Ottawa Mint sovereign

The Ottawa Mint sovereign is a British one pound coin (known as a sovereign) minted between 1908 and 1919 at the Ottawa Mint (known today as the Ottawa branch of the Royal Canadian Mint. This has augmented debate among numismatists because some view these pieces as Canadian while others view them as British and thus distinct from the decimal series of Canadian coinage. The discovery of gold in the Yukon in 1896 led to calls for the creation of a mint in Canada that could convert locally-mined metals into coins. Concerns that a low demand for Canadian coins could leave the mint idle lead to a proposal that British sovereigns (a widely accepted form of payment) could be produced domestically. To do so, Canada's mint would have to be established as a branch of the Royal Mint.

Sovereigns were used extensively for exporting funds, and redeeming bank notes, up to the twentieth century. Following the opening of the Ottawa Mint in 1908, the Dominion of Canada's government planned to produce decimal gold coins in addition to sovereigns. As it was a branch of the Royal Mint, it was obligated to mint sovereigns on request. Gold used to produce sovereigns came from British Columbia and the Yukon.

Despite not being a denomination of the Canadian dollar, in 1911 a place for sovereigns was included in cases meant to hold specimen coins, produced by the Ottawa mint.

In 2019, the Royal Canadian Mint issued a gold coin resembling a sovereign to mark the 100th anniversary of the striking of the last sovereign in Canada. The coin had a nominal face value of ten dollars.

The sovereign's value was set at “four dollars and eighty-six cents and two-thirds of a cent” by the Currency Act of 1910, and made legal tender in Canada along with divisions of the sovereign. One Canadian dollar was therefore worth 15/73 of a sovereign.