According to an article in The Globe and Mail dated 4 March 2010, Canada has announced that beginning in late 2011 it intends to replace paper-cotton banknotes with polymer notes which are reported to last “two to three times longer. The changes are intended save on the cost of printing bills – and create a currency that’s much harder to counterfeit.” Canada will rely upon Austarlia’s Securency as the sole supplier for the polymer substrate. Though there is no mention of who will print the notes, it will probably continue to be Bank of Canada and Canadian Bank Note Company. Furthermore, it appears the 10- and 20-dollar denominations will be the first to be printed on polymer.

Courtesy of Dharshan Mahalingam and Mark Allen.

Tags: Canada, Polymer

Some Canadian 10-dollar notes printed in 2007 with the Jenkins-Dodge signature combination were printed on paper intended for 20-dollar notes. They therefore have Queen Elizabeth's portrait and the number 20 as the watermark, a security thread with demetalized "Canada 20", and the holographic stripe with the number 20. There are at least three ranges of the error notes with prefixes BTT and BTU. Six notes have been confirmed so far, though there could be many more notes in circulation.

For more information, please visit Canadian Paper Money.

Tags: Canada, Error

The above notes are all dated 2006 on front and printed 2008 on back. They are like preceding issues, but with a new signature combination: W.P. Jenkins and M.J. Carney. As of late May, apparently the $100 has not yet be issued with this date/signature combination.

Courtesy of Jim “Rubycored” Chen.

Tags: Canada

5 dollars, 2006. Issued November 15, 2006. Like Pick 101, but new date, new signatures (P. Jenkins, Senior Deputy Governor; and D.A. Dodge, Governor), and additional security features, including metallic holographic stripe, a watermark portrait, a windowed color-shifting security thread, a registration device, and enhanced fluorescence under UV light. Gone are the iridescent maple leaves and latent image of the denomination that appear on Pick 101. To increase its durability, the upgraded $5 note is printed on a slightly heavier paper and is coated with a protective varnish.

Courtesy of Dennis Lane.

Tags: Canada

Winston Brown of Toronto, Ontario, has recently gone public with a dramatic example of a modern error. The $20 from 2004’s Canadian Journey series has the holographic stripe on the front right, the windowed security thread on the back right, and the watermark is upside down (compare top pair of images with normal note below).

The Bank of Canada has confirmed that the note is genuine and postulates that the error is a result of an uncut sheet of banknote paper being being rotated 180 degrees before being fed into its presses in Ottawa. Since each sheet contains 45 notes, there must have been 44 other examples of this error with serial numbers similar to that found on Brown’s note: EZM7459230. However, his note was found in circulation in 2006 (though a 2004 issue, the note is dated 2006 on the back), and Brown isn’t aware of any other similar notes that have surfaced to date. It’s possible they escaped notice and may be lost, destroyed, collected, or waiting to be discovered.

Brown intends to sell his error note via auction at some point in the future. Interested parties may contact him via email: w_brown_2007@hotmail.com.

Courtesy of Winston Brown.

Tags: Canada, Error