The Great Toonie Heist of 1996!

 

The Toonie, what is it? Well, it’s Canada’s two-dollar coin and was introduced on February 19th, 1996. As of 2025, it possesses the highest monetary value of any circulating Canadian Coin. It is a bi-metallic coin, which features an image of a polar bear, and since 2023, has featured King Charles III. The coin itself is manufactured as a bi-metallic coin-locking mechanism and is estimated to last a good 20 years. It replaced the discontinued two-dollar bill.

Coins that were minted before 2012, consist of an aluminum bronze inner core with a pure nickel outer ring. However, this design was replaced with an aluminum bronze coated with multi-ply brass, and the outer ring was switched to steel coated with multi-ply nickel. They also added new security features.

The name toonie was created by combining the words two with loonie the name of Canada’s one dollar coin.  The name had become so widely known by 2006 that the Royal Canadian Mint secured the rights to the name. The bear on the Toonie is known as Churchill, both a reference to Winston Churchill and the common polar bear sightings in Churchill, Manitoba. 

 It was July of 1996,  just months after the toonie coins had entered circulation when a cash haul on board a tractor-trailer that was in CN’s Turcot Yard,  Montreal carried sixty tonnes of coin. That truck was driven away by thieves in broad daylight, leaving only one question in the minds of millions of Canadians, how?

The thieves had struck at lunchtime on a weekend and made off with the property through an emergency exit. Police soon found the abandoned truck nearby without a single coin inside. The thing is no one knows how they pulled it off because it would be harder to move the coins than it was to steal them in the first place.