What  images  should  not  or  should  be  printed  on Canadian  paper  money?

 I have been in 26 countries around the world and I have never seen paper money so well designed than Canadian paper money. Each denomination is printed in a different colour. Truly Canadian paper money is the finest of all paper money world-wide.

However, in the past, many merchants in Canada refused to accept $100 and $50 bills made out of paper because of the risk associated with possible counterfeits. This created a real problem to merchants since some potential customers having higher denominations would stay away from stores advertising non-acceptance of $100 or $50 bills.

Now Canada has made the $100 and $50 bills out of plastic polymers which although cost more to manufacture, they will last far longer than bills made of paper. Further, the money won’t dissolve in water. The $100 bill is made from a single piece of smooth polymer, (all the bills will be made of the same material) and in certain places – like on the large “100,” the words “Bank of Canada” and the shoulders of Sir Robert Borden (former Canadian prime minster) the ink is raised, adding multiple layers of security. On the right is a large transparent opening which replicates the main image of the prime minister and below it includes a building. Tilt the bill and the building changes color.

But by far the coolest (and arguably hardest feature to replicate) is the maple leaf in the opened transparent space. With a light source coming in from the other side, if you raise the transparent opening closer to your eye, you’ll see hidden numbers that correspond to the value of the bill. Counterfeiters will have a hard time trying to duplicate that bill or any of the other new bills.

The $100 and $50 bills are already out and the government will have the others—$20s, $10s and $5s out by 2013. Canada used to have two-dollar and one-dollar bills but years ago, they were phased out and now they are replaced with two-dollar and one-dollar coins. There is some talk of bringing in a five-dollar coin but that hasn’t happened yet.

Just as the Americans print the faces of famous presidents on their bills, Canada prints the faces of famous prime ministers on the bills along with a picture of Queen Elizabeth II. Now there is some controversy about another image that had been planned to be printed on the new Canadian $100 bill but was cancelled.

The image was that of a woman of South Asian descent looking through a modern-day microscope. The complaint was that the woman should have been Caucasian. (White) As a result of the complaint, the woman looking through the microscope is now a Caucasian.

Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of Canada which authorizes the Canadian Mint to print the bills, issued a public apology. He was so mortified at the furor over the bank airbrushing off the features of an Asian-Canadian scientist in the mockup for the new $100 bill and subsequently made over as a Caucasian scientist. He said, “On behalf of the bank and (me) personally, I apologize for the offence created by that sequence of events.

It strains belief to think the bank intended any slight. Rather, it seems to have been caught on the horns of identity politics, in which its  first rule is—no matter what you do, it will be wrong. Focus groups had apparently objected to the image of the Asian-looking woman on the bills — some (presumably non-Asian) because other ethnicities had not been so honoured, others (presumably Asian) because it stereotyped Asians as scientists. It follows that some people would be offended if the oriental woman was left in and others were offended because she was taken out of the bill.  

Was it really a bad mistake to print the image of a South Asian scientist on the Canada’s first polymer $100 bill? I am afraid it was. Don’t get me wrong. I believe that the image of someone who is Oriental should be on our bills—just not on the first $100 bill placed in the market.

Canada is truly one of the most cosmopolitan countries in the world but Caucasians are more prominent in Canada than any other race. South Asians only represented 4% of Canadians. The Chinese represent only 3.9%. Blacks only represent 2.5%. This is why I believe that a Caucasian should be on every $100 bill that is printed especially when you consider that as many as 80% of Canadians are Caucasians.   

Now, what about the $50 bill? The Orientals—South Asians, Chinese, Southeast Asians, West Asians, Korean, and Japanese represent a total of 9.2% of the Canadian population so I think an Oriental image should be on the $50 bill. The Aboriginals—First Nations, Metis and Inuit represent 3.8%, so they should be on the $20 bill. Blacks represent 2.5% of the Canadian population so they should be on the $10 bill. This covers the races in Canada so I think women holding babies in their arms and who are represented by the four races I previous mentioned should be placed on the $5 bills.

Now comes the matter of what the images of these people represent in the bills other than the $5 bill. For the first of the $100 bills, I think they should have placed the images of two male Caucasian scientists in which one is looking though the eyepiece of a microscope and the other is standing next to him. As you may have guessed, I was thinking of the two Canadian scientists who discovered insulin. 

For the $50 bill, I propose that the Oriental image should be of an Oriental working on the railroads in the nineteenth century. Those Orientals contributed a great deal towards the opening of all of Canada by working on the railroad.

For the $20 bill, the image should be of an Aboriginal who were highly respected as hunters and fishermen. Such an image should be on the $20 bill. 

