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No more funny money

As of today, Canada will no longer be the butt of currency related joking. The dollar has been sinking for the past few years, but today my attention was grabbed by the following:

1.00 CAD

=

0.999149 USD

Yes folks, the Canadian dollar is now par with the American dollar, and will probably be worth slightly more in the next day or so. The last time the Canadian dollar was worth more than the U.S. dollar was November 25, 1976. Here’s a handy list on how this will affect your lives:

  • Vacations to Canada will no longer feel like a great deal. In the past, we’ve put up with lackluster trips to the great north because hey, it’s cheap. There’s no excuse now to put off that Mexican vacation.
  • Lumber and beaver pelts now out of our price range.
  • Influx of Canadian tourists. Aboot time, ay?
  • Books will no longer have the U.S./Canada price difference on their spine.
  • No more thrill in using Canadian nickels to beat the man at toll booths. emot-argh

I guess I could talk about how this is helping U.S. exports and the trade deficit and blah blah blah… No, I think my list covers all we need to know.

This entry was posted on September 20, 2007 at 10:50 am and is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

9 Responses to “No more funny money”

  1. Katie says:
    September 25, 2007 at 5:27 pm

    Unbelievable. Simply intolerable. They must be stopped!!

  2. Ray Minner says:
    September 25, 2007 at 10:55 pm

    Ah, but exactly what, Miss Katie, are you demanding should be stopped? Is it the influx of Canadian tourists brandishing newly cheap American dollars? Nay, I say! As long as they refrain from drinking their Labatt’s while cruising our interstates en route to our malls, BRING ‘EM ON! Besides, if we were to be as effective in stemming the inward flow of Canadian tourists as we are the similar inward flow of Mexican, um, tourists, it’s a moot point anyway.

    Perhaps you meant skyrocketing prices of Canadian beaver pelts. If so, I say, don’t worry about it. You never looked good in Saskatchewan-chic anyway.

    If you are decrying the demise of the dual pricing on the spines (or, in my observation, the BACKS) of books, that was probably on its way out anyway, as it was only a matter of time before the publishing industry discovered that Canadians don’t read books.

    I suspect that what you really find so objectionable is the writing of social commentary which leaves unresolved the burning question: is the writer PRO Canadian or ANTI Canadian? One cannot make a definitive determination of this from the posting. We might suspect that the writer is, shall we say, conflicted on the subject. Perhaps he once madly loved a Canadian temptress, only to have his heart broken when she ran away with a Mountie to, um, set up a business selling timber and beaver pelts. Or perhaps he was once actually arrested for trying to pass a Canadian nickel at a U.S. toll booth.

    We do know the writer sometimes vacations in Canada, but he also raises questions about how he REALLY feels about the serene isolation of Prince Edward Island. Who knows? Maybe there’s a sequel looming–something on the order of “Confessions of a Former Hostage of Anne of Green Gables.”

  3. Jason says:
    September 26, 2007 at 10:17 am

    There’s an old joke where a Canadian spends a lot of time thinking about the U.S., our politics, our culture, everything that we do. Finally, he meets an American and asks him, “What do the Americans think of Canada?” to which the American replies, “We don’t.”

  4. Ray Minner says:
    September 26, 2007 at 4:09 pm

    Oh, Canada! WHO stands on guard for thee?

  5. Jen says:
    September 26, 2007 at 5:35 pm

    Well, I love Canada at least. I love PEI particularly, but I think Canada in general is quite cool. (Literally and euphemistically–is that a word?!) Anyway, for further discussion of this topic, all participants should be required to watch the film Canadian Bacon. Classic.

  6. Katie says:
    September 29, 2007 at 11:56 pm

    Sure, I guess Canada is alright. But what about the rest of the world?: http://freedomrider.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/Blog+Image_american-world1-773341.jpg

  7. Ray Minner says:
    October 3, 2007 at 10:38 am

    Hold up there, Ms. Partlo. We’re not quite done with Canada yet, or more precisely, Canadians. NBC Nightly News did a story on this very subject last night (Jason, of course, having been prescient enough to bring it up BEFORE NBC caught on to it–maybe Brian Williams’s producers read this blog!)

    NBC’s story would lead the viewer to believe that we not only are going to be hosting more Canadian tourists, but THEY’RE MOVING HERE TOO! The story showed one couple in particular who had lived in Canada their entire lives, but are now buying a house just over the border in Washington–BECAUSE THEY CAN! Of course, even as they were still standing in the empty house with the real estate agent they were homesick. The wife is shown wistfully looking out the sliding glass door into the backyard and asking, “Now, which way is Canada?”

    The Question for the Day: Are Canadians really so shallow that they would actually abandon their homeland and move to a place they don’t really want to be, JUST BECAUSE IT’S CHEAPER?

    I repeat: Oh, Canada, WHO stands on guard for thee? Nobody, maybe?

  8. Jason says:
    October 3, 2007 at 11:42 am

    If they live right on the border, it makes sense that they would move to where they get the most value. People who used to live and work in DC now buy a house just over the border of Washington County - BECAUSE THEY CAN! And we have idiots wistfully looking around Hagerstown asking, “How far is it to a REAL city?” Your QOTD is biased. It’s not shallowness that dictates the move, it’s economic efficiency. And while they may say they don’t really want to be there, they choose to be there anyway.

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