“Grouped together, their collective life’s work offers us the hope of a caring and reconciliatory spirit for generations to come.”

As fans of Canadian humanitarian Lotta Hitschmanova celebrate her 114th birthday today, they’ll be pleased to know her name is still on the short list of 8 notable Canadians to appear on our new $5 banknote.

It’s been a long time (over 3 years) since the short list was created, after more than 600 nominees had been submitted by Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

I suspect it may be challenging for Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland to choose a single individual to appear on the banknote, so a year ago I proposed a creative solution to the problem:

To select Terry Fox, Lotta Hitschmanova and Isapo-muxika (Crowfoot) to appear together on our next $5 banknote.

All three are iconic figures who lived in different time periods in Canadian history. Individually, each represents an important social element in our uniquely Canadian story.

While grouped together, their collective life’s work offers to us the hope of a caring and reconciliatory spirit for generations to come.

I think this idea still has merit. However, I do acknowledge there could be some design problems in blending all 3 heroes onto one banknote. So I have come up with an even better solution:

Let’s give Lotta, Crowfoot and Terry Fox each their own banknote!

With the changing of the $20 banknote to King Charles, here is the current situation of our 5 Canadian banknotes:

$5 Wilfrid Laurier, $10 Viola Desmond, $20 King Charles III, $50 William Lyon Mackenzie King, $100 Robert Borden.

Why don’t we take this opportunity to do a complete revamp of the WHOLE banknote series, so that it could look something like this:

$5 Lotta Hitschmanova, $10 Viola Desmond, $20 King Charles III, $50 Terry Fox, $100 Crowfoot.

There can be little question that we live increasingly in an age of deep social rifts, exacerbated by our sometimes-vitriolic political parties.

So why not give the 3 Prime Ministers — 2 Liberals, Laurier and King, and one Conservative, Borden — a bit of a rest and replace them with 3 towering individuals who represent the very best of 3 substantially different historical streams from our Canadian experience?

The beauty of adding Lotta, Crowfoot and Terry Fox is that all 3 of these iconic figures are “ready to go,” no further consultations are needed!

If you like this idea, be sure to let Minister Freeland know about it.

And Happy Birthday Lotta!

David Rain