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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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Where Futurists Feared to Tread

By: Graham Iddon


January 15, 2020

A look back at the money of tomorrow

Among the laser pistols, hover cars and androids of science fiction, there’s an elderly elephant in the room: money.

Remember The Jetsons, those campy Flintstones of the future? Their world of 2062 had collapsible flying cars, floating buildings and robot maids, yet they still paid for everything with little green pieces of paper. OK, sure, the creators of The Jetsons were not among the glitterati of futurist prophets, but their vision was far from unique in popular science fiction. There just seemed to be a blind spot when it came to payment methods in the age of the silver suit—it was a place mainstream futurists didn’t like to go.

In space, nobody sees you pay

a person in a homemade <i>Star Wars</i> “Jawa” costume

“Luke! Have you got any cash on you? He won’t take my debit card.” Image: Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons

For example, those of us raised on the original Star Wars film will recall a scene where Luke Skywalker’s Uncle Owen buys the robots R2-D2 and C-3PO from the Jawas. He seems to be a hard bargainer, yet only for the briefest of shots do we see Uncle Owen appear to pay the Jawas. Well, he is putting something small into the Jawa’s hands (perhaps the Jawa just dropped its keys), but he’s certainly not looking into a retinal scanner or touching his index finger to a reading device. Still, I can understand how it would be just a little awkward to have your protagonist pull out a wad of $20 bills to buy a robot. It’s not very sci-fi. We presume Uncle Owen didn’t stiff the Jawas, but how did he pay? Payment methods, it would seem, are just not as cool as light sabres.

You see, money doesn’t exist in the 24th century.

Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek IV: First Contact

The interplanetary society of Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek was often characterized as moneyless. It was a universe where the seemingly infinite availability of all things among dozens of planets would make money obsolete. In the original series, however, in order to obtain a cuddly little tribble (“The Trouble with Tribbles,” Star Trek season 2, episode 15), members of the crew would have needed to pay interstellar trader Cyrano Jones with “credits.” Aha! Not only was it extremely difficult for science fiction to create a suitably high-tech payment method, it is darn near impossible to create a society that functions without a medium of exchange. Money would occasionally pop up in the numerous iterations of Star Trek, for example, the Ferengi’s “gold-pressed latinum” in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine or when Dr. Crusher asks a merchant to charge her for something in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Money, it seems, is simply unavoidable.

a ball of fur

In Star Trek, an adorable “tribble” cost several “credits,” and they are referred to as “…the only love money can buy.” But Star Trek’s interplanetary society didn’t use money. Or did it? Tribble Image: Stifehler, Wikimedia Commons.

In Utopia, you simply can’t pay

And the inescapable necessity of money vexed futurists long before popular science fiction. As in Star Trek, the use of currency was almost taboo in utopian societies.

“Money is the root of all evil.” This 15th-century proverb originates from a biblical quote: “For the love of money is the root of all evil…” (1 Timothy 6:10). There’s a crucial difference here: the later version shifted the blame for some of society’s problems from the act of loving money to money itself. This version appeared to inform the thinking of many utopians of the 18th and 19th centuries who wanted to do away with money altogether. But to be without a medium of exchange was a big roadblock to a functioning society and demanded a lot of imagination of the utopian.

Nineteenth-century social reformer Robert Owen felt that money’s only real value was to represent the occurrence of a transaction. Though his ideal society would have no money, Owen was a practical man who recognized that this was extremely unlikely. Instead, he proposed that money did not need to be physically valuable. In his day, and for part of the 20th century, a paper dollar was supposed to represent a dollar’s worth of gold stored in a vault someplace. Owen’s plan for a future money resembled our own system in that the value of the currency would be guaranteed by the government and not linked to gold.

So, currency, for Owen, could simply be a cardboard token. But for a society to function without currency at all, its very foundations would need to be replaced.

blueprint of a self-sustaining town ringed with working homes

Owen established a utopian commune, New Harmony, in Indiana. He planned to build a grander community, as seen here. But New Harmony’s 1827 economic collapse destroyed his dream. Image: Library of Congress, Wikimedia Commons

black and white photo of man with big mustache

Bellamy was an American whose book Looking Backward inspired legions of followers wishing to change the social order from capitalism to state-owned production. Image: Library of Congress online collection, Wikimedia Commons

And replacing the foundations of society is just what Edward Bellamy, another 19th-century utopian, proposed doing. He dreamt of an America in the year 2000: a state that would own all production and capital and distribute the wealth to the public. Instead of money, Bellamy imagined something he called a “credit card” upon which each citizen was allotted an annual share of the nation’s output. The cards were redeemable for items in standardized shops. It was a system that stripped money down to its most basic function: merely negative and positive entries in a ledger. This sounds an awful lot like the basics of a cryptocurrency. But Bellamy had no technology with which to further his vision of the next millennium. He couldn’t possibly have imagined the internet.

