by Linda Solomon
I was about to cash a cheque I’d received from an American client. It was November 2007. The agreed on price for the job: a thousand dollars. When I negotiated the deal, the US dollar was worth a little more than the Loonie. During the time I completed the job, about ten days, the Loonie and the US dollar achieved equity, diminishing my pay by more than a hundred dollars. I notified the client and asked her to even things out. Fair enough, she said, and graciously agreed to call her bank, get today's exchange rate, and send me another cheque. As I waited for the new cheque to arrive, the Loonie kept going up.

When I got the cheque and made it to the bank, the teller, a young woman with shiny black hair, apologized to me. “I’m very sorry, but do you realize that the Canadian dollar has just passed the US dollar in value and…” she seemed embarrassed to have to say it, but my thousand dollars would only come out to be nine hundred and something. “If you don’t have to do it today, maybe you want to wait a while,” she said, tilting her head and knitting her brow, as if she were personally responsible for the exchange rate.

“Okay,” I said. I decided to wait. I could remember the years when the two currencies rose and fell against each other daily, and the US dollar always came out on top. Only two years ago, the dollars shifted and sank, rose and fell, like intrepid wrestlers. Surely, the Loonie would retreat back into its longtime position as underdog, if only for a day.

A week later, I went back to the bank to cash the cheque. But now the Loonie was worth even more. The Loonie was winning, day by day humiliating the US dollar as if it were a champion fighter casually passing by an old beat up punching bag and, just for the hell of it, taking another slug. All the while, saying, "Sorry," and "I didn't really mean that," and, "I hope you're okay" as the bag swings on its chain of war, debt, and bad social policy.

The teller, a man with glasses and spiky brown hair, apologized profusely. “I’m sorry,” he said, wincing, as he turned his computer screen towards me, displaying the awful reality of my thousand dollar’s shrinking worth. Now my thousand dollars had practically shriveled. The teller looked pained by the state of affairs, as if something shameful had befallen me, something he personally had brought on.


“I have an idea,” he said, working his lip between his teeth, and he practically begged me to buy a US dollar bond that would eventually make up the difference, he said. It was a way to get my thousand dollars back. The bond would pay four percent interest. But that would depend on the US dollar regaining ground, I said. “Well, yeah,” he said, scratching his head, as if it had never occurred to him that a greenback resurgence wasn't as inevitable as the rain in Vancouver.

“What are they saying around here?” I asked, motioning around the busy Cambie Street branch. "What do you think is going to happen?"

“I wouldn’t dare make a guess,” he said. It sounded like a corporate sound bite. “I wouldn’t dare make any predictions,” he added, just to make sure I understood. He glanced over his shoulder and leaned towards me. “Four percent,” he said again, making it clear what he really thought.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think I want to bet on the US dollar over time.” He gave me a strange look. Was I really beting on the Loonie? His mouth hung open slightly. He seemed not to believe what he had heard.

The next day, the Loonie went up even more.

The Loonie, so historically humble, so humbled, if you will, had managed to get even stronger, become less humble, less, dare I say it, apologetic, and was bravely dwarfing the currency down south. If my tellers were any indication, this running to the front of the pack was making more than a few Canadians uncomfortable, defying the cultural dictum not to call attention to oneself. The Loonie was getting downright muscular. It was flexing its muscle and for generation of Canadians who had lived with the idea of the Lesser Loonie, it appeared to be messing with their sense of self. Now the tables had turned and the bargains lived south of the border and the Loonie loomed large as an Alberta oil field.

“I predicted it,” the cashier at Memphis barbecue on Commercial Drive, told me, as he watched me count out change. He examined a US nickel that had inadvertently ended up in the pile of coins I handed him. He studied the nickel and as I waited for him to speak, I recalled how for years, I’d paid for Canadian items with American change leftover from trips to New York, always feeling like I was tipping the vendor. No one ever remarked on this. They didn’t mind getting my US quarters and dimes back then.

“It’s not worth very much anymore," he said.

I felt the colour rise to my cheeks. Finally, a Canadian was speaking the truth. And he wasn't even apologizing.

Today, this all seems absurd. Of course my American nickel wasn't worth very much.
It came from the land that was about to experience mass lay-offs, foreclosures, that was already experiencing exploding national debt to the land of oil fields and natural resources. It came from the territory of need to the country with stuff in the ground that the rest of the world needed. Needs.

We locked eyes over the counter, as the nickel slid across the Formica from my hand to his.

Training his eyes on me, he put it in the cash register and popped it closed. “I always knew Canada was undervalued,” he said, "but no one ever listens to me."


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