20 Dollars - Elizabeth II Bald Eagle With Fish

Part of the RCM's ongoing fine silver wildlife series, this issue coincides with a period when the bald eagle — long absent from much of Canada as a breeding population — had recovered sufficiently along Pacific and Atlantic coasts that encounters with the species were becoming routine again. The recovery owed largely to the 1972 ban on DDT across North America, which had devastated raptor reproduction for decades by thinning eggshells.

Struck to .9999 fineness rather than the more common .999, a standard the RCM adopted aggressively in this era to differentiate its bullion and collector output from competing mints.