I think that the first $10 bill should show two blacks working side by side working in a mine or smelter.

Every 5 bill as previously mentioned should show a woman with a baby in her arms.

Every 100 million bills should have a different occupation as part of the image of the various races of people except with the $5 bill. In that bill, only the races should be changed. 

The Canadian Bank appears to have gotten around its policy against depicting actual, flesh-and-blood Canadians on the old $50, which shows a statue of the Famous Five — famous, that is, for launching a lawsuit against Canada. Silly, it  is.

It’s hard to escape comparisons with the notes issued for the unfortunate euro, with their bizarre images of buildings that were never built, in a style that can’t be identified. By contrast, consider the currencies they replaced. On the various denominations of the Italian lira, just before it went out of circulation, you would have found quite vivid portraits of Raphael, Caravaggio, Bernini and Marconi, among others. French banknotes, similarly, featured Cézanne, Debussy, Pierre & Marie Curie, and Gustave Eiffel; previous issues depicted Delacroix, Montesquieu, Richelieu and Hugo. The British pound, spared the fate of its continental counterparts, currently features such notables as Darwin and Adam Smith, having earlier celebrated the likes of Newton, Shakespeare, and Florence Nightingale.

There’s a reason they do this, as there is a reason we do not. Countries that represent themselves in this way are, consciously or no, making a statement, or rather a series of statements: that we have a history together; that this history is illuminated by the accomplishments of great individuals; that, indeed, individual accomplishment matters.

On the matter of prime ministers being printed on the bills, let me say that I can think of three prime ministers who should never be printed on our bills.

The first is our first prime minister, John A. Macdonald. In 1885, he addressed the told the House of Commons and said that if the Chinese were not excluded from Canada, “the Aryan character of the future of British America should be destroyed.” This was the precise moment in the histories of Canada and the British dominions when Macdonald personally introduced race as a defining legal principle of the state. He did this not just in any piece of legislation, but in the Electoral Franchise Act, an act that defined the federal polity of adult male property holders and that he called “my greatest achievement.” Macdonald’s comments came as he justified an amendment taking the vote away from anyone “of Mongolian or Chinese race.”

He warned that, if the Chinese (who had been in British Columbia as long as Europeans) were allowed to vote, “they might control the vote of that whole province” and their “Chinese representatives” would foist “Asiatic principles,” “immoralities,” and “eccentricities” on the House “which are abhorrent to the Aryan race and Aryan principles.” He further claimed that “the Aryan races will not wholesomely amalgamate with the Africans or the Asiatics” and that “the cross of those races, like the cross of the dog and the fox, is not successful; it cannot be, and never will be.”

 As far as Macdonald was concerned, Canada was to be the country that restored a pure Aryan race to its past glory, and according to his belief, the Chinese in Canada threatened this purity. Lest you suspect that Macdonald was merely expressing the prejudices of the age, it should be noted that his were among the most extreme views of his era. He was the only politician in the parliamentary debates to refer to Canada as “Aryan” and to justify legalized racism on the basis not of alleged cultural practices but on the grounds that “Chinese” and “Aryans” were separate species.

 The second prime minister who shouldn’t have his image on our bills is William Lyon Mackenzie King. He too was a racist. The evacuation and internment of Japanese Canadians from the coast of British Columbia during World War II was an unnecessary and racially charged course of action taken by the Canadian government under his leadership. As it turned out, not one Japanese citizen during the war was ever suspect of committing an act against Canada because they were all loyal Canadians.  Further, German Jews aboard the M.S. St. Louis who were fleeing the tyranny of Hitler in 1939 were seeking a place to escape persecution, and when the ship arrived at a Canadian port, Mackenzie King ordered that none of the Jews on board would be permitted to remain in Canada. The ship sailed back to Europe and later, many of its passengers died in German concentration camps.

The third prime minister whose image should not be on any of our bills is Martin Brian Mulroney. Regardless of what happens now, Brian Mulroney's credibility and reputation is shattered. Given the very best spin available, Mulroney's dealings with Karlheinz Schreiber (who was under a deportation order) are tawdry to say the least. Ex-prime ministers can't be secretly getting $300,000 in cash in grocery bags from a convicted felon, who was wanted for serious criminal charges in Germany, (and later convicted of those charges)  and walk away claiming that he did no wrong.

Perhaps interest in the histories of all Canadians would lead the federal government to reconsider whether in a multiracial, multi-ethnic society like that of Canada today, we should even be naming public monuments after white supremacists and anyone else whose honesty is suspect. We certainly don’t to see their faces on our new plastic money.