1987 Loonie

1987 was the first year on the Canadian $1 coin. I was 10 years old and I remember holding several lemonade stands on my parents front lawn with my sister during that summer. I also remember getting handfuls on loonies from neighbours, people running for exercise, and people that just loved supporting kids trying to earn a buck. My sister would save her coins and buy Archie magazines with the cash she saved up, while I would run off to the nearby convenience store ( Moore Milk & Variety in Toronto) and get some candy and play some arcade games that convenience stores had in them back in the 80’s.

So as you can imagine, although this coin may not be worth any more than it’s face value of $1 it was nice to find and bring back some good memories of when I was a youngster growing up in the BIG city.

Last week on June 23rd I had just come off working nights and I was feeling the itch to get out detecting. I hadn’t been in a week or so and I was really feeling like getting out for a couple hours before I got some sleep before heading back in for another night shift that afternoon.

I packed up my Deus back-pack with all my gear and walked over to a nearby area I knew to be crown land close to an old railway which no longer exists. Now the old railway is part of the Cataraqui hiking / skidoo trail.

Of course you always hope for some great finds any time you head out, but in all honesty I really wasn’t expecting to have a great day with lots of great finds. Infact I went out thinking “I’m just going to dig up any sound I hear on my Legend detector.

As it turned out, I was correct in thinking I wouldn’t find much in the way of valuable items. All I heard were tones telling me all that is beneath my feet are iron targets. So I started digging them up.

At the end of my hunt which took about an hour and a half, I ended up with some very old nails, my guesstimate is those nails were from the 1800’s A small aerosol cartridge, the same ones I used in some old pellet guns I owned as a kid, , a few odds and ends, and. Bottle cap for a beer that was called “MOLSON GOLDEN” which stopped producing the beer in the 1950’s (possibly 73 Yrs old)

Next up was my first introduction to metal detecting in the water. Something I’ve been waiting to do for a while now.

During the early 1800s Spain’s colonies in Central and South America declared themselves independent. Later, Spain tried to regain control over these colonies, and it appeared that some European powers might help. At the same time, Russia wanted to establish a colony on North America’s Pacific Northwest coast.

Monroe made four basic points: (1) the United States would not interfere in European affairs; (2) the United States recognized and would not interfere with existing colonies in the Americas; (3) the Western Hemisphere was closed to future colonization; and (4) if a European power tried to interfere with any nation in the Americas, that would be viewed as a hostile act against the United States.

So hence, this coin was created to commemorate the Monroe rulings and remind foreign countries of what would happen should they try to colonize the United States in the future.

This concluded my first water hunt.