Winnipeg, MB's Royal Canadian Mint makes a heckuva lot of money: every Canadian circulation coin, in fact, plus those of more than 60 other countries—billions of coins each year.
Now the mint’s poised to extend its already impressive global reach with a series of 17 special-circulation coins celebrating the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. Throughout 2009, the mint will issue17 different coins including a dozen quarters and two "Lucky Loonies" depicting Olympic Winter Games sports from speed-skating to sledge-hockey.
Visitors on a pre- or post-Olympic jaunt to Manitoba (home of multiply-medalled speed-skater Cindy Klassen) can tour the mint, check out its stunning, angular architecture, and watch coins being made in its high-tech 15,000-sq-m (159,995-sq-ft) facility. They can even make their own souvenir coins and lay their hands—momentarily, mind you—on a pure gold bar worth almost a quarter of a million dollars.  (Free samples, sadly, are not available.)
Designed by celebrated Manitoba architect Étienne Gaboury, the mint's massive, triangular shape—panelled with rose-tinted glass—literally glows under Prairie sunsets.
Here, Canada's first one-dollar coin, dubbed the loonie because its face shows a loon, was first minted back in 1987, as cost-conscious Canada decided to save money by replacing dollar bills with genuine "hard" currency. It was followed in 1996 by the two-dollar coin—the bi-coloured toonie—thereby causing Canadian jeans pockets to forever sag.
For a cool contrast to the mint's uber-modernism, check out Winnipeg's historic Exchange District, a downtown 30-block district of vintage early 20th-century buildings.
And hang onto your pocket change on your way home: you'll have Olympic souvenirs scattered in among those coins. Not to mention loonies and toonies. And saggy pockets.