The year was 1937 and Canada was about to issue its first set of newly designed Canadian coins since 1858. As the country was finally starting to find its own independent footing, it had been decided that we needed to find a look at that reflected us. (Prior to 1858, we had used whatever coins came into the colonies from other countries, often having been sent in shipments as a way to get rid of old unsavoury coins that a country was looking to off-load. It was also reported that some local blacksmiths were even known to forge their own coins before heading out to the pub!)
The process for the new set of coins got underway once the tools holding the effigy of the King were finally obtained from Britain in order to be cast on the ‘obverse’ side of each coin. That had been a tricky business because the year prior, 1936, had seen King Edward VIII begin his reign in January, only to abdicate the job by December 11th, leaving King George VI to step up and carry on. It was hard to know whose silhouette to run with.
While we were waiting for all that to sort itself out, Canadian Emanuel Hahn, a well-known and respected sculptor (except in Winnipeg where they didn’t like the fact that he had been born in Germany) was picked to share the coin designing process, along with a British artist who was an established Royal Mint favourite (he sounds like a chocolate!). George Kruger-Grey went to work to give us a maple leaf on the penny, a beaver on the nickel, and the country’s coat of arms on the 50-cent piece. Seems a bit on-the-nose.
Emanuel Hahn chose to sculpt a caribou for our quarter and fashioned an image of an Indigenous guide and a coureur de bois paddling a canoe together under the Northern Lights for the dollar coin. Very nice! That left Hahn with just the dime to figure out.
Fishing was a big deal in Canada, and on the East Coast then as now, much of life revolved around the water. Fishing was done all up and down the Eastern Seaboard and, as a result, the fishing vessels from both Canada and America were familiar with each other and often participated in races held to determine who had the fastest boat and could grab the bragging rights. Canada struggled. That is, until the Bluenose fishing and racing schooner was built in Lunenburg in 1921!
The self-taught guy who designed the Bluenose had never built a fishing boat before, but he had designed several racing yachts for people at the sailing club. When he was asked for a schooner that could be valuable as a fast fishing boat, he reworked a couple of his designs and the Bluenose was born.
And she was fast!
She started to win local races that year and racked up respect. Finally, after the cod season was over on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, it was time to see what she had against the other boats entered in the annual International Fisherman’s Cup. The Bluenose cleaned house. She did the same the next year and then in 1923, a change in the course rules led to her disqualification during a race (that she won), although it was later called a tie. The captain of the Bluenose refused to return to the IFC for the next 8 years in protest. During those intervening years, racing schooners started being designed with the specific intention of beating the Bluenose, but were left to just race against each other in her absence.
The Bluenose continued to race at home, winning handily, but in 1930 she was again entered in the international fishing boat race off the coast of Massachusetts, this time coming into the final race having been beaten by one of the vessels purpose-built to beat her. In each of the two attempts to run the deciding race, the competition was called off mid-race on account of the weather. Both times the Bluenose had been ahead.
Even though fast sailing schooners were being replaced by motorized fishing schooners and trawlers, the Bluenose had become a media darling and a sensation in her own right. All of Canada basked in her limelight with each race she won, and pride in her spread right across the country from the humble port of Lunenburg.
This pride is what Emanuel Hahn picked up on as part of our shared Canadian personality. He got a photograph of the Bluenose and drafted the relief for the face of our dime from that image. East Coasters knew just by looking at it that she was their very own Bluenose, but at the time it was merely referred to officially as “a fishing schooner under sail”. After Emanuel died, the actual photograph that he based his design on, was found among his estate, and in 2002 the Canadian Government amended the formal description for the coin to include the name of the Bluenose.
Emanuel’s image continues to be the one you see when you look at a regular ol’ dime today, 88 years later. There is a tiny H just off the bow of the schooner to indicate that Emanuel Hahn is the designer. That H can also be found on the base of the quarter’s caribou, in the same way that George Kruger-Grey’s KG can be seen on the penny (if you can find one) and the nickel.
2021 saw the 100th Anniversary of the launching of the Bluenose and the Royal Canadian Mint decided to have a commemorative dime made up to salute the schooner and all that she had come to mean to the country. Yves Berube, a Canadian marine artist, re-designed the dime showing the Bluenose sailing in from the opposite side from Hahn’s model, and pictured a much stronger wind filling her sails. There were 9 million of these struck. There was also a design that added blue paint to the image’s water, making it even more special, and 6 million of those were also minted and put into distribution. With any of these versions, you are able to carry a piece of our Canadian history in your pocket that acknowledges a time when we were just beginning to figure out who we were and how tall we stood as a country.
That, in itself, is worth at least 10 cents!
A fine piece of writing as usual and timely. Not to disparage the artistic aspect of the dime, it’s time to do a wholesale redesign or eliminate that thin wafer. Counting and rolling them into $10 sleeves from our community bus is frustrating. Too thin!