Between June 3rd, 1974 and June 30th, 1989, 3.4 billion one dollar bills were printed. On the backside of the bill were two small tug boats, both built in Owen Sound. One was called the Missinaibi and it is long gone. The other was the Ancaster and today, it stands proudly on display outside of Owen Sound’s Marine and Rail Museum on the city’s historic harbour.
These two little Owen Sound built-tugs would probably have passed into oblivion and sent to the scrapyard like so many others had it not become the illustration on the back of the Canadian one-dollar bill.
In 1963, the celebrated Ottawa photographer Malak Karsh, the younger brother of Yousuf Karsh, took a picture of the Ancaster and the Missinaibi in their natural element – navigating the log-filled Ottawa River against the background of the Parliament buildings. A log boom had broken upstream and the two tugs were cleaning up the spill.
This photograph was to play a major role in deciding the tugboat’s fate when the government decided to change the design of Canadian paper currency in a move to tighten security an prevent counterfeiting. The new notes included security innovations such as multi-colour printing, along with familiar design elements from previous bills.
It was then decided to once again use panoramas of representative regions the country. The last Canadian dollar featured the Anacaster and the Missinaibi captured in black and white by Malak Karsh.
Originally aired March 4th
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