What are the national symbols on the Canadian dollar?

Canadian currency carries a small set of national symbols that recur across coins, bills, and Royal Canadian Mint products: the reigning sovereign on the obverse, the maple leaf and beaver on coins, and historical, artistic, and natural-world figures on the polymer bank notes issued by the Bank of Canada. Together these images form a portable gallery of Canadian identity that every resident handles daily.

The five-cent coin features the Industrious Beaver designed by George Edward Kruger Gray in 1937. The ten-cent coin shows the schooner Bluenose, the racing fishing vessel built in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia in 1921 and the world's most successful racing schooner. The 25-cent coin shows a caribou (Rangifer tarandus) introduced in 1937. The 50-cent coin carries the Canadian coat of arms. The one-dollar coin, the loonie introduced in 1987, depicts a common loon. The two-dollar coin, the toonie introduced in 1996, depicts a polar bear.

The polymer five-dollar note features Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Canadarm robotic arm with astronaut Dave Williams; the ten-dollar note features civil-rights activist Viola Desmond, the first Black Canadian and first non-royal woman on a Canadian regular-issue note when introduced in 2018. The twenty-dollar note features King Charles III (or Queen Elizabeth II on the previous polymer issue) and the Canadian National Vimy Memorial. The fifty-dollar note features William Lyon Mackenzie King and a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker. The hundred-dollar note features Sir Robert Borden and Canadian medical innovations including insulin.

All Royal Canadian Mint Maple Leaf bullion coins, struck since 1979 in gold and 1988 in silver, carry the national maple leaf on the reverse and the sovereign on the obverse, providing one of the world's most recognised Canadian images.