My name is Joseph Green and here is the story of how I started Beaverworks Mint. I was borne and raised in Edmonton, Alberta my mom passed away when I was 8 from breast cancer, she was an award winning pianist and well known artist in her own right, my dad was a retired fighter pilot with the RCAF.

My father had a Masters Degree in electrical engineering and worked in the telecom industry, lobbied the CRTC, was a GPS expert and the worlds leading expert in Syledis Navigation used in positioning high arctic, off shore oil well drilling platforms. He was a one of the worlds leaders in electromagnetic propagation and antenna design and I gave him the knickname of “Magneto” because his level of expertise was that next level. As a graduate student, he assisted his professor in calculating the Apollo Lunar program re-entry calculations for the return from the mission to the moon. He also worked in some other areas I won’t disclose here.

Growing up after my mom died, with a month later my childhood dog passing away, my dad was the only parent I had left and in order to obtain the needs of a child to bond with their parents, most bond over throwing a ball, playing hockey or fishing, with my dad it was discussing advanced physics, advanced military technology, the black programs, space technology, the RCAF and things of that nature. As a result, I was the kid that no one understood. By the time I was an adult, about half of my family died from cancer and I was all too familiar with death. That too not only compounded the divide between my peers as I  was much further along in facing death, and when you couple that with having a father who was an engineering scientist, only served to distinguish me from everyone else as I stuck out in every community I was in.

Being able to reconcile the influence of the arts from my mother and engineering from my father, at points was a nearly impossible task given the extreme depth my dad was at…like imagine having what seems like normal discussions with your father about quantum tunnelling within the context of cold fusion in high school. After graduation I enrolled at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology in the Avionics program, remained there a year and realised that at the time it was not for me and I left, sold my car, put rent down on my apartment for an entire year and explored my creative side where I invented a 4 player and 8 player chess game and developed with my other art friends an enhanced version of Axis and Allies the board game.

April 17, 2001 changed my life forever when the first four Canadian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan.

As an accomplished high end web designer with clients including the official production company for the Edmonton Oilers, NHLPA and film companies that worked with noted celebrities in San Francisco.

When that event happened in Afghanistan, I put up a website which could capture the official condolences from all over the world, sent it to every MP in Canada and requested they sign it and send it to every Canadian they knew. In addition to that, the following morning I went out and placed hundreds of yellow ribbons on the main 97 street boulevard I lived on, all at eye level to capture the cities shock at the loss of our beloved soldiers based in North Edmonton. Shortly after I posted that website, I was contacted by the Battlegroup serving in Afghanistan and I was stunned that my work was being shown in a war zone which was a new experience for me.

At this period in time, I was dealing with my first ever lawsuit as a former client of mine overtly stole the website I made for him and I went on to successfully have my work removed with the assistance of my father. Due to all the stress in this moment, I had the prevailing mindset where everyone was a liar and no one could be trusted. It was one of the most negative periods in my life. When the military asked me if they could do anything as thanks, my first reaction was everyone was full of lies and no one could be trusted and declined. They insisted and after thinking about it, I staunchly refused to accept any form of payment, notwithstanding the increased costs of bandwidth to host the site which my family helped to cover the costs, since I was a flag collector, I requested a signed flag of the service members there, but the entire time I was under the impression that it was all a lie, they won’t deliver and my mentality was “Please don’t promise because everyone is a liar as this is a true and solemn moment of pure expression if it must remain pure at all costs!”

A few days later, the officer, the Deputy Commanding Officer, Major Mark Campbell, sent me another email saying that my flag was making its rounds for signature and my mentality was “Yeah, sure buddy…I don’t believe you” and I just kept pushing to keep expanding the website as it was growing exceptionally fast and it turned out to be the single platform where soldiers serving there could spend hours reading all the entries from Canadians as they didn’t know if we even heard about the event, let alone knew how many people were impacted.

A couple days later, an email arrived with the message that…me and a few of the boys decided to pose for a picture to say thanks for your work.

When I received this around 9:30 AM, when I opened this and saw this group photo, I broke down and cried and said that my day was done and by 11:30AM I was drunk, processing this powerful moment. I was the only Canadian to receive a full sized signed flag. I was interviewed on CBC and made the promise to publish a book which had all the memorial entries and present that to the families. Not truly understanding what that commitment meant, it ended up taking about 2.5 years to finish the task. During this period, I went through a personal hardship of a breakup, I was in a dark and suicidal state of mind because of it, and I was obliged to look at a book of death while in this state for years. The breakup happened shortly after this began and so it was fresh pain during a painful event which acted as a force multiplier.

During this process, I came across a story on CNN about how a USMC flag which was pulled from the rubble of the Pentagon in September 11th attacks was taken onboard the space shuttle and flown as a way to inspire the American Armed Forces and since I had a very unique flag, I contacted the Canadian Space Agency, provided the back story and requested permission if they would be agreeable to taking the flag into orbit. They agreed, I was left in awe and my life was again, fundamentally changed as it shifted my perspective. None of these events would have taken place unless when the moment in time came, I didn’t follow my instincts and act when I did. The notion of trusting your gut instincts and acting on them when I did, formed the backbone of a major pillar of my identity as a Canadian Artist. While it was in orbit, I asked Colonel Stogran about how he felt about his signature flying around the world at 17500MPH and his response was “When you put it that way, HOLY SHIT!”. It was cool to be able to do this for those who served our nation.

