Craig Young is a long-time member of the Pontiac Community Players. He acts in plays, helps with production and does administrative tasks for the newly minted non-profit organization.
However, before he retired, Young’s career was about as far away from participating in local theatre productions as you could imagine.
Young was involved with developing a technology that was . . .
aimed at ensuring the Canadian dollar couldn’t be counterfeited.
It all started in 1973 when Young joined the Bank of Canada, which he referred as ‘The Bank’, as an IT specialist.
After working in IT for over a decade, Young was hired as the deputy-project manager to create and implement an optically variable security film (OVSF), which was a small strip of material that was put on the corner of every paper bill over $20 and changed colour based on how you looked at it.
While this may sound simple, the technology required to cheaply and reliably produce this for the massive amount of currency in circulation at the time was not an easy task.
“The making of this thing and getting it onto the banknote was highly involved and very technical,” said Young.
As colour printing technology developed from the 70s onwards, counterfeiting money was becoming easier.
“You could be a young office worker and say, geez, I really want to go out tonight but I don’t have the money,” explained Young. “Take a $20 bill, put it on your photocopier and photocopy it front and back and cut it out, hand it in and get real money back.”
If you found someone who would accept the bill, it was that easy.
Counterfeiting went from a crime that took some skill, to one that was becoming a crime of opportunity, according to Young.
“It starts to impact the value of your currency,” he said. “So, the people in the bank thought [the OVSF] would be a way to deter it.”
The material used in the OVSF was originally invented by the well-respected Canadian scientist J. A. Dobrowolski and was patented by the National Research Council of Canada (NRC).
“The NRC allowed the Bank of Canada to use that patent,” said Young. “But then we had to have a machine configured that would make the material in enough quantity that it became economically viable to make.”
The team Young was a part of ended up contracting a company out of Japan called ULVAC, which built a 65 metric ton machine that produced the material in a vacuum.
Young went on to describe the complex way this machine operated, which involved minerals like zirconia, silicon and aluminum, temperatures of 1600 degrees celsius, electron beam guns and more.
Young and his team encountered various engineering challenges from factors like the atmosphere changing the colour of the strips to one they didn’t intend, or the melting point of zirconia and silica being far higher than melting point for polyethylene, to getting the strip to actually stay attached to the bills, to keeping the precise optical sensor cameras in place while the machine was moving or making sure the machine was well-maintained, and so on.
All these engineering problems had to be worked out through trial and error.
The OVSFs began being put to use in the early 90s. Once implemented, the number of counterfeits that the Bank of Canada collected dropped drastically, according to Young. “The key factor was [that the OVSF] shifted colour, and they couldn’t replicate that,” said Young.
The process was so successful that Canada began exporting the process to other countries around the world. For example, the British pound adopted a form of the OVSF.
The Bank of Canada also made deals with the private sector regarding the implementation of the technology. “The [OVSF] didn’t cost Canada anything at the end,” he said. “And we actually, much to the bank’s astonishment, made a profit.”
The OVSF was present on Canadian bills until the introduction of plastic money starting in 2012. This was done to make counterfeiting Canadian bills even more difficult.
“When I look at the fact that we achieved our goal, no matter how frustrating and difficult it was to do it,” said Young. “It was something to be proud of.”
Working at the Bank of Canada gave Young an interesting perspective on money.
He recalled how he was once in a room with millions of dollars. “We had hundreds of millions of dollars sitting in front of us and it really just became paper.”
However, after he retired from the Bank of Canada, Young could devote himself to a long time passion he had since high school, the theatre, which brought him to the Pontiac Community Players.
The high school in Etobicoke that Young attended “put on amazing productions, amazing musicals, live bands, and everything. But I didn’t have the courage to get up on stage,” he said.
Yet, after decades of working in securing Canada’s currency, Young joined the Pontiac Community Players and began to help with productions. It seems to give him a similar sense of pride that he has towards the OVSF, despite the time commitment.
“It’s been fun, I get to take my clothes off on stage,” he said jokingly.
