User:Generalissima/Totem pole dollar

The totem pole dollar is a commemorative one-dollar coin struck by the Royal Canadian Mint for collectors in 1958, commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Colony of British Columbia. The coin was nicknamed the "death dollar" soon after its release, as it featured a Tlingit mortuary totem pole, traditionally used to store cremated remains.

Design
Stephen Trenka was a Canadian-Hungarian engraver. Born in Hungary in 1909, he immigrated to Canada in 1929, and soon afterwards attended the Ontario College of Art. He had previously designed the 1951 commemorative five-cent piece.

Anthropologist Wilson Duff described the design as based off an 1884 photograph of a Haida house pole. However, Kwakiutl woodcarver and totem pole expert Ellen Neel stated that the totem pole featured on the coin had a "burial connection", comparing it to similar pre-contact Tsimshian poles used for the storage of cremains.

Master Engraver Thomas Shingles cut the reverse die of the coin based off Trenka's design.

Production and distribution
The number of coins produced far exceeded usual commemorative issues, with around three times more coins produced than the previous largest issue for a commemorative dollar, the 1939 Voyageur dollar.

Over a third of the coins were sold in British Columbia; in addition to its commemoration of British Columbian history, the use of silver dollar coinage were popular among mining interests in the region.

Reception
The coin was criticized for its lack of a reference to the Cariboo Gold Rush, whose centennial coincided with the foundation of the colony itself. The use of Tlingit symbolism was considered particularly unfitting, as the nation was far removed from the early colonial settlement and its founding.