I ended up making an application to Emily Carr University in BC to which my life changed and right before I departed for Vancouver, I was able to finish my book, keeping my promise and made plans to sell the book and donate 100% of the profits to a non-profit based on the recommendation of 3PPCLIBG CO Col Pat Stogran, a group that promotes literacy and women’s rights in Afghanistan and donate those funds in memory of all those who served. During my enrolment at Emily Carr, I was the only student in the world who was involved in sending a flag into orbit while in university. Following that event, I was able to host a presentation at Emily Carr and present the funds to the recipient, along with a copy of my book to them and thanks to Major Campbell, a piper from the Seaforth Highlanders was present to participate. I was in tears literally the entire time due to this overwhelming moment in my life.

During my time in Vancouver, Major Campbell suffered an IED blast which significantly wounded him and as someone I regarded as a dear brother, I ended up painting him an 8’x4′ painting titled Patricia’s Endurance and sent it to 3 PPCLI RHQ. I knew he was enduring immense hardship and this was my only way to show how much he meant to me. Eventually, that signed space flag made it back to Edmonton where it was unveiled at 3PPCLI RHQ. Right before that, I presented a painting and invited the senior officers which included Major Campbell to paint with me the final brush strokes and that act helped to lift the spirits of everyone presents and when I painted my brush strokes, it was on behalf of the global arts community to strike back against the horrendous damage that was done to the two large statues of Buddha carved into the side of and blown up.

When that flag was finally unveiled, it finally allowed me to have completion on what turned out to be a massive promise I made and at points felt like it was very nearly going to destroy me. However as I held on, especially in the darkest of those moments, endured those dark temptations to go to sleep and exit this world and end the pain I was enduring, it ended up providing me, thanks specifically to this event, a truly unique life altering perspective which showed existence from an orbital perspective.

It taught me, that if you make a promise, regardless of if you really thought about the significant and potentially life altering consequences of that promise, if you endure all the hardship the world throws at you, and overcome, God will reward you with sometimes something priceless, a new perspective on life and one from literal orbit.

At no point did I compromise on that project, it took much longer than I expected, especially since the fatal Columbia Shuttle disaster which delayed the mission, the project would not let me go until the moment that flag was unveiled and the moment it was, I was free. I kept my word of honour, at all points, moments and areas, did the absolute best I could, did it right and something my father, family and I think my late mother would have been proud of.

Why am I providing this information?

I am providing this information to you to better understand the mentality of the person who is at the top of Beaverworks, how he operates, what his priorities are, his standards and expectations from himself are.

There came a point while living in Vancouver where I simply had enough of people making promises that were never kept, doing an immense amount of work in those pursuits which never panned out and I pretty much checked out and decided to radically change my life, move back to Alberta, get trained as an oilfield trucker and go and work in the oil patch. I was very well known in Vancouver and BC for my paintings and by moving, I was walking away from that so I could get a new perspective and generate revenue.

So I ended up moving back, moving into an apartment across the street from my sisters house, a 2 bedroom apartment with one room, the master bedroom becoming my painting studio and living room my digital design area. Given my love for the Canadian Forces, I ended up putting up a website selling shirts with the RCAF Roundel on them with Cafepress and when I did, it was shut down by government lawyers. My intent was to provide people with the opportunity to show their support, but I was made aware that you just can’t do that. During this period, as part of my truckers training, more specifically, learning how to operate a vacuum truck and training in Medicine Hat, living in a trailer in the back parking lot of a trucking company in an industrial section of the small city, I was contacted by the Directorate of Intellectual Property who could see what I was attempting to do and got me in touch with the Executive Director of the RCAF Association who would be able, in turn, to grant me the permissions I formally needed in order to proceed with any commercial sales. At this point, as an artist, learning the trade of trucking and operating a vac truck, I was interested in watches and getting one made of the Avro Arrow but one that was seriously pimped out to the extremes. So over the following year or so, as I had these permissions officially, I examined potentially making blankets, watches, zippos, and with the exception of watches, nothing really lit my passions. It was during this time, I was exploring the Super Arrow concept interceptor design and one of my supporters contacted me with a link to a coin design competition hosted by the Royal Canadian Mint.

I was immediately enthralled and by now, I was back in Edmonton and working with a water trucking company watering lawns, 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. After I designed the coin, I thought to myself “I have the legal permissions to do this anyway, I am not going to beg to have this coin made, I am just going to do it myself!”

This was the exact same thing that happened when I decided to go out and put up yellow ribbons and post the memorial website, although I really could not see it at the time. Up until this point, I never purchased any silver coin in my life because I could not justify it and I especially loved the select gold plating on some coins. I felt that I couldn’t justify buying any silver because I viewed it as an unnecessary luxury. So after I found a suitable mint I could subcontract this to, I ended up using all of my personal savings, my tax returns, line of credit and ended up making the first batch of Silver Arrows and when they arrived, I had about 17 lbs of finished, stunning coins! I was all in.

