CANADA COURIER: A special Canadian coin in Sergiy Minenok's pocket (07/04/99)

CANADA COURIER

by Christopher Guly

A special Canadian coin in Sergiy Minenok's pocket

Sergiy Minenok left his native Ukraine for Canada in December 1997, seeking new opportunities for himself, his wife, Anzhelika, and their 5-year-old daughter, Natasha.

Today he has a special Canadian coin in his pocket: a 25-cent piece bearing his initials.

Mr. Minenok is among 12 Canadians whose coin designs have been selected from more than 50,000 entries for use in special millennium quarters being issued by the Royal Canadian Mint every month this year to celebrate the past. Another 12 designs - ones that look to the future - will be issued in the same cycle next year, marking the first time in Canadian history that coins will bear the month of circulation.

Mr. Minenok's winning design was the selection for May 1999. Called "The Voyageurs," it depicts a canoe, the type used by fur traders and explorers in opening up vast areas of North America from the mid-17th century to the mid-19th century. An image of Queen Elizabeth II appears on the front of the coin.

Explorers who married aboriginal women produced an entirely new generation called the Métis. Two of those voyageurs (French for travelers), who were also known as coureurs des bois (trappers), Pierre Radisson and Médard Chouart Des Grosilliers, are credited with the formation of the famous Hudson's Bay Co. in 1670, the holdings from which eventually formed today's Canada.

Appropriately, Mr. Minenok's special quarter was unveiled at a ceremony at Winnipeg's historic Forks Junction, where the Red and Assiniboine rivers meet. The site has been a meeting place for centuries, dating back to the voyageurs themselves. Manitoba's capital city also was an important fur trading and administrative center for the Hudson's Bay, whose archives are located in the city. Coincidentally, the Royal Canadian Mint's circulation-coin production facility also is based in Winnipeg.

Mr. Minenok's coin, which went into circulation in May, is also available in a sterling silver proof version for $14.95 ($9.95 U.S.) and may be purchased directly from the mint by calling 1 (800) 268-6468 in the United States or 1 (800) 267-1871 in Canada.

On a historical note, the last time the mint issued a coin with a voyageur theme was in 1935, when Prime Minister R.B. Bennett commissioned a silver dollar to commemorate the King George V's silver anniversary on the throne. That coin later became known as "The George." The image remained a part of the dollar coin for the next half-century, until the release of one depicting a loon, known as the "loonie," that replaced the dollar bill in 1987.

Mr. Minenok, who has an interest in history and experience as a participant of several archeological expeditions in Ukraine, decided to try his hand in designing Canadian currency. He pored over historic paintings and engravings depicting voyageurs and the clothing of the era (deerskin moccasins, red-colored shirts, colorful finger-woven waist sashes, toques).

Mr. Minenok entered the mint's "Create a Centsation!" Coin Design Contest with an image of three voyageurs and aboriginal guides paddling a canoe through the Canadian wilderness along a shoreline of rock outcrops and trees symbolic of the rugged Canadian Shield. It was one of six designs portraying early European contact with the New World that he submitted.

"My design was inspired by my childhood visions of the North American wilderness, and the romance and excitement of early explorers, adventurers and fur traders depicted by such writers as James Fenimore Cooper and films I saw as a child," explained Mr. Minenok. (Cooper is perhaps best known for his 1826 classic "The Last of the Mohicans.")

In the annals of Canada's numismatic history, Mr. Minenok's name will be listed along with that of renowned Canadian sculptor Emanuel Hahn, who created the first voyageur design six decades ago. According to the mint, Mr. Minenok's voyageur depiction, which shows a party of three, is "more historically accurate" than the Hahn coin, which had only two passengers traveling in a canoe.

A graduate of both Ukraine's Technical College of Art, where he earned an honors diploma as an industrial art technician, and the Art Academy of Ukraine's graphic arts program, Mr. Minenok has seen his art featured on three Ukrainian coins. One is a gold collector's coin honoring celebrated poet and artist Taras Shevchenko; the other two commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Chornobyl disaster (1996).

Mr. Minenok's artistic works have been reproduced also on two of four Ukrainian postage stamps created to mark the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Skilled as a modeler, oil painter, book designer and illustrator, wood and stone carver, he is now establishing his professional career in British Columbia.

In describing his winning entry, Mr. Minenok said: "The images of strong and brave people who were seekers of new adventures have remained in my heart all my life. In my mind, they are firmly connected with the word 'Canada'."

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