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    Collage, photo of wild west street, old bank notes, old counterfeiting brochure.

    Security is in the bank note

    Security printing is a game of anticipating and responding to criminal threats. Counterfeiting is a game of anticipating and responding to bank note design. This cat and mouse relationship affects every aspect of a bank note.

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    Needs or wants? That is the question!

    Do you need it, or do you want it? That’s an important question to ask before buying anything. This activity is designed to teach kids how to prioritize their needs and wants, and how to make informed choices when shopping.

    Price check: Inflation in Canada

    All about inflation: what it is, what it means and how it's measured. Students will learn how the consumer price index is calculated and create their own student price index to measure the prices that matter most to them.

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The Adventure of Exhibit Planning IX

By: Graham Iddon


April 6, 2015

Voices from the Engraver is launched!

Museum panels

Introductory panels, including a full printing plate of stamps and a sheet of $1000 bills.

It’s was an exciting and anxious time: a sort of combination of Christmas morning and a doctor’s appointment. Our little team from the Museum stood in the education space of the Sherbrooke Nature and Science Museum on a chill November morning while the exhibition technicians assembled our finished exhibition. Yes, finished. It was the first time we’d seen the panels with artifacts attached, sat in the photo booth, tried the physical interactive or even seen how the exhibition zones related to one another. For months we’d been accustomed to seeing the exhibition as a white board scribble or a rendering on a computer monitor. To walk through the full-scale exhibition was at once surreal and giddily exciting.

Exhibition panels in a museum

The main panel units are 8 feet tall and 4 feet along each side.

Museum display case

Each “exhiblet” is an offshoot of the main exhibit story and is housed in a case designed to look like a drafting table.

Exhibition panels in a museum

Voices is comprised of 14 separate display units including interactives.

Prior to their first assembly, travelling exhibitions can harbour any number of nasty surprises that are just waiting to jump out and yell “Boo!”. Things just don’t always work as well in practice as they do in the imagination - that’s life. So when you see four exhibit builders standing in a circle scratching their chins and staring at a hinge assembly, you know something said “boo”. In the case of Voices from the Engraver, there was no such chin scratching. There were some expected minor glitches with the timeline touch screen and some adjustments needed to the way the panels fit together, but it was remarkably (dare I say, amazingly) trouble-free. We were so very pleased.

A machine for drawing patterns

This works just like the old Spirograph® game; you can move one paper from station to station to create a highly complex pattern.

Bank notes and stamps in cases

These are real stamps and notes, all relating to how Canadians represent themselves on stamps and bills.

Children operating a touch panel

Visitors place their photos into a variety of changeable graphic features and colours to make their own stamps and bills.

Part of making this exhibit as trouble-free as possible comes from the very traditional nature of the basic assembly. Not that there isn’t a lot of high technology, but it is all housed in frameworks that wouldn’t surprise any cabinet maker from the last century. Why use vacuum assisted, electromagnetic torque inducing titanium fasteners (OK, I made that up) when a simple wooden gate latch will do? Seriously, though, keeping things simple is a good practice in this business, especially when your exhibit is likely to be 2500 kilometres from the nearest titanium electromagnetic vacuum fastener supplier.

So, here it is. What do you think? We think it’s beautiful, but we’re a bit biased.

A computer monitor showing dates

The history of engraving timeline includes historical contexts; most of the items are illustrated with Canadian stamps.

Engraving tools

Most of these tools were used by Canadian engravers in the engraving of our bank notes and stamps.

Stamps and images of stamps

Where references were made to specific stamps, enlargements were printed to aid the viewing of such tiny artifacts.

As of publication, Voices will be at its 3rd venue, the Galt Museum & Archives in Lethbridge, AB. Its second run was at the Musée régional de Kamouraska, north of Québec City, where it was set up without a hitch. Please see the travelling exhibitions page on this website for more info. Thanks to the exhibitions staff at the Sherbrooke Nature and Science Museum and, of course, our hard-working curatorial and exhibition teams.

