New $1 Coin : Officials Hope Canadians Will Go Wild for Loonies

Royal Canadian Mint officials are optimistic that consumers will embrace the “loonie,” Canada’s new $1 coin, with more enthusiasm than U.S. citizens accepted the Susan B. Anthony dollar.

“We looked at the post-mortem,” Denis Cudahy, vice president of manufacturing for the mint, said of the U.S. disaster on the Anthony coin.

He says the U.S. dollar coin was too close in size to the quarter, confusing consumers, and the public relations campaign wasn’t extensive enough before the Susan B. Anthony coin was distributed in 1979.

Significant Shift

Introduction of the Canadian coin, according to the mint, is the most significant change in the nation’s coinage system in more than 50 years.

“The coin had to be special,” Cudahy says. “We knew we had to have a colored coin; we had to make it different.”

Different it is. It is of a yellow gold color and has 11 edges. Heads is Queen Elizabeth II, tails a loon, a long-billed duck known for its weird cry heard in many northern Canadian lakes. The loon design was by chance; it was substituted when the design dies for the “voyager” canoe were lost in shipment.

The “loonie” name has caught on. Halfway through a 2-year publicity blitz to introduce the coin and phase out the $1 bill, a mint survey has determined that 99% of Canadians are at least aware of it.

Cudahy says polls by the mint indicate that highest approval is among young, urban people who use the coin most frequently for transit fares or in vending machines.

Money Savings Seen

The mint says the $1 coin was introduced to meet the needs of transit companies, vending machine operators and retailers for a coin of greater value than the quarter. It also will save money, $144 million over 20 years, by the mint’s count.

That’s because 300 million $1 bills must be produced each year at a cost of $13.6 million. The bills last only one year, while a coin can stay in circulation for 20 years. The introduction of a $1 coin had been considered since 1978.

Alasdair McKichan of Toronto, president of the Retail Council of Canada, says merchants believe the coin has substantial advantages, especially for ease of cash handling. But he says the sooner the overlap with the $1 bill ends, the better.