you'd be looney to refer to it as 'monopoly money'

October 2, 2007 under Canada, finance

Big Loonie in Echo Bay, Ontario
For the second time in my life on this planet, the Canadian dollar is worth more than the US dollar!

Many people don’t care. But for me, it’s a small victory. You see, on many an occasion in the past 12 years, I’ve been the only Canadian in a room full of Americans. Americans are good people, don’t get me wrong. So good that I married one (love ya, Chickypoo 🙂 ). But their education system, media and government keep them uninformed/misinformed about the world beyond the United States’ borders (and sometimes about the world within their borders too). So when in the situation of being the lone Canuck in a group of Yanks, I usually have to field ribbing along the lines of this:

“$10. What’s that in Canadia[sic] dollars? Like $10000?. Hardy har har.”

Or I love when they parlay it to metric forms of measurement like this one:

“The speed limit’s 100 kilometres per hour, huh? What’s that in American? Must be 2 miles. Heh.”

These days, the currency that they refer to as Monopoly money is now officially worth more than the indistinguishable US greenback. But 100 kilometres is still 62 miles 🙂

PS: It would’ve been nice if the loonie were strong like it is now back while I was a university student in the US. Darn my luck, I guess.

PPS: Yes, in my experience many Americans often refer to Canada as “Canadia”, “Canadiana” or something else other than its name of the past 140 years. I don’t know why – see the US education system/media/government perhaps.

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