Got any nickels in your pocket? Or how about that designated place in the car where you keep all that errant change?
When you are looking around on the back roads you will discover older, lost coins at campsites abandoned farms, anywhere where what was.
An older date is always fun to find, it has sentimental value. The one-cent penny was withdrawn from circulation Feb. 4, 2013.
A total of 94,704,645 nickels were minted by the Royal Canadian Mint in 1974.
Fifty years ago there was an accident where nickels were strewn everywhere along a railway right of way, ripe for the picking, it was a “field day” in northern Ontario.
What happened?
Research identified a couple of renditions of what happened on the CNR line from Hillsport, through Longlac to Nakina.
From a news story from The Vancouver Sun, March 9, 1974, the title was “DERAILMENT SPILLS COIN.
The story’s lead: “There’s nickel in them drifts.
“If you need a few nickels and are willing to brave sub-zero temperatures and dig through 14 foot snow drifts, you might find some along an 80 mile stretch of railway in Northern Ontario.
“Canadian National Railways confirmed Friday that one of its trains dribbled thousands of dollars of the coins along the stretch of track Tuesday.
“The shipment of more than 500,000 shiny 1974 nickels, worth about $27,000, was being shipped from the Canadian Mint in Ottawa to Winnipeg in a rickety old wooden boxcar. The bottom of the boxcar apparently broke at Nakina, Ont., north of Lake Superior.
“Mrs. Mickey Popovich, owner of the Nakina Hotel, said an unusual number of nickels have been showing up at stores and taverns.
‘I know of one fellow who found about $400,’ she said. ‘And we’ve got people coming in here all the time paying for things with brand new nickels.’
Then there was this Ottawa writer’s column- editorial following the mishap, who analyzed or “fact-checked” the story for accuracy.
“DERAILMENT”? “There was no derailment. This report says the coins “dribbled . . . along the stretch of track”. That is true.
The headline reads “There’s nickel in them drifts”. This is obviously a play on that memorable phrase coined by Mark Twain, “There’s gold in them thar hills”. But the headline and the report do sound like a Wild West scenario. Someone on the editorial desk was having fun.
“And '14-foot snow drifts' do not describe any condition ever known in Northern Ontario. In the Rocky Mountains, maybe. The report is right about sub-zero temperatures. A reasonable guess, not a reported fact."
As for the “80-mile stretch of railway”, the railway distance from Hillsport (not mentioned) and Nakina (again, not mentioned) is 89 miles, close to 90 miles.
“And on which 'Friday' did CNR confirm the report? March 9 is a Saturday. The previous Friday would have been March 8, when CNR supposedly confirmed the report. But, the report states the spill occurred on the previous Tuesday, which would make it March 5. The spill occurred on Friday, February 22. So, any report of a spill on a Tuesday is way out of whack. CNR would have reported the spill on Friday, Feb. 22, or on Saturday at the latest.
“ A quantity of 500,000 nickels would have a value of $25,000, so that figure of $27,000 sounds right. However, other reports state that was the quantity lost, not shipped. Lord knows how many were shipped, but certainly, only a fraction of the shipment dribbled. And, the shipment was destined for Regina, not Winnipeg.
“If the container 'broke at Nakina', that means nickels dribbled 80 or 90 miles west of Nakina. The first alert about the dribbling actually occurred at Hillsport, 89 miles east of Nakina.
“Now the story references 'a rickety old wooden boxcar' with a faulty floor. The container was actually a modern metal transport trailer which was piggybacking on a flat car, and a faulty door latch may have precipitated the dribbling. However, early speculations about the cause of the loss did reference wooden boxcars and faulty floors. This was not reportage, this was pure speculation. By the way, it was Mr. John Popowich, not his wife, who owned the Nakina Hotel.
“Note the contraction of the '80 mile stretch' to '60 miles', and the pure invention of a Western-sounding community of “Cow Pass”. And one has to overwork the imagination to have the boxcar break at Nakina and couple it with a derailment at an unspecified location all the while it is dribbling nickels.
“Let us be clear: there was no derailment. It makes sense that the police cordoned off an area in the Nakina rail yard while CNR employees scrambled to pick up nickels. Were they 'railway' police? No, not at Nakina. Certain it was that Nakina had a detachment of Ontario Provincial Police, one or two officers and that they helped out.
“We may never know if Mrs. Popowich’s remarks about the rickety boxcar came from speculations about the coin container, or if the quote was made up of whole cloth by the press. Certain it was that there was never any old rickety boxcar. By the way, the correct spelling of her name is Mrs. Mickie Popowich, married to John Popowich, the hotel owner. This is the first mention of any Popowich in the press. Further mentions had to wait for reports on June 1 from The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail. It appears that some enterprising reporter did call Mrs. Popowich at the Nakina Hotel on March 8, but she drew many of her alleged facts not from personal observation but from speculations rife at the time.
