What is the significance of the beaver on Canadian currency?

The beaver appears on the Canadian five-cent coin, where the Industrious Beaver design by George Edward Kruger Gray has been the standard reverse since 1937. The coin shows a single beaver crouched on a rock above water, with a log to its right. Master engraver Thomas Shingles refined the design in 1953 to soften the beaver's profile and improve coin striking, but the basic composition has remained for nearly nine decades.

The 1937 reverse replaced an earlier maple-leaf design that had been on Canadian five-cent coins since 1922. The same year saw redesigns across the entire Canadian currency to mark the accession of King George VI: a Bluenose schooner appeared on the dime, a caribou on the quarter, and the Canadian coat of arms on the half dollar. The Royal Canadian Mint, established in Ottawa in 1908, struck all five denominations.

Commemorative beaver coins have been issued at multiple anniversaries. The Royal Canadian Mint produced a 1976 silver dollar marking the 100th anniversary of the telephone (invented in Brantford, Ontario by Alexander Graham Bell), a 2011 five-dollar silver coin marking the 35th anniversary of the Industrious Beaver, and a 2018 gold coin to mark a celebration of Canada Post's beaver-themed Three-Penny Beaver of 1851. The beaver also features on the obverse of certain Royal Canadian Mint Maple Leaf bullion variants.

The five-cent coin is colloquially called a nickel because it has been struck from copper-nickel alloy since the 1920s and from steel plated with cupronickel since 1999. The coin is the oldest continuously circulating denomination of Canadian currency, surviving the 2013 retirement of the one-cent coin and the ongoing debate about retiring the five-cent piece itself.