Spent!

Kayak #38 was all about the history of shopping and currency — the coins and bills we use to pay for things — in Canada. Here are just a few places you can visit to see and explore for yourself.

Bank of Canada’s Currency Museum, Ottawa, Ont. Whether you spend 45 minutes or two hours, you’ll find lots of fascinating stuff to check out here: playing-card money, seven-dollar bills, money issued by places with names like Henry’s Bank or the Banque de St. Hyacinthe, and coins and bills from all over the world. Bonus: your trip to this museum is free!

La cite de l’or, Val d’Or, Que. More than 450 km north of Ottawa and 500 km north of Montreal, this site takes you deep underground into a former gold mine. You can also tour the nearby mining village that sprang up during the mine’s richest years, from 1935 to 1985.

Royal Canadian Mint and Fort Gibraltar, Winnipeg, Man. There’s no candy at the Royal Canadian Mint, but you get an amazing look at how coins are made, from punching blank disks out of huge sheets of precious metals through stamping and wrapping. The Mint also makes coins for other countries and special items such as the medals given out at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. (There’s a Mint building in Ottawa, too, which produces medals, collector coins and nearly-pure gold coins for investors.) Visit Fort Gibraltar to see how an early fur-trading post worked. Be sure to check out the beautiful centuries-old trade beads made in Italy.