According to its website at mint.ca, the Royal Canadian Mint decribes its Winnipeg location as “… our high-tech, high-volume manufacturing facility. Every single Canadian circulation coin is produced here – literally billions each year. Established in 1976, the Winnipeg plant occupies a 14,864 m2 state-of-the-art facility.” Ian has a special connection to Winnipeg’s Mint since he worked in that architectularly-beautiful and important building for three years shortly after it opened.

Gayle’s editing of our next book, Ian’s second memoir entitled Came To Canada, Eh? Continuing A Scottish Immigrant’s Story, is finally back in full swing after about a three-month hiatus to pack up and move into a larger apartment in our seniors’ lifelease building in Winnipeg. Finding appropriate photos to include with a story about one of the unique jobs Ian held has proved an impossibility until today. Camera in hand,  we made a trip to Winnipeg’s Royal Canadian Mint where Ian had worked from 1977 until 1979.

Though having lived in Winnipeg twice for a total of about 22 years and often having seen the beautiful Royal Canadian Mint building from the highway, Gayle had never toured the facility. Ian hadn’t been back to the building for 37 years. What a fun tour we had yesterday!

Included below is a portion of our book’s fifth chapter which Ian calls, “Heading A Wee Bit Back East-Winnipeg, Here We Come.”

“As I wasn’t too satisfied in the job I first had in Winnipeg, I applied for and got a job in the new “money factory” that had opened in Winnipeg in 1976. I should maybe explain that the “money factory” was the Royal Canadian Mint (certainly the most impressive-looking building I’ve ever worked in). The Mint building is a large, shining triangle rising up out of the surrounding prairie with a small picturesque lake at its side populated by a flock of Canada geese and an occasional pelican or two. Whenever anyone asked me what I worked at, I would say that I made money. Actually, I worked in the die production department,  using a lathe and a milling machine to make some of the dies that were eventually used to stamp images on the coins.

(If you happen to have any 1977-1979 Canadian coins in your pocket, there’s a possibility that they were stamped with dies that I made. Incidentally, the Royal Canadian Mint also produces coins for about 75 other countries as well.)

“The public was regularly invited to take tours of the mint so they could see the process by which Canadian coins were produced. You might say that I became a bit of a ‘tourist attraction’ during those tours. No one ever commended me for making the tours a bit more colourful, but I believe I did. You see, I love to whistle and have found that whistling makes the work go faster and also makes it more interesting. So there’s me, merrily whistling along (probably a Scottish folk tune) when I overheard a commotion on the catwalk above our work station. A small crowd of tourists had stopped and were pointing down at me while commenting on the ‘happy work atmosphere.’ Well, I couldn’t ignore them, so I gave them a wee wave and a bow. From then on whenever a tour came by, I would wave at the group and give them a nice whistled tune. They could have called me the Mint’s version of one of the seven dwarfs of Snow White fame (probably “Happy”) performing “Whistle While You Work.”

“[While this book was going through its final edit in 2016, my wife/editor thought we needed to add a few photos of the mint as I didn’t have any in my photo collection. We decided to take a tour of the mint, to educate her on the minting process and help me reminisce a bit, all the while taking a few photos. This time I was an 84-year-old tour participant, listening to a guide, peering from the catwalk and straining to see the process from my wheelchair. I didn’t hear any whistling or see any workers waving; but considering that the catwalk over the working floors has been  glassed in, I’m not sure we could have heard someone whistling anyway. The tour is still interesting, though; at least for anyone curious about the minting process. We were fascinated to learn of the two-metal process that was developed for the “toonie” ($2 dollar coin) that is made of a steel ring around a brass disc. Both the “loonie” ($1 coin picturing the North American bird, the loon) and the “toonie” were introduced long after I had left the mint job.]”

Copyright © 2016, Ian Moore-Morrans

Below you can check out some of the photos Gayle took yesterday of the “Parade of Nation’s Flags”along the entrance to the Mint representing some of the 75 nations for whom the Mint produces coins; a front view of the Mint location; a view of the machine shop where Ian used to produce dies for coins; and two photos of Ian sitting on his wheelchair in the lobby where he enjoyed posing with a unique “Mountie” and an antique minting machine, as well a mint.ca website photo of some beautiful Canadian coins made right at the Royal Canadian Mint in Winnipeg.

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