![]() In 1931, the Ottawa Mint was renamed the Royal Canadian Mint and began reporting solely to the Department of Finance. It was not until the Great Depression that the Ottawa Mint negotiated its independence from the British Royal Mint. The silver is first upgraded in an oxygen converter and then refined by electrolysis. Over the years the Mint had used different processes to recover and sell the silver often found in unrefined gold, but, in 2006, the Mint opened a new, state-of-the-art silver refinery that finally allowed it to refine silver. Today's process is a combination of chlorination and electrolysis. Since then, the Mint's refinery has undergone several changes and expansions. This method proved to be too time-consuming and in 1915 the Mint introduced a new chlorination process developed in Australia to reduce processing times and increase the Mint's gold refining capacity. Three years later the Mint began refining gold by electrolysis in its assay department. When the facility first opened, it had 61 employees. The first coin struck was a 50-cent piece. ĭuring a short ceremony, Lord Grey and his wife, Lady Grey, activated the presses for the Canadian Mint on January 2, 1908, officially opening the Ottawa branch of the Royal Mint. ![]() As a result, a branch of the Royal Mint was authorized to be built in Ottawa in 1901 after being first proposed in 1890. As Canada emerged as a nation in its own right, its need for coinage increased. Logo of the Royal Canadian Mint until June 2013 Ottawa facility The Royal Canadian Mint building at 320 Sussex Drive in Ottawaįor the first fifty years of Canadian coinage (cents meant to circulate in the Province of Canada were first struck in 1858), the coins were struck at the Royal Mint in London, though some were struck at the private Heaton Mint in Birmingham, England. In April 1969, the Royal Canadian Mint was incorporated as a Crown corporation via the Royal Canadian Mint Act for the purpose of minting coins and associated activities. In December 1931, the Mint was established as the Royal Canadian Mint and as a branch of the Department of Finance via an act of Parliament. In 1931, Canada became an independent dominion of the British Empire and the assets of the Mint were transferred to the Canadian government. When first established in Ottawa in 1908, the Royal Canadian Mint operated as the Ottawa branch mint of the British Royal Mint.
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