Halifax bridge coins find new home
For as long as the Macdonald and MacKay bridges have been around, people have been tossing coins into the baskets to get between Halifax and Dartmouth.
Millions of coins have been dropped over the last several decades, with a number of those being rejected.
“They’re collected, they’re taken to our area, and for the last 25 years, they’ve just been put in a bucket,” said Steve Proctor with Halifax Harbour Bridges.
The rejected coins are from all over the world, and they’ve been piling up. When Proctor discovered the coins sitting in a vault, he took it upon himself on his own time to go through them as a hobby.
“There’s coins from Vanuatu, there’s Australia, there’s New Zealand. Every country in Central America is represented. Every country except Paraguay in South America is represented,” said Proctor.
“Each of them must, in my mind, tell a story.”
Of all the rejected coins, Proctor sees three as the most interesting.
“One is a coin from Yugoslavia, a country that doesn’t exist anymore. One was from East Berlin that was minted before World War II, and then there was a Russian Ruble that was minted before World War I,” said Proctor.
He said there are 3.3 million crossings each year, with approximately 20 per cent paying cash. Once a coin is tossed into the basket, a system is able to identify 36 approved types of coins. The rest are rejected.
“Part of the challenge is that the government has issued more than 36 different kinds of coins, you know, the commemorative coins, the new coin with King Charles on them, those kind of things, so we have to continually update that.”
Currently, there are only two ways to pay to cross the bridges: cash or a MacPass.
“A tap option comes up frequently, but it’s not something we’re considering right now,” said Proctor.
He said coins aren’t the only thing that gets put into the baskets.
“We get diapers, we’ve had drugs, we’ve had garbage,” said Proctor.
The public will be able to see all the coins on Sunday, Aug. 4 for this year’s Bridgewalk on the Macdonald Bridge. People may even get to take a few home.
“But we do not want to see them back in our toll baskets again,” Proctor said.
Click here to see a photo gallery of the coins.
