We should lighten up on dollar deliberations
Viewpoint: New Glasgow (NS) News So focus groups find the latest in this country’s plastic money display a cartoonish or childlike look — as the new $5 and $10 polymer bills were unveiled Tuesday.
Well, considering we’ve had a $1 coin for the past three decades fondly referred to as the loonie, what else is new?
Also consider the release of the $2 coin in the 1990s. Remember how people cheerfully claimed that the gold-coloured centres quite handily fell out?
It wasn’t long before someone suggested it was just people with no money shortage and nothing better to do than to knock the coins apart with hammer and punch. When’s the last time you heard of a toonie losing its centre? Somewhere around 1996?
Do we Canadians take our monetary denominations seriously? It’s not really looking that way. With the colour-coded bills commonly referred to as Monopoly money by our friends south of the border, it’s best not to belabour the look too much.
The group in particular furrowed brows over the space motif on the new $5, a picture of Dextre, a Canadian robotic handyman on board the International Space Station. No Hal, or R2-D2, to be sure, but cartoonish or not it’s at least a little different. It’s also a lot more interesting than the rocks and trees that typically get passed off as representative of Canada.
Conversely, the critics say the $10 with a picture of the train is too quaint. It’s hard to please everyone all the time.
Earlier redesigned notes, already released, drew similar complaints: ethnic-looking subjects, religious icons, sex toys. It goes to show if you stare at a blot long enough anything could emerge.
The average Canadian, it’s safe to say, would be happy with a vault full of these suckers when they’re circulated later this year and leave the critiquing to someone else.
In the long run, the penny’s already gone, and many are already predicting that cash in general is on the way out in favour of electronic transactions. Let’s have some fun with it while we can.