The "Four Winds" series draws on Inuit cosmology, but the Franklin connection here is specifically the 1845 expedition — Sir John Franklin's third and final Arctic voyage, during which HMS Erebus and HMS Terror became icebound near King William Island. All 129 men were lost. The wrecks of both ships were located in 2014 and 2016 respectively, renewing public interest in a disaster that had preoccupied Victorian Britain for over a decade.
The Royal Canadian Mint issued this as part of a broader "Pathfinders in Canada" sub-series examining Arctic exploration through an Indigenous lens — a framing that would have been unthinkable in mid-twentieth-century Canadian commemorative coinage.
The "Four Winds" series draws on Inuit cosmology, but the Franklin connection here is specifically the 1845 expedition — Sir John Franklin's third and final Arctic voyage, during which HMS Erebus and HMS Terror became icebound near King William Island. All 129 men were lost. The wrecks of both ships were located in 2014 and 2016 respectively, renewing public interest in a disaster that had preoccupied Victorian Britain for over a decade.
The Royal Canadian Mint issued this as part of a broader "Pathfinders in Canada" sub-series examining Arctic exploration through an Indigenous lens — a framing that would have been unthinkable in mid-twentieth-century Canadian commemorative coinage.