With the help of the Association, with the single paypal email and without any website, the opening weekend of accepting sales, really floored me because it was my most successful opening of any type of e-commerce business or any kind of business I’ve ever experienced! I knew I had a winner! From there, I build a website, continued to expand it and included some of the watches I was offering and then I thought to myself, “You know, I don’t want this to be a one off….I want to build this into something really, really special.” As an artist and web designer, the downside sometimes is finishing a project and moving on and never really investing for a prolonged period of time, work that can pay dividends and something you can continually build. It was then I decided to set my goal to make the 100 Collection: a collection of 100 different coins, celebrating 100 years of the RCAF and to peak at the conclusion in April, 2025. This was back in 2015 and so I had 10 years.

So as began to expand, one of my supporters for my Super Arrow concept donated to me, a made in China CNC wood mill, a truly outstanding Canadian patriot and when it arrived, I knew I could not operate it in my apartment. It was from there that I moved into a commercial building, an 800ft2 office above a book bindery and was allowed to renovate it to suit my needs. It was there that I set up, build a space with a bedroom and bathroom, a glass enclosed area for the CNC mill, storage area for all the packaging and over the following 4 years, the collection expanded and I received my first backing from a fellow trucker named Ryan who could see the merit in my project and he wanted to help with a small loan of 10k to help me to keep pushing.

From there I ended up outsourcing the sculpting of the next number of coins to a retired sculptor from the Royal Canadian Mint and pursued expanding the collection. As time went on, I was faced with delay after delay, coin batches would arrive after in some cases many months overdue, they had the wrong serial numbers so they would engrave Spitfire onto the Hurricane coin etc…in one case I had to wait well over a year for one batch and I thought to myself as I continued to push, that this group is unreliable, they may do nice work but I can’t trust the scheduling because what was happening was that customers were getting upset with me and I had to apologise to them because of delays that were beyond my control and it made me look exceptionally bad and this kept happening.

Then the time came to produce our first gold coin, the Golden Arrow. I designed the coin to look identical to the Silver Arrow but made of Gold and in keeping with the overall theme of referencing 100 or 201, referencing 100 years which is depicted as 100 squares around the perimeter of the coin and 201 referencing the first AVRO Arrow to fly, RL-201, as 201 tiny dots running around the circumference on the inside of the coin edge near the squares, I decided to make the only coin with 2.01 Troy Oz of Gold with select Platinum Plating, full colour printing and serialized edge markings. When the silver Arrow was issued, the sub-contractor mint informed me that it was the first time in history that any coin was ever minted up to these particular specs and when I heard that originally, I thought to myself “You have got to be shitting me! I am the new guy on the block and I just set the global precedent in quality!? WOW!” I wanted to ensure Beaverworks did exactly the same thing with Gold as we did with Silver.

It was at this time when one of my collectors ended up purchasing the first Gold Coin and he also offered me financial assistance with another loan so I could keep going. Then the beginning of the bad news began.

My Landlord Headed into Foreclosure, I had 2 Weeks Notice

My landlord, a man of highly questionable ethics and integrity ended up going into a commercial foreclosure. The difference between a residential and commercial foreclosure is that there is no grace period given in commercial ones as compared to residential and allow for people to move out in an orderly manner. I had 2 weeks to move, after 4 years of non-stop renovations and work which was all abandoned, I was exhausted and my sister came to the rescue and she said I could move into her garage, provided that I build a shed to house all the stuff I will have displaced. So that’s what I did.

After I finished the shed, all my stuff was moved into this unheated garage, including my bed, computer, coin stuff, CNC Mill, my life was in complete chaos. However I didn’t lose any hope because I still had my website, still had the Golden Arrow, I was and still am working on the packaging for that as I am known for my packaging, and the chaos was so bad, that even processing a single order took over a month. Keep in mind that under normal operations when an order comes in, I always aim for same day shipping because I like high performance turn around time. So having a delay of this magnitude was a truly hard thing to entertain and so I paused all sales until I could get set back up and operating in a basic way.

Our collectors, especially the owners of Golden Arrow’s 201 and 203 especially, Louis and Andrew, two of the absolute amazing human beings alive and they have been with me since the beginning. I have not shipped these coins yet because they have been patiently waiting for me to finish the packaging for the Golden Arrow which will be a thing of next level awe and they are absolutely willing to wait because they trust me that I will deliver and have been patiently waiting now for over 5 years while I have embarked on this and I offered multiple times to send the coins but they wanted to wait for the finished product because you only get one chance to make the first impression and if all goes well, they will be shipped in time for Remembrance Day. Last year I took one of these coins to our bullion broker because they have a desktop spectroscopy scanner which will tell you which metals are present. These coins are supposed to have select platinum plate. This is what I advertised, this was what was sold. To my horror, my bullion dealer informed me that there was no platinum present. To me, this was a deliberate act which was very subtle and done in such a manner which when these coins would have been shipped, then if our collectors took their coins in for a technical audit, they would have come to the same realisation and then that act alone would have been enough to destroy our reputation because of fraud. We caught that and I am making the public disclosure so everyone can see what it is I as leader of Beaverworks have to contend with and why I have decided to go this route of doing it all in-house. It will be all done in-house, especially critical stuff like this because I can guarantee which metals are present because I will do the select plating myself. After this experience, I have decided to switch out platinum for rhodium instead and because these were originally made in the United States, well that just didn’t sit well with me so they will be remade here in Canada by me, now that I have all the tooling to properly do it all. The nice thing about this setup, if there is a flaw or error at all of any kind, I can literally remelt it, remake it, re-strike it and finish in very, very short order. The Golden Arrow is our ultimate calling card, our subcontractor knew it, our competition knows it and we caught them dead to rights.

