Dear North American Currencies,

I had forgotten how expensive it is just to be in Vancouver, and how annoying and heavy your Canadian coins are, especially all those loonies and twoonies. And now that the US dollar is falling, everything seems unreasonably priced, especially books with two prices on the back (ie. $10.99USD, $15.99 CDN) when you have to pay the Canadian one even though its not anywhere equal to the USD one.

And, whats up with taxes never being included in the price? I can’t calculate 6.5% of $3.87 to know how much my pumpkin latte from Starbucks will actually cost, and when I sit down at a restaurant to have a sandwich for $9.65, I have to pay 7% provicinal sales tax, and then Im not sure what the difference is between government  sales tax and harmonized sales tax or when I pay them, but they’re each another 6 or 7 %, AND then I have to tip 10 or 20 %, so my ten dollar sandwich winds up costing $14.79. It makes me feel cheated like false advertising does. And why can’t things just cost even dollar amounts? Coffee? $3. Sandiwch? $10. No more of this dimes and cents business.

I dont like pennies, since they make my fingers smell like sulphur, and whenever you need a penny, you dont have one, since when you have pennies, they’re easier to throw away than carry around. Pay phones dont even take pennies, parking metres dont count nickels, and a dime only buys you 1 minute and 36 seconds of parking. Quarters are weighted so sometimes a Canadian Quarter doesn’t even let you make a call in an American payphone.

I just wish we could get rid of pennies all together, sell things for the advertised price, all have the same coins, and bring back the dollar bill to Canada so the tipping culture wouldn’t be so embarassing – no one likes handing a valet parker $4 in loonies. Or we could just get rid of this expensive tipping culture all together, use less coins and make less change with more even prices.

Sincereley,

the traveler who still uses payphones and doesn’t like heavy pockets