“The final paragraph, referencing remarks by Transport Minister Jean Marchand, has an element of truth. However, the figure of $10,000 worth of nickels recovered is pure fabrication. This is the complete answer received by Marchand in Question Period, House of Commons, on March 8: ”
Hon. Jean Marchand (Minister of Transport): Mr. Speaker, I know now that the hon. member was quite right and that the railway lost a certain amount of money in the form of nickels. How much I do not know. They [CNR] want to keep the amount secret because they say they are not sure. These coins were spread over a distance of about 80 miles.” (Hansard)
“If CNR was unwilling to elaborate further in response to a question put to them by a high profile Cabinet Minister, what hope has the historian for official confirmation of the details in the case?
“In Ottawa, Transport Minister Jean Marchand said that about $10,000 worth of the coins had been recovered by railway crews. He said the railway had been trying to keep the loss secret so nickel hunters would not swarm to the area.”
Clarification of the story
So, I thought there needed to be more clarification as this story was half a century old.
It started with listening to a CBC interview that ran Jan. 22, 2024, on Points North.
Edgar Lavoie is a northwestern Ontario type of back roads heritage writer.
Along with the two newspaper articles cited, he discovered “Fifty years later, rumours still swarm around the facts of the case. This writer has combed through thousands of words of news reports and social media comments to arrive at a semblance of the truth. Official archives still fail to divulge the official facts.”
Lavoie was correct the CNR failed to report this incident until two weeks after the fact. Meanwhile, locals were scooping up the five-cent coinage.
He found out “The story of the great nickel spill lapsed into limbo for two and a half months."
On June 1, The Globe and Mail published a story datelined Nakina. “Many of the 1974 nickels, with the tell-tale damaged edges, are circulating through the cash registers of the town’s economy.
“Mickie Popowich, whose husband owned the Nakina Hotel, stated “We’ve got a few boxes full here. All the businesses are holding on to them. Nickels always come in handy.” The coins were showing up in stores and restaurants.
“Here in the beer parlour, we get them every day.” No businessman refused to take them.”
In pursuit of this story a visit to Nakina, this spring, was warranted. Just about anyone of that vintage knows of this debacle.
It was fortuitous early one evening at the restored caboose adjacent to the CNR railway station that we (Brian Emblin from Timmins) met Grant MacPherson, retired from the town’s recreation department, tending the decorative flower beds bordering the rail car.
He told us he met a local girl in 1970 and stayed.
“At the time I worked for CNR in communications for 21 years when it was all tubes and transistors, the system was called ‘telex.’”
The post-WWII system was for train dispatch. The technology operated on a switched station-to-station basis with teleprinter devices at the receiving and sending locations. Things have changed.
He said the culprit was a faulty shipping container affixed to a tractor-trailer flatbed where the nickels were stored. It is thought the coins had spilled out because of vibrations or after a sudden jarring the seal on the back door of the container swung open. Canvas bags containing the coins had somehow ripped open and the coins spilled out through the open door from Hillsport to Nakina.
“People were finding coins all along the right of way and that went on for quite some time.”
Less than one-half of the 500, 000 nickels were found so there remain a lot of coins out there along the right of way. I didn’t find one.
Finally
The final penny was minted at the Royal Canadian Mint Winnipeg, Manitoba, plant on the morning of May 4, 2012, and was later entrusted to the Bank of Canada Museum in Ottawa. Since 2000, the one-cent coin was produced using either copper-plated steel or copper-plated zinc compositions. Existing pennies will remain legal tender indefinitely.
An internal federal analysis shows the government has studied the pros and cons of the nickel, but Ottawa insists it has no plans to force the five-cent coin into retirement, as it did the penny.
Any nickel before 1960 is worth keeping for its potential value. From 1858 to 1921, the Canadian 5-cent coin was made of silver. War nickels made from 1942 to 1945 have a higher silver content and are more valuable. Nickels with obvious minting errors can be valuable.
Here is the map of the CNR route, ninety miles or 145 km. Back in the 70’s the population of Nakina was 1,100, now about 500. In 1986, Nakina ceased to be a station stop on the CNR line.
When you Google “Nakina Nickel,” nothing of value seems to appear. It cost me about ten bucks to purchase my 1974 nickel for the photo shoot. Many of the keepsake 'Nakina Nickels' as they are known have nicks from being tossed around underneath the rail cars.
But the worthiness of the story holds greater value on the back roads.