As I was “settling” into the garage, the first two Golden Arrows arrived, they had problems with them, both of which had to be sent back repeatedly. The problems were with the strike quality as the coin was damaged on the edge face from the strike itself in one case, the others were the masking for the select plating was below a rank amateur level and in another case, the printed decal came off the coin. I kept the subcontractor mint informed and to their credit, they accepted the returns in each case. Frankly it was embarrassing to see actually, however nothing was out of the ordinary. I looked at it as a commentary on the failure of the overall system which utilises the globalised distribution of specialised services as not one facility seems to do it all. Each part of the process requires the coins to be shipped around from facility to facility for each additional options to be added. The Golden Arrow was plated in Germany of all places.

When the remade Golden Arrow arrived, that’s when I began to post pictures on social media and then that’s when my world came crumbling down. I had a third customer lined up and he was good to go, then I was informed by the sub-contractor mint that they could no longer do any further business with me and in the span of a day, we lost a vital sale and more importantly, lost our sole provider who could mint our coins and thereby eliminating our livelihood, and all this while I was living and operating out of a garage. There are no words I have for gratitude I have now looking back that I did not have that third Golden Arrow made because of the deliberate fraud committed against us of having no platinum plated.

That news hit me hard, but I assessed the situation and reminded myself that there is no point in feeling sorry for oneself, solve the problem and move on. So I looked and looked for a suitable replacement subcontractor, especially here in Canada and found no one that could help, for a variety of reasons they had issues that raised red flags with me and it was then that I sat in my old, used massage chair in my sisters garage and said to myself “Oh my God…if I am going to keep my promise I made to finish this collection, I am going to have to build my own mint from scratch!”

When I started this, all I wanted to do was to make a truly beautiful collection that Canadians can be proud of, finish it, then exit stage left and with the funds I earned, pursue my aerospace UAV ambitions. I didn’t think I would have to literally build a mint from scratch in order to keep my word of honour. Like who does that? Well it turns out, I do.

I kept my Golden Arrow collectors apprised of the situation, I was not finished the packaging but offered to send them the coins but they elected to wait because they wanted the experience and I am eternally grateful for their patience. Losing a sale and the source of my livelihood all in the span of a day or two was a truly hard thing to digest. I had the strong feeling that behind the scenes, calls were made and suggestions were made to drop this project.

With my Golden Arrow backer offering to help me with another small round of a loan, it was not enough to purchase a calibrated minting press. At this point, I literally knew nothing about the tooling, even the language used. I knew I needed a press but a press is seriously expensive and I needed one that would work, so with the small loan I received, I purchased the hydraulic piston which I would then purchase the steel locally and then weld it all together. Did I know about different steel grades? No. Did I know about things like press terms like “daylight” or any of that? No. I just knew I needed a way to press my coins.

This was around the period when Covid hit. All the lockdowns and social isolation quite literally had almost zero impact on the work I was doing. I was already isolated, all day, every day, pushing hard to build this system. I purchased a 2D laser engraver so I could end up eventually engraving my own dies. More debt, more hardship, more struggles and as seasons changed, working towards keeping your word of honour you gave to the RCAF, the Canadian Forces and Canada as a whole became increasingly more and more difficult. I gave my word, I decided to proceed, not having any clue as to what I was getting myself into, but my mentality was and is, “whatever it takes to keep your word”.

In every single instance of every tool I ever purchased from China, there was nothing but problems. I didn’t have a choice but to purchase from China because of how cheap everything is. The downside to that is almost none of the equipment came with any manuals and poorly made on a phone, video instructions which are well beneath any form of western standard.

One day I managed to discover there was a company that could make a coining insert for my press and he was the only person I came across by this point now 5 years into this project where he could answer some of my technical questions but it was only limited to a single hour. I informed him that I built my own press and because of that fact I built it, they would not sell me an insert and thereby enable me to resume operations. For the first 15 mins of the phone call, he was warning me not to go down in this direction and I said that I made a promise to the RCAF, I don’t have a choice, I must do this. Then he said and I will never forget this, he said “In that case, there are mints down here in the US that are making well over a million a month doing nothing but striking custom silver coins for people, making a couple of bucks per coin” and I thought to myself, “there it is…” Independent, expert level confirmation that those here in Canada don’t want anyone intruding on any type of market share at all for any reason, full stop.

