Old Canadian Money

Old Canadian money has quite a fascinating history. Canada began its money ventures when the country declared in 1858 that it would be in charge of its own currency and decided to peg its Canadian version of the dollar or loonie to the US dollar. Canadian provinces began to bound over currency with New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and British Columbia all coming together to adopt the new Canadian money system. However, not all provinces felt the same. In the case of Nova Scotia, it continued to use its own currency system. In 1871, they finally conceded. Newfoundland was quite similar to Nova Scotia. However, Newfoundland was able to keep its version of the dollar until 1949 when it became part of the confederation.

Pegging the Canadian Dollar
The Canadian government tried its hardest by passing acts to standardize the Canadian currency. Since old Canadian money varied from province to province, the Uniform Currency Act passed in 1871 worked to replace other Canadian currencies with the standard Canadian dollar. The next phase for old Canadian money was when it had to be pegged against certain currencies. The first Canadian money was pegged against the British pound. Then for a time, the Canadian dollar was pegged against gold, but this did not last long. In 1933, Canada decided to drop the gold standard and fixed the Canadian dollar against the US dollar around WWII. Since then , the Canadian dollar switched between a floating price and a fixed rate which has since then become hit or miss for the Canadian currency.

Old Banknotes
British Army Bills were the first types of banknotes to be issued as Canadian money. Banknotes were created in various dominations ranging from the following dominations: $1,$2, $3, $4, $5, $10, $20, $25, $40, $50, $100, $500 and $1,000. However, for bank transactions, banknotes of up to $50,000 Canadian were issued.