Its Somebody’s Birthday Today!!

Look who is celebrating a birthday today. The iconic $2 coin, The Toonie turns 25 years old. It was introduced to Canada back on February 19th, 1996 to replace the $2 bills. The coin was used with two different metals and joined the Loonie that was introduced to Canadians in 1987.

The Toonie has went through a bunch of changes since it was introduced. Back in 1999, it featured Nunavut to commemorate the founding of Canada’s newest territory.

The following year, it featured the original Polar Bear but this time also had two Polar Bear cubs, which represented the “transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next”. Also, if you look at the coin, you it reads “Knowledge – Le Savoir” on it.

For the 10th anniversary of the coin, the Mint put out two Toonies, one to honour the original Polar Bear design and then a second coin where the bear is looking up at the Northern Lights.

The last time the coin was updated was in 2008, where it celebrated the 400th Anniversary of the founding of Quebec City.

I remember when they first came out, we used to punch the middle part out of the coin and flip it around and put it back in again. The Mint says that the Toonie has life span 20 times longer than your traditional paper note, well thats if you dont punch the middles out of them.

Happy 25th Birthday Toonie! As annoying as you are to have multiples of you weighing down my pocket, we still hope that you have a great day.