It was certainly eye opening. Over the course of this, funding became so sparse as the time demands required to investigate, research, solve and adapt for each and every micro aspect of what goes into a mint consumed so much time, that I was reduced to scouring for empty cans to take them in to be able to buy a pack of smokes. All the funds I ever received to help push this along was all spent entirely on the things the mint needed, I even refused to even buy a second paid or shoes. All day, every day, focused on addressing and solving every minute detail of what really goes on within a mint and developing a system that is all under one roof so I can do it all and bypass all the problems I encountered along the way and ensure quality control at every step along the way.

Then came the breaking point, it was in late July a few years ago, all resources gone, absolutely nothing left in the tank, I went for a walk, deep in prayer and thought and had a long talk with God or the universe and said “Well I gave it my best shot father….I can’t go any further. I have no regrets as every nickel that came in was dedicated to this and so, I guess I will go back to trucking.” it was at that point, on July 31, I get a call from the lovely woman who was selling my coins at the Legion saying that she just made a deposit from some coins she sold and that immediately gave me a breath of fresh air just as I was about to expire. That happened to be on the anniversary of my mothers death. We had a call and she decided to loan me some more funds which came 4 days later which happened to be the birthday of my late mother.

With those funds, I purchased a 15 needle digital embroidery machine for packaging for the Golden Arrow, a large format UV wall printer which I was planning to use to print a large volume of of the packaging in a single go instead of one at a time, the press was now assembled and I was making progress. She also agreed to loan me the large sum of funds so I could buy the complete calibrated minting system. I was once again inspired to keep going, living like a vagrant, enduring the hardships I was, winter was coming and with the nonsense of Covid, it only compounded the misery. In the previous winter, after visiting friends, my family who bought into the lies, ordered that I “self isolate” inside the gold garage in winter, with no access to a toilet, shower or any hot food. That was hard. In all fairness to them, they did agree to let me use the washroom, but I refused because of the surrounding nonsense. I ended up walking to the corner store to buy 4 large coffees at a time and reheat them as I needed, eat microwave heated pizza pockets and using a camping toilet. It was a cold and demoralising period. Nothing like finding dead mice in your bar bridge. At the lowest point of this experience, it was -30 in the unheated garage and I discovered there was a small little mouse that was inside and I didn’t have the heart to kill him and I managed to get a single picture of him. He looked exactly how I was feeling and it made me think about how hard life is for a little mouse in winter. So I gave him a little food to help him out and until it warmed up. Sometimes even when you’re at the lowest point in ones life, there are little blessings that come in the form of a little mouse to remind you just how blessed you are. I ended up naming him Roberto.

Then a day after my birthday in November, that night I went for a walk, it was during a lunar eclipse which turned the moon a blood red. I was profoundly distressed, the pressure was getting to me so hard that it taxed my faith to the point where I was praying to God to simply obliterate me. I said “Father, I don’t think I deserve hell, nor do I deserve heaven, can you please just obliterate me as I don’t want to live anymore as all of this is just way, way too much.” All of my nature felt like chunks of broken metal all being melted at once and the heat was so intense, so intense, it was my soul’s breaking point. It was arguably the worst moment of my life. In the morning, my sister comes in and says that my dad’s door is locked and he is unresponsive and for me to break in, which I did and I found my fathers body after he passed away while he slept. My life changed, my biggest supporter and man who was going to help me secure the large loan from the woman, the man who helped to shape who I am, is gone, the family was in shock, and life changed and we went into funeral mode which is something we were all too familiar with and all this after the previous night of torment and around the period of my birthday. Birthdays for me have always been reminders of the pain of loss and same as with all Christmas’. Reminders of those we lost, the hardship and misery.

The funeral was arranged, it was held at our church and I was the only one in the family who refused to wear a mask because I would not dawn the symbol of silence and conformity to the lie. The amount of people was small because everyone was still brainwashed by the lie and it was a funeral unlike anything I’ve ever attended. My father was sent off with the Honour Guard from the Legion, something I shall be eternally grateful for and reminded me of how important institutions like the Legions are to everyday people. The woman who was going to invest was the wife of the man who was in charge of the honour guard and after he passed away, she went silent and unresponsive.

Alone, cut off, I still endured and persisted, as this was all that I had to enable me to escape this prison of obligation I have put myself into. Vicki was the woman and she was amazing but with her silence, I didn’t want to pressure. Months went by and I reached out and I said something to the effect that…. its okay if you don’t want to back me, but I hope you can still help me sell the coins once I get this going because I don’t have anyone that is selling them on my behalf and I hope you are still interested in helping. She clearly did alot to help me and I was grateful but it was a hard thing to endure the pressure, followed by the loss of my father and I have so many elements that I was still working on to bring this mint operational.

During this period, I ran a strike test with my press I built, and the piston I purchased from china with the square flange made of 2″ thick steel, used inferior steel in the flange and not hardened still and the press began to rip off its housing and my press was now ruined and unusable. It had to be repaired. I called my cousin Darren and asked if he thought his press could be used to to bend the metal back into position and he came by and took a look at it and immediately saw that his 60T press was not anywhere near able to tackle this problem and he volunteered to help get my press repaired by a professional machine shop and even volunteered to help pay for the repair, which ended up costing a little over $5000.00 and more than the piston itself.

