Canadian Tire Money

Canadian Tire Money is Canada's secondary currency. It is given out at Canadian Tire stores and gas stations across the country as a 5% bonus on whatever you spend at Canadian Tire.

The coupons are redeemable for gasoline and merchandise at Canadian Tire but is now gaining popularity in bars, where you can sometimes spend it at par.

Canadian Tire Money is also named Funny Money by the weirdos who squirrel it all away for years and then buy lawnmowers with bags of five cent coupons.

As far as it being a successful loyalty program for Canadian Tire, it is. Their clientele (especially the ones who hoard their coupons) is to be often questionable.

Canadian Tire Money is now called... watch this carefully... Canadian Tire "Money". On all the posters and advertising material, the "Money" is in quotation marks.

This money looks absolutely hilarious, like pastel versions of actual Canadian money (though in much smaller denomenations) and with cartoony pictures of "historical figures" instead of the actual former Prime Ministers that normal Canadian cash features. (Oh, and don't forget The Queen).

Often referred to as "Crappy Tire Money", spendable at "Crappy Tire". Oh, and in any town above a 5000 population, I doubt you'll be able to spend it in bars.

The Scottish lad that appears on the front of all the Canadian Tire 'Money' bills is called Sandy McTire. He first appeared on the 1961 issues. The really weird thing about CTM is that is was printed by the same company that minted actual Canadian currency: the British American Bank Note company.

Further to this node, there is a television ad campaign currently being used by Canadian Tire that features several men with a leader who is apparently able to buy many things with the "money" that he's hoarded over the years...things such as electric drills, fishing rods, scooters, bicycles, canoes, etc...all with the song "Big Spender" playing in the background.

It's kinda funny...I mean, the guys open up briefcases with clean stacks of the "money" like they were holding millions of real money. To be able to buy that much stuff...well, you'd have to be one hell of a "big spender" of legitimate money at Canadian Tire to be able to do it all over again with the fake stuff.

On the other hand, at least the reward is that you can buy pretty much anything at the store with the "money". Other stores have catalogs for their rewards programs...the best one I saw was a Club Z catalog for Zellers that featured a Porsche Boxster as one of the items...achievable with a total of something like 100,000,000 points. At 100 points a dollar, you'd have to spend $1 million at the store to be able to score that much...and, quite frankly, I highly doubt that I would spend that much on Martha Stewart housewares or Delta Burke clothing.

On a final note, it's no secret that many Cuban streetside merchants in Havana have been suckered into accepting the "money" for goods...cause enough for Canadian Tire to open up a store there for these poor souls to cash in what they thought was legal tender.

The really strange thing is that you can generally pass off Canadian Tire money as bonafide legal tender in stupid countries!

We were at a bar in Jamaica on a vacation last year, and the bartender had this big wall full of foreign money. I was sitting there looking at it when I noticed the Canadian Tire money. I laughed for quite a while about it, but I didn't have the heart to tell the bartender....

If you're not in the market for power tools or pool noodles, you can sell your Canadian Tire "Money" at pawn shops for fifty cents on the "dollar".