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The Royal Canadian Mint has decided to break the mold – literally – and design a coin shaped like Canada in honor of Canada Day.
Erica Maga, product manager at the Royal Canadian Mint, told CNN that it was a first for the Mint. The engineering and research and development teams worked together to create the innovative form prior to design selection. The Royal Mint contacted the artist Alisha Giroux, who had already designed a Canadian card with a different animal for each province.
"I remembered that a few years ago we had met Ms. Giroux after which she had made an imprint of her map drawing of Canada," Maga said. "I knew immediately that it would be just perfect."
Giroux told CNN that she had designed the Canadian map years ago for the pleasure. His drawing on a coin was therefore surreal.
"I cried tears of joy," Giroux said. "I was ready to give up the design and it was the best shipment I could ask for."
Giroux specializes in the illustration of wildlife, especially with Canadian animals.
"The map itself, with all its islands and provincial forms, often looked like animals when I was growing up – Baffin Island, for example, looks like a dog on the back and Newfoundland has always looked like to a dinosaur, "said Giroux.
The limited edition piece costs 260 US dollars (339 Canadian dollars) and has only been printed 2,000 times. Maga explained that the coin was very expensive because it consisted of three ounces of pure silver and was difficult to manufacture.
"The pieces were struck, and then the edges were finished before the colored drawing was applied very carefully so that it was perfectly aligned with the engraved relief," said Maga.
This is not the first time that the Mint has created unique coin shapes. They created a variety of different shapes, including squares and the famous maple leaf. They also developed the world's first circulation coins to shine in the dark. Maga said that Australia is the only other country, to his knowledge, to have designed a country-shaped coin.
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