The Toronto university professor who noticed something amiss with the new $10 polymer bill, and hounded the Bank of Canada until it made a quiet correction, is wondering why the central bank isn’t more publicly acknowledging its mistake.
When the bill was revealed last November, Ryerson University architecture professor Hitesh Doshi noticed the Bank of Canada's description didn't match what was actually pictured on it.
On its website, the Bank of Canada claimed the bank note features an image of Mount Edith Cavell, a prominent peak near Jasper, Alta.
But Doshi, who had hiked up Mount Edith Cavell with his family, didn’t recognize that peak among the mountains depicted on the bank note. So he contacted the central bank on Nov. 23, asking them to point it out.
Doshi said he engaged in a months-long to-and-fro with bank representatives who insisted Mount Edith Cavell was "on the left" of the bill.
Finally, on July 25, Doshi received a short email saying that the central bank had changed its description.
Mount Edith and Mount Marmot were no longer named in the bill's description, and Aquila Mountain and Lectern Peak were added to the list. However, there was no mention of the error, or the change.
Doshi said he thinks there's an obligation for public institutions to admit to their mistakes.
"Unless I show the old and new documents to people, nobody would know this had happened. To me that was the sad part," he said in a phone interview Tuesday.
"It's like burying history."
