Whither, fair loonie?

The loonie reached and briefly exceeded parity with the US dollar today.

Loonie, I love you, I love your shape and your colour and your face and everything about you, but your timing is crappy. Where was your robustness when I was paying back $20,000 of $25,000 in student loans- AMERICAN student loans- in your stunted currency starting when I emigrated in 1997? That was hell- I spent a lot of time behind the wheel back then, driving from teaching contract to teaching contract all around the Toronto area, and every day I’d listen to the financial news in the car and break into a cold sweat around dollar news. I remember it breaking 70 cents (from above, I mean). I remember it touching 62 cents. I remember having to deposit something like $500 a month Canadian into my TD US dollar account just to cover that month’s US$300 and change student loan payment… and then there were the US credit cards, too. I used most of my share of proceeds from two property sales, tens of thousands of dollars, to pay off all my US debts in muscular US dollars, having to buy those fat dollars with anemic Canadian ones.

And now you’re even with the greenback. And you might go higher.

Oh, loonie, your timing! Not only did I miss the boat (and lose thousands of dollars) by paying off my loans and bills when I did, but now I’m getting paid for work in the States, and my most recent cheque was worth FEWER Canadian dollars, after transaction fees. We’re talking nary a cent on the dollar, so far, but when I think that this check would have paid me something like 1.50 per US dollar a few years ago, it really confuses me. Sure, this is a point of national pride, and I’m enough of a Canadian now to feel it. But there are so many downsides to your strength, loonie. And as I say, your timing is terrible.