Thomas Shingles (3 April 1903 – 31 May 1984) was the Master Engraver of the

Royal Canadian Mint }) is the mint of Canada and a Crown corporation, operating under the ''Royal Canadian Mint Act''. The shares of the Mint are held in trust for the Crown in right of Canada. The Mint produces all of Canada's circulation coins, and manufacture ...

from 1943 until his retirement in 1965; he first began work at the Mint in 1939. He was born in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the We ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

. Shingles was responsible for several of the images on

Canadian coinage The coins of Canada are produced by the Royal Canadian Mint and denominated in Canadian dollars ($) and the subunit of dollars, cents (¢). An effigy of the reigning monarch always appears on the obverse of all coins. There are standard images wh ...

, including the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

V-variant nickel, which he designed in 1943 at the behest of Mint staff; although most coin designs are done at full size and then reduced via a

pantograph A pantograph (, from their original use for copying writing) is a mechanical linkage connected in a manner based on parallelograms so that the movement of one pen, in tracing an image, produces identical movements in a second pen. If a line dr ...

, Shingles chose to produce this design in miniature. Other designs by Shingles include the 1959 updating of the 50 cent piece to include the

Canadian coat of arms The Arms of Canada (french: Armoiries du Canada, links=no), also known as the Royal Coat of Arms of Canada (french: armoiries royales du Canada, links=no) or formally as the Arms of His Majesty the King in Right of Canada (french: Armoiries de Sa M ...

; as with all of Shingles' work, the coin includes his initials "TS". He also designed the majority of Canadian commemorative coinage during his tenure as Master Engraver. Shingles retired from the Mint in 1965, but continued to work as a freelance artist. In 1970, he entered a contest to design the 1971 Canadian dollar coin and took first prize, being awarded $3500.Islandnet.com
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References

Canadian currency designers 1903 births 1984 deaths People from Birmingham, West Midlands {{England-bio-stub