A commemorative $3 coin produced to mark Canada's 150th anniversary features the artwork of Guelph artist Laurie McGaw.

The coin shows a "fun and inspiring collage of unmistakably Canadian symbols on a 99.99% pure silver coin," said the Royal Canadian Mint in a news release.

"Those [symbols] include our beloved Canadian flag, a birch-bark canoe, old fashioned lobster traps, an Inukshuk, wheat, the majestic Rockies, hockey sticks and many other icons that are Canadian to the core."

Oodles of doodles
"I thought it would be interesting to get as much as possible on a coin that you could still see and recognize... and simple enough that you can still see it down at the small size," McGaw told CBC News.

She said the first step in designing a commemorative coin like this is a simple doodle.

"I doodle and doodle and doodle, just out of my head. And then I spend hours and hours and hours doing research for images."

All art on Canadian Mint coins must be 100 per cent original, said McGaw. Even with portraits, the images "can't be just a reproduction of an existing photograph, it has to be an original interpretation of the pose or the images."

To read the complete article, see:
Ontario artist Laurie McGaw designed Canada 150 commemorative coin(www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/laurie-mcgaw-150-canada-coin-mint-1.3993183)

McGaw has designed several other coins for the Canadian Mint. In 2015 her artwork was featured on two coins released by the Royal Canadian Mint honouring the 100th anniversary of the creation of "In Flanders Fields."

"It's a coin, but it's still an illustration and it's problem-solving," she said of that design featuring Lt. Col. John McCrae. "Obviously, it's an honour. It's exciting and really quite neat to see them come out and be collected by people. It's a huge honour."

In 2011, she designed a coin commemorating the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

The new Canada 150 coin was launched on Feb. 16, Flag Day, as a way of honouring the Canadian flag, said a news release.

To read the complete article, see:
Guelph artist's work appears on Canada 150 coin(www.therecord.com/news-story/7156291-guelph-artist-s-work-appears-on-canada-150-coin/)

For more information, see Laurie McGaw's web site:
www.lauriemcgaw.com