It was around this time and before my press was repaired that Vicki called me out of the blue and apologised for the time she took as she needed to the time to assess but was ready to loan me the funds I needed to get the tooling I needed. She said for me to come over and pick up a cheque and I thought it was perhaps another bait and switch as I’ve had too many events where I got my hopes up to only have them come crashing down again. I was so financially hard up that I had to borrow bus fare to go over and pick up a cheque for $130500.00. She gave me the extra $500 with the instructions to use that to buy some new shoes and clothes which I did and eternally grateful for as I was getting pretty ghetto, even by my standards.

When I picked up the cheque, I showed a picture of the cheque to my cousin and he said “Why don’t you move your operations into one of my farm garages because you’ll need the space.” I was floored by the offer and I took him up on it. He even agreed to differ collecting any rent until I get striking and so for these past years I have been working inside this farm garage, the back rent I owe increases every month. So I made the deposit, paid for the minting system, began the process to move, I bought a cheap used vehicle to begin the moving process and I recall the last shipment out of my sisters garage, how I cried in sincere gratitude for having my prayers answered. None of this has been easy. I can endure a lot of physical hardship, even the mental, its the emotional hardships that are the hardest.

As I moved into his garage, a long process as I had to renovate the space and build a wall down the middle section, which is 17 feet tall and runs about 60 feet in length, I had to not only frame it, but build a platform so I could work on the upper parts. As I was working one day, climbing the ladder to get to the 8 foot tall 2×4 cube platform I built for this purpose, the ladder slide out from under me, I fell onto the platform then fell from the platform onto the concrete floor with the ladder breaking my fall. I’m glad my girlfriend at the time, a woman who stood by me through all of this was there to help me as I only agreed to take a single day of rest because I was under the time crunch to get this operational because the deadline for the conclusion of the 100th was approaching and I had to get this operational.

So the following year, the studio walls were framed, layered with OSB the drywall so I could hang my paintings on the wall and have the screws able to bite into something, but before I moved in, my cousin gave me the heads up that I had only a few years to “get my shit together” because he was going to sell the land and I’ve learned that it something he’s now done and as I write this, I have about 8 months left inside this studio or less.

He assisted me in getting all the electrical working, arranged for the local generator company to have them store one of their generators here so I can use it on the occasion when I need to power up the system for use, I agreed in principle to pay him rent for that, and to his credit he offered to waive those fees but I gave my word.

I have on occasion brought him coins as gifts and I presented him with his own prototype Silver Maple that I presented ahead of the Commanding General of the RCAF and I presented it enroute to dropping the coins off to be transported. I wanted him to know how much I appreciated all the help and said “Sir, I am going to say something you have never heard nor will hear again in your life. I am giving you a coin ahead of the Commanding General of the entire Royal Canadian Air Force.” Needless to say, he was tickled pink. I also gave him the second prototype 5 Oz Command Maple I made as a gift to patient thanks to him as I have only placed on the generator perhaps less than a dozen hours in the three years I have had it here.

So as the system came in it took weeks to arrange for the electrician to come in, get it all connected, after I had to position the tools. For the main coin press, I had to move it a grand total of about 6 feet and all I had was a long maple 2×4 that I used as a wedge to nudge it incrementally into position and it took a full day to move just that press. I had to build a dedicated maple table for my 400T press and with my wall printer, I used it to print imagery on the walls to echo the ethos.

After all this time, energy and effort, the very first activation of the press, which came with no instructions at all, I ended up breaking the first reeded collar I had. The moment I had worked so hard to have, waited so long, something I thought would be a moment of triumph, was anticlimactic and it sucked. It took a few months for a replacement collar to arrive and ultimately I ended up making replacement collars here which are twice as thick and withstand the pressures that broke the previous collars, yes, collars.

When I was in the process of getting the system all calibrated and integrated, a multi-month long process to not only familiarise myself with it all, but to have it work along side other systems, when the time came to produce the finished Silver Maple prototype coins, the night I finished the very first successful strike after years of toil and struggle, the largest backer for this, Vicki passed away. It was heart breaking, I was devastated as she became like a second mom to me and more family than family as with the exception of my dad, cousin and uncle buying a single coin, no one in my family ever purchased a coin or badge which was a way to show their support for a dream I was pursuing. Its not about the money, its about the symbolic act that matters. She passed away without even seeing the studio she helped to build, nor see the tools she paid for nor the coins she helped to make. For a moment, the earth was frozen in her orbit as it mourned her passing.

When I began renovating here, one of my cousins, the husband of Darren’s sister was tragically killed in a collision and he will be missed as well as he referred to me as “Picasso” in his charming farm boy manner. In addition to Todd, my cousins father, my Uncle Alex recently passed away, he was a man who taught me so much about building and repairing anything. Both are terribly missed. They make me proud to be a red neck! 🙂

He died too soon as did Vicki, as did my father and for me, to get this operational is to do so in their memory, along with the memory of our first major backer and first Gold Coin customer, the family of Major General Lionel Bourgeois. This process of keeping my word has brought out the nature of others whose silence in some areas, emerges in volumes in others for how they have supported this because its beyond me now.