The internet’s the thing


Bellamy wasn’t alone; nobody would imagine such a thing as the World Wide Web for another 60 years. And prior to envisioning the internet, we couldn’t even dream of money’s future. Once the possibilities of computer networking were understood, however, a new future for money leapt into visionary imaginations—at least economically inclined imaginations. In 1965, Thomas J. Watson Jr., chief executive officer of IBM, outlined a futuristic transaction:

To draw down or add to his balance, the customer in a store, office or filling station will do two things: insert an identification into the terminal located there; punch out the transaction figures on the terminal’s keyboard. Instantaneously, the amount he punches out will move out of his account and enter another.

Though Watson got the debit transaction spot on, he could only glimpse the vast possibilities of a worldwide computer network.

black and white image of man in his fifties

J. C. R. Licklider was a computer scientist whose inspirational visions of worldwide interactive personal computing foresaw most of the internet’s major functions. He is considered the “father of the internet.” Image: US Library of Medicine, Wikimedia Commons

Four years later, reality would begin to catch up. On October 29, 1969, the true mother of the internet was born: ARPANET, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. Direct communications between individual computers were already relatively common. But the developers of this new network invented a process that enabled information to be delivered as small packages in the gaps between messages on telephone networks. It was only four computers, but ARPANET demonstrated a realistic potential for moving and storing vast amounts of information. Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor, and internet visionary, J. C. R. Licklider noted at the time:

It's just fundamental that if one wants to deal with information, he ought to deal with the information and not with the paper it's written on.

And that paper would soon include money. With the pre-dawn of the internet came inklings of a completely cashless, chequeless, tokenless economy—one that didn’t demand the dismantling of modern society. It was a vision of today’s interconnected banking system and e-money. Too bad this never made it to the movies.

map showing 18 connected locations next to a graphic of millions of connections

On the left is the entire ARPANET of 1971 while on the right is a representation of a mere 30% of the internet in 2005. Images: UCLA Library/opte.org, Wikimedia Commons

And what does the Bank say?

The Bank of Canada is not in the science fiction business. But it is putting considerable effort into researching the real future of money. And this means keeping a sharp eye on all aspects of “fintech,” or financial technologies. Payment options are multiplying like tribbles, but many of them are just variations on a theme. Some stand out, like cryptoassets. Take a look at this article, which lays out the Bank’s position on, and concerns about, future payment methods in clear and sensible terms. No silver suits, no hover cars.

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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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 31, 2023

Sensory Sundays

For Autism Awareness Month, the Museum will provide a sensory-friendly experience every Sunday.
January 27, 2023

Summer camps at the Museum

Bring your camp crew to the Bank of Canada Museum this summer. Check out our available programs, and book your visit.
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 8, 2022

Winterlude Weekends 2023

Winterlude 2023
From February 3 to 20: Join us every Saturday and Sunday throughout Winterlude for interactive family activities!
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
December 5, 2022

Surprise, It's Money!

Onsite program: See and touch an amazing array of objects that have served as money at one time or another.
Content type(s): School programs Subject(s): Financial literacy, History, Social studies Grade level(s): Grade 03, Grade 04, Grade 05, Grade 06, Grade 07 / Secondary 1, Grade 08 / Secondary 2
November 18, 2022

A bank NOTE-able Canadian

Students will use the concept of historical significance to choose an iconic Canadian as a portrait subject for the Bank of Canada’s new $5 bank note.
Content type(s): Lesson plans Subject(s): History, Social studies Grade level(s): Grade 06, Grade 07 / Secondary 1, Grade 08 / Secondary 2, Grade 09 / Secondary 3, Grade 10 / Secondary 4
November 18, 2022

The changing face of our money

Students will use a historical thinking approach to examine historical significance, continuity and change in Canadian bank notes.
Content type(s): Lesson plans Subject(s): History, Social studies Grade level(s): Grade 06, Grade 07 / Secondary 1, Grade 08 / Secondary 2, Grade 09 / Secondary 3, Grade 10 / Secondary 4
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