Description
This 2014 $15 fine silver coin takes us back to the gold rush era in Western Canada. Mintage is 15,000 coins. HST/GST exempt.
The Design:
The coin features a beautifully detailed image of two prospectors on a quest for gold. One is crouched in the foreground panning in a riverbed while a second stands on a rocky outcrop as if surveying the land for another potential site. The background includes some of the treasured mining equipment each prospector would have to purchase before heading into the wilderness. For most, all their belongings would be contained in a single backpack, while prospectors with the financial means could lessen their load with a pack mule.
What if you heard whispers of rivers flowing with gold? Would you rush into the wilderness to make your fortune; leave the security of civilization for untamed forests and perilous mountain trails? After purchasing your mining supplies and strapping 32 kg of gear to your back, you would join thousands of others and hike for hundreds of kilometres, never quite sure when or where your journey would end. The threat of bears and cougars would be ever-present; the weather unforgiving. Winter would freeze all activity and usher in avalanche season, yet people would push on, driven by their dreams of gold. Tent cities would spring up around promising sites and frenzied panning would begin. And if you were one of the lucky ones to find a nugget, the claims office was only a few days’ race away.