I recall as a kid watching Little House on the Prairie and the episode of Stone Soup. Here is the link to watch it and the part I am citing begins that the 4:54  mark:

The story of Stone Soup is very much what this entire process feels like. A community of supporters who donate an ingredient here, an ingredient there and over time, more and more people contribute and with what started out as a pot of hot water and rocks, turns out to be a magnificent community soup that everyone contributed to and can share in its success flavour.

In order to build a mint from scratch, it involves so much more than you think, building the system is a magnitude of order more complicated to build than it is to use. There are so many different aspects to it than you can imagine. It is not as simple as buying a single tool and away you go….HAHAHAHAHA!!!YOU FOOL! I LAUGH AT YOU if you think that. This is a complicated interconnected web of systems that each of which needs to be calibrated and connected to each other and to give you a single example, the 3D laser engraver we have, it was converted to a 3d engraver and just adding that card into the system, doing all the correct wire pin out connections, due to the fact there was no documentation and one had to find it, that alone took a week to complete, working all day, every day. That is just one single example of the immensely complex system I’ve built in order to keep faith with the RCAF and Canada.

Let me give you a breakdown insofar as to what its like as to how my thought process is. Let’s say you know you are going to need a laser engraver to engrave. Okay, now what. Well it needs a table to sit on, it needs power, where is it going to reside, what computer is going to drive it, how is it networked, is there electrical, do you need to run electrical from the box, is there a box, if not, where do you put it, do you wire up the table or no. How are the monitors displayed…like this aggregated mental breakdown comes with not only building all the systems for each station, but doing so within a space that you had to build from scratch, wire it up from scratch, build the shelves…all of it, all subjected to this complex mental breakdown of first of all mapping it, then breaking it all down into orderly steps to build what you need. Now when you throw into the mix, cost constraints because I don’t have access to unlimited wealth, it becomes an issue of rather than spending thousands of buying a large table, counter top or whatever, it becomes one of buying the wood to build the tables or counter-tops to then equip it etc…you analyse exactly what each step requires and what you can’t buy, you identify thing you need but can’t afford to buy and build your own and incur the time penalty.

“But Joe! Can’t you just start selling?!” Yes, but only when ready….why? Because I am a one man operation and in order to get anything done, to quote the character from MASH, Charles Emerson Winchester III, “I do one thing at a time, I do it very well, and then move on.” If I want to sell a coin and ensure my reputation and the reputation of Beaverworks is as top notch as I have established it to be, for the most part with very few exceptions that are due to this chapter, if I sell coins, I need the website to be functional so it can keep track of all the orders for account reconciliation. If the website is not functional or part finished, its a reflection on my work and does not impart confidence in consumers. Once the website is done as it is now once this site goes life, then is says all systems and subsystems are a GO. If just one single subsystem is off, then it will mean a backlog, orders pile up and until the subsystem is corrected, my reputation is at risk and that can’t be allowed to happen. It is better to remain in a state of pause across the entire ecosystem than it is to open early and risk damaging it as was the case a few months ago. If blanking, engraving, striking, packaging assembly, design, printing…any of it at all is offline or partially offline, it impacts everything.

To the outside observer looking in without giving it due consideration as to what is actually happening, it may seem like I may be dragging my heels, I’m not. My goal is to get this system to the point where when I am ready to take orders, I can complete the order and ship them in a timely manner and not sacrifice quality and there are still some issues like the select plating I am working on to address. However, with these last 5-6 years and 18000 hours of time of non-stop work invested to get here, I’m very confident in the ecosystem now so customers can place an order, the site will register it, the payment systems will go through, a notification is sent, I fabricate the coin, process the order, package and ship, close the order and repeat.

Other mints outsource various aspects of minting to other groups, Beaverworks does it all in house and that is the reason why its taking as long as it has. I’m tired of relying on others and having them not follow through for a variety of reasons or failures or for whatever reason. We do everything in-house to ensure quality control. What we don’t know, we will learn, what we need we will buy or build and do it ourselves. Knowledge is the reward. Its taken much longer than I anticipated to do this, cost more, required more, but I am doing it right according to my “Gut Feeling”. Since I can’t buy silver blanks that have a .9999 purity, I have to make them. I don’t like the option of outsourcing elements like paper board boxes being made in China and then imported in then used, when the funds permit, I will buy the tooling so I can make our own, then all I will need is the paper and box folding machine. Because I am an artist, I can appreciate the craft of making your own paper or sourcing it from artisan craftsman who make their own paper. THIS IS THE ART FORM OF MINTING.

As times goes on, my skills will only continue to improve, be refined, enhanced and will only keep getting better and by marrying them to high performance e-commerce enabled systems, will allow Beaverworks to capitalise on this unique system we built which is literally unlike anything else in the world today. I don’t want to buy anything from China or any other third world nation, I want to build here, Canadian made, literally all of it When I can afford to buy the tooling to make our coin display slabs which is an adapted plastic injection molding system, I will. I want to be able to make our own acrylic plastic packaging from scratch and when I say from scratch, I mean right down to the source polymers, if possible.

