I was fortunate this month to acquire a unicorn-calibre Ontario plate for my collection: A blank Ontario plate, discarded from 3M, with...

I meant to tell this story as its own unique post, but suddenly, the whole #Plategate thing happened, and I was busy following the news to inform the next installments of 2Cents. But then, during a 24-hour period, #Plategate went from being Ontario’s top news story to being completely forgotten because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that the emergency province-wide shutdown has curtailed all the events where I would have gone to find plates, there’s not been much to write ab

What started as an interesting event for collectors of Ontario licence plates has turned into a train wreck, followed by emergency surgery. What follows is a day-by-day description of #plategate. On Saturday, February 1, 2020, Ontario released its new blue “A Place To Grow” licence plates for sale to the general motoring public. There was much chatter about it on social media channels. By the end of the day, a few of my good friends in the plate-collecting hobby had already g

Today’s the day! Blue numbers on a white background are no longer being issued to passenger vehicles in Ontario. After 47 years, we’re finally making a transition to something substantially new. Alannah with the first blue plate in town. I’m not a spring chicken anymore; I'm closer to 50 than 40. In my time, Ontario passenger plates have always been white with blue letters. The colour is changing, starting today, to white characters on two shades of blue. That’s really exciti

Today will be a day long remembered by Ontario plate geeks. There are a few dozen of us… maybe a couple hundred if you count the lurkers. But today, we all heard the news. The 2019 provincial budget was presented, and just like the media hinted, Ontario’s getting a redesign of its plates. This is the first time they’ve even been tweaked since 1994, and it’s the first major design change in my lifetime. Opponents of the ruling party were strongly critical of various announcem

According to multiple media reports today, the slogan “Open For Business” is under consideration for Ontario’s truck plates. Simon Jefferies (Premier Doug Ford’s media relations director) was quoted in the Toronto Star as saying, “While no decision has been made, that is a slogan the Government for the People is considering for commercial vehicles only.” [1] It has not yet been clarified as to whether that would include only regular truck plates——like the kind that your budd

This past summer, when I assembled the display that I brought to the ALPCA Convention in Rochester, I did my best to restore confidence...