Canada 1 dollar - Elizabeth II 1965

The coin's story

This dollar in 800 thousandths silver bears on the reverse the famous “voyageur dollar”, designed by the sculptor Emanuel Hahn for Canada's first silver dollar in 1935. The design shows a canoe paddled by a voyageur, a travelling agent of the fur trade, and an Indigenous man, in front of an islet planted with pines and under the northern lights, the bales marked HB recall the Hudson's Bay Company. Hahn had first proposed another design, rejected by the Minister of Finance Edgar Rhodes, who suggested this canoe. This reverse remained in use on silver dollars until 1967, before the switch to nickel. The obverse bears the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II with a tiara, designed by Arnold Machin. The 1965 dollar was struck at the Royal Canadian Mint in Ottawa, in several varieties of beads and of the numeral 5.