We want to hear from you! Do you have an idea for a blog post you’d like to see?
Content type(s): Blog posts

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The Museum Blog

March 22, 2023

Security is in the bank note

By: Graham Iddon


Collage, photo of wild west street, old bank notes, old counterfeiting brochure.
Security printing is a game of anticipating and responding to criminal threats. Counterfeiting is a game of anticipating and responding to bank note design. This cat and mouse relationship affects every aspect of a bank note.
Content type(s): Blog posts Subject(s): Economy, Financial literacy Grade level(s): Grade 07 / Secondary 1, Grade 08 / Secondary 2, Grade 09 / Secondary 3, Grade 10 / Secondary 4, Grades 11 and 12 / Secondary 5 and CEGEP
February 2, 2023

Teaching art with currency

By: Adam Young


From design to final product, bank notes and coins can be used to explore and teach art, media and process.
Content type(s): Blog posts Subject(s): Arts, Education Grade level(s): Grade 05, Grade 06, Grade 07 / Secondary 1, Grade 08 / Secondary 2, Grade 09 / Secondary 3, Grade 10 / Secondary 4, Grades 11 and 12 / Secondary 5 and CEGEP
January 20, 2023

New Acquisitions—2022 Edition

By: David Bergeron, Krista Broeckx


It’s a new year—the perfect time to look back at some notable artifacts the Museum added to the National Currency collection from 2022. Each object has a unique story to tell about Canada’s monetary and economic history.
Content type(s): Blog posts
December 6, 2022

Money: it’s a question of trust

By: Graham Iddon


Photo collage, parking meter, old bank notes and an early bank card.
The dollars and cents we use wouldn’t be worth anything to anybody if we didn’t have confidence in it. No matter if it’s gold or digits on a hard drive, public trust is the secret ingredient in a successful currency.
Content type(s): Blog posts Subject(s): Economy
November 14, 2022

The day Winnipeg was invaded

By: David Bergeron


People on the street were randomly stopped and searched, and some were even arrested and imprisoned in an internment camp. Even German marks replaced Canadian currency in circulation—in the form of If Day propaganda notes.
Content type(s): Blog posts Subject(s): History Grade level(s): Grade 10 / Secondary 4, Grades 11 and 12 / Secondary 5 and CEGEP
October 18, 2022

Positive notes

By: Krista Broeckx


The imagery on the Bank of Canada’s 1935 note series depicts the country’s rich industrial history.
Content type(s): Blog posts Subject(s): History
June 16, 2022

Army bills: Funding the War of 1812

By: David Bergeron, Graham Iddon


In 1812, British North America had no banks and little currency. With the prospect of war drying up supplies of coins, the government of Lower Canada decided to issue legal tender notes called “army bills” to pay for troops and supplies.
Content type(s): Blog posts Subject(s): Economy, History
May 5, 2022

Between tradition and technology

By: Graham Iddon


Collage, man at an easel, paintings of birds and a goose illustration with comments written on it.
What was proposed was a complete about-face from the philosophy behind recent security printing. If photocopiers could easily deal with the colours and designs of the current series, then the next series should be bold and simple.
Content type(s): Blog posts
April 21, 2022

Teaching the green economy

By: Adam Young


From windmills and solar panels to electric cars, signs of the green economy are all around us. Check out our resources for how to teach about the green economy.
Content type(s): Blog posts Subject(s): Business and careers, Economy, Geography, Science, Social studies Grade level(s): Grade 07 / Secondary 1, Grade 08 / Secondary 2, Grade 09 / Secondary 3, Grade 10 / Secondary 4, Grades 11 and 12 / Secondary 5 and CEGEP
April 4, 2022

Talk to your kids about money

By: Heather Montgomery


Collage, ceramic pig on background of a bank book and a stamp folder with kids on it.
Introduce important financial skills to your children, and help them plan for their futures with free resources from the Bank of Canada Museum and others.
Content type(s): Blog posts Subject(s): Financial literacy Grade level(s): Early childhood / Kindergarten, Grade 01, Grade 02, Grade 03, Grade 04, Grade 05, Grade 06, Grade 07 / Secondary 1, Grade 08 / Secondary 2, Grade 09 / Secondary 3, Grade 10 / Secondary 4, Grades 11 and 12 / Secondary 5 and CEGEP
March 3, 2022

Teaching inflation during the COVID-19 pandemic

By: Heather Montgomery


COVID-19 has had an unprecedented effect on the economy: closing businesses, driving down demand and interrupting supplies. With news stories and popular culture addressing inflation and supply chain issues, now is the perfect time to explain this key economic concept to your high school students.
Content type(s): Blog posts Subject(s): Economy Grade level(s): Grade 09 / Secondary 3, Grade 10 / Secondary 4, Grades 11 and 12 / Secondary 5 and CEGEP

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