. These quarters were given to new Canadians at their citizenship ceremonies during Celebrate Canada Day Week in 2002. #SaturdayArtifact

The Museum is temporarily closed. Please check our website for updates. 👉 bit.ly/3InMt16