Wood You Believe Canada Once Used Wooden Coins?

In early Canada, wooden coins like these were quite common, and much lighter for heavily-burdened fur traders .

Early Canadian traders, burdened with cumbersome animal pelts, horns, and ivories, were unable to trade efficiently because their sleds, canoes, and portage carts were always weighed down with their heavy trade items. They needed a monetary solution that would make their trekking slightly less harsh.

The first wooden coins were bulky and awkward, up to 12-inches thick and seven feet in diameter, made from the sawed cross-sections of maple trees, and etched with rough caricatures of the King of England on one side and a beaver on the other. These crude national symbols of money were bulky, but still much lighter than a rack of damp bearskins.

Unfortunately, the first generation of wooden coins was easy to counterfeit. Bandits, thieves, and crooked lumberjacks could reproduce the money using common saws, crude wood burning irons, and simple chiseling tools. In fact, several counterfeit rings were broken up when several illicit moneymaking sawmills were discovered outside Fort Langley in 1849. The term "counterfeit ring" referred to the altering of rings in the layers of the wood.

Next came the hand-carved tokens, which were used until the mid 1800’s. These were often made of cedar, lighter than the maple slabs, and more manageable for busy fur traders on the go. Denominations were made in five and ten cent amounts, which was, like now, a lot of money back then.

These coins were discontinued as they had a tendency to wear out, or they would be used inappropriately in salmon smoking processes. For two years, Members of The First Nations Bank refused to accept the cedar money, and tried to persuade government that strands of beads would be a more efficient form of legal tender.

Later on came the "hard" currency, wooden coins made of ash, oak, and petrified fir. These were the first coins to be embossed, using iron presses and coated with a basic lacquer, the same finish French Canadians often used as a maple syrup substitute. When traders purchased items at dry goods stores, the clerk would always ask "ash or check?". (The word "cash" actually comes from the Algonquin term "ka'ash" meaning chips of wood.)

Canada didn't introduce metal coins until 1867, after the Canadian Coin Treasury burned down to the ground. The story goes that a Canadian treasury employee accidentally started the blaze by rubbing two nickels together, destroying the entire wooden reserve. The treasury was later nicknamed "The Mint" because of the sweet menthol smoke that permeated the air during the fire.

After that incident, government officials decided it wood be more prudent to develop metal coins, and chose copper, nickel, and silver, because they feared if the coins were made of aluminum, they could still melt in catastrophic Mint fires.

Nowadays, the Canadian Mint will still produce commemorative wooden coins, but more often than not, they are mistaken for drink coasters and carpet protectors.