Royal Canadian Mint

When it opened its doors in 1908, the RCM, as it is now widely known, was the fourth branch of the Royal Mint to be established outside the United Kingdom. The three earlier branches had been established in Australia (Sydney in 1855, Melbourne in 1872 and Perth in 1899). The Australian branches had all been established within a few years of the discoveries of gold in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia, respectively. The first gold rush in Canada – a short-lived affair in the region of the lower Fraser River in the west of what was then the British province of British Columbia – did in fact result in the setting-up in 1860 of an assay office and mint in New Westminster (modern-day Vancouver), which produced a few gold coins before closing in 1871, as the local gold fields were exhausted.

In 1858, Ottawa (at that time a small outpost known as Bytown) was chosen by Queen Victoria as the capital of what would become, a decade later, the Dominion of Canada. The Dominion’s coinage initially included a US $10 gold Eagle as well as base metal coins minted privately in England (as the Royal Mint lacked the capacity to produce them). But in the final decades of the 19th century, the Royal Mint was able to convert Canadian copper and silver ingots into Canadian coinage. However, the fact that the gold produced by Canadian miners could not be converted into coins in Canada led to increasing pressure to set up a mint in Canada itself, namely a branch of the Royal Mint that could produce Sovereigns (just as those in Sydney and Melbourne had been doing). This idea gained ground with the discovery of gold in a tributary of the Klondike river in the Yukon in 1896 and, after much discussion and debate, the Ottawa Mint Act was finally passed in May 1901.

The Mint’s first coins (sterling silver 50 cent pieces) were produced shortly after it opened in 1908. Although it had been established in part to produce gold Sovereigns, it is perhaps surprising that the Mint had no gold refining capacity when it was first constructed (though it did have an assaying laboratory). Initially, a small refinery was quickly set up using the electrolytic Wohlwill process, but as Canadian gold production from Northern Ontario started to expand, a decision was made to install a more productive Miller chlorine plant in 1913.

In fact, production of Sovereigns was never an important part of the Mint’s activities and, especially during the First World War, production of refined gold ingots became more important, in part based on unrefined gold from South Africa (before the opening of the Rand Refinery in 1921). The last Sovereigns were minted in 1919, but the Mint remained a branch of the Royal Mint. This status changed on 1^st December 1931, in effect, the date of birth of the Royal Canadian Mint. The Mint was one of the refiners listed on the London Gold Market’s first Good Delivery List in 1934. One of the most important developments soon followed – the establishment in 1936 of a new gold refinery in a separate building in order to cope with the output of Northern Ontario’s burgeoning gold-mining industry.

The Second World War led to a demand for medals, which resulted in the Mint developing its expertise in design and die-making, which in turn led to the setting-up of a numismatic division in the early 1950s, to meet the demand of collectors and foreign governments for commemorative and uncirculated coins.

In 1979, the product that would give the RCM its world renown, the Maple Leaf was launched. Prior to this launch, the only international bullion coin was the 22-carat South African Krugerrand. Like this coin, the Maple Leaf contained 1 troy ounce of gold, but what made it unique was its fineness of 999 (increased to 999.9 in 1982). The launch date of September 1979 was propitious as world gold markets rose dramatically in the era of inflation and geopolitical tension. Sales of the Maple Leaf in many East Asian countries took off equally dramatically.

More recently (in 2007), the Mint achieved another first – the production of a 100 kg Maple Leaf in 999.99 gold. Six of these coins were produced. One famously was stolen from the Bode Museum in Berlin in March 2017.