{"id":614364,"date":"2026-04-19T11:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T11:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/614364\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T11:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T11:48:08","slug":"belleville-illustrator-the-creator-of-commemorative-toonie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/614364\/","title":{"rendered":"Belleville illustrator the creator of commemorative toonie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t&#13;<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/carl-wiens.jpg\" class=\"header-image\" alt=\"Belleville illustrator the creator of commemorative toonie\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Belleville illustrator Carl<br \/>\nWiens with a blown-up version of the CN Tower commemorative toonie he designed. (Photo: Facebook\/Royal Canadian Mint)<\/p>\n<p>There are three million toonie coins now in circulation in Canada, originally designed by a local graphic illustrator.<\/p>\n<p>The new toonie was the creation of Belleville artist Carl Wiens and honours the 50th anniversary of Toronto\u2019s iconic CN Tower.<\/p>\n<p>Recently Wiens appeared on CJBQ\u2019s Lorne Brooker Show revealing he was one of only three people to be chosen to submit designs for the coin.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/media-cdn.socastsrm.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/1977\/files\/2026\/04\/wiens-super-excited.wav\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/media-cdn.socastsrm.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/1977\/files\/2026\/04\/wiens-super-excited.wav<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI considered it to be a real honour just to be included in that first process and then when I got through I was super excited.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wiens said a lot of work went into the toonie\u2019s design.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/media-cdn.socastsrm.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/1977\/files\/2026\/04\/wiens-glow.wav\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/media-cdn.socastsrm.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/1977\/files\/2026\/04\/wiens-glow.wav<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had to keep the Mint (Royal Canadian Mint) people happy, I had to keep the CN Tower people happy and there was a lot of different levels of<br \/>revisions and changes and the glow in the dark feature was obviously a big component.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>See a Facebook post from the Royal Canadian Mint on the<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/search\/top\/?q=ROYAL%20CANADIAN%20MINT\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> CN Tower toonie here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>See much more detail about Wiens\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mint.ca\/en\/blog\/2026-04-behind-the-design-cn-tower?rcmeid=soc_2604_CNTower50_blog_design_EN&amp;fbclid=IwY2xjawRRf5BleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFYcUFZUGoyOWtlVlVvQkVEc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHvEztNHvhsCcCISG45f9HVel3dK8IgWFiRKL0O-SXg6pZsmA7fc7YVSz_yMM_aem_wjwK3jzl1VVMXTkBWzb8xA\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> toonie design here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-381826\" class=\"size-full wp-image-381826\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/carl-toonie.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1536\" height=\"2048\"  \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-381826\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Photo: Facebook\/Royal Canadian Mint)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; Belleville illustrator Carl Wiens with a blown-up version of the CN Tower commemorative toonie he designed. (Photo:&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,3735,3736,49,48,356,75,44,3733,3731,3734,3729,3730,3737,3732],"class_list":{"0":"post-614364","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-bancroft","12":"tag-brighton","13":"tag-ca","14":"tag-canada","15":"tag-design","16":"tag-entertainment","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-pec","19":"tag-picton","20":"tag-prince-edward-county","21":"tag-quinte","22":"tag-quinte-news","23":"tag-quinte-west","24":"tag-trenton"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}