Beaverworks and its visionary approach is to conduct a complete cycle restart of our manufacturing capability because after having the rug pulled out from under us with either fabrication or with websites, we are taking steps to forever harden ourselves against that ever happening again and to demonstrate to Canadians how we can leverage our innovation for problem solving and technology to overcome the Boomer generations actions of selling out or manufacturing capacity for profit. Being able to absolutely control the means of production in whatever you make is absolutely critical to success, in all areas, at all levels, at all times. If you are subcontracting out, do your due diligence to ensure they won’t injure you at the worst possible moment when you are more vulnerable.

Now that the website is finished, in order to update it means only having to update our blog and catalogue while still retaining the functionality and security. Now that the minting system is done, once operational the only thing that would be the bottleneck would be the fabrication of the blanks and we have that now in hand which only came after months of effort to solve critical problems and directly innovate our own solutions and methods.

As an artist, I place expression of the art form as a priority ahead of profit, but I am not oblivious to the need for profit, but it won’t come at the expense of meaning, integrity, honour and ensuring we are always focused on quality first, customer service first, honesty and transparency first. Delays and setbacks are always inevitable and being honest about if you screwed up, or whatever it may be is absolutely essential so customers can be informed and respect is shown.

I am trying my best. I am not a billion dollar backed organisation, I am a guy who lives in a farm garage with his dog, working endless days and nights towards this mission and keeping my word of honour. Yes I’ve been delayed, but I’m still here and I’m not going anywhere, I will deliver and because I am the only Canadian who is doing this in my own way, I am my own backstop and others are looking towards me for inspiration and hope and in a time period of so much corruption, lies, broken promises and more, I have endured more hardship, humiliation and real hard pain to do this and if anyone thinks I am going to simply sell out or suddenly deviate from this path, then they are simply wrong. I want someone to look to for inspiration, an example of doing it right because its the right thing, the Canadian thing to do and won’t ever compromise on those basic standards of excellence. I suppose I am becoming the man I want to look to as to how to do it right and if my journey can inspire others, then I am honoured. Truly.

I don’t care what you do, just do it well, do it right, do it by the book and if the book is wrong, write a new book and educate others as to how. And above all, don’t be discouraged. Failure only happens when you give up. If you staunchly refuse to give up, success is absolute. However sometimes success is not measured in wealth but in wisdom. All I want to do with this is to make beautiful works of art and if I can get out of debt with this system, that would be a God send. There is always hope my friends. Always. Don’t curse darkness, light a candle of hope. In my journey, its been so difficult that all I had at points was absolutely nothing but hope. I have managed to build something unique, capable, competent, advanced and dialed in. There is a reason why I was thrown under the bus multiple times. I was because this work is very good and this industry is very lucrative.

My goal here is to resume working with the RCAF Association because they’ve been really amazing and patient with me over these years and they deserve to profit from this system and I want to be able to send them funds and copies of my coins so they can finance their projects and I’ve demonstrated this is possible. I want people to take pride knowing that a guy named Joe minted their coins, printed the images on the coin, plated their coins, ideally make the packaging for their coins and inspire countless others to follow this example so we can get this country moving forward again, in terms of economic stimulation, but also in terms of taking pride in what is actually made here in Canada. I take pride especially with these coins dedicated to the RCAF because it was a massive part of my Dad’s life. With each sale and a job well done is honouring his memory and the memory of Vicki and Major General Bourgeois, honouring my backers who share this same sentiment, its a truly heavy obligation to carry but I’m here Canada. I’m here…I did it and now that the website is done, I can finally become the financial success I’ve always dreamed of. Its not easy living like this, but I chose this because I believe in this nation and this was my sacrifice to demonstrate it.

Beaverworks is already a success because we did what most everyone thought was impossible. Once we can secure the financial success I am certain this will grant us, you watch what we do next. Seriously. Life is short, I am not one to spend funds lavishly on myself, I am one to invest into the tools of expression and I have a long overdue UAV I want to build for Canada, buy and build the tools I need for that and keep building Canada up,  instead of tearing her down. I am that guy, I will forever be “that guy”

I wanted to provide an unvarnished truthful accounting of what it has taken to get here so that when I say I truly love and I am humbled by so many who have helped me along the way, you understand that I mean it. When I say, I will remember how others tried to throw me under the column of tanks trying to destroy this, and I will remember it, I mean it. When I say to retain hope, I mean it. The adherance to the doctrine of truth is critical for wisdom and the doctrine of humility and humbleness equally so. I will always try my best in all things, as I am sure all of you will, that is our shared common values. At this point, I am doing this now for Canada, for what I think you want this to be. I hope you have been able to come away with a true sense of the immense effort its taken to get here and sincere love I have for you and all those who have taken the time to read a portion of my journey in life. Its certainly a unique path. I am no one special, just some guy who lives in a garage with his dog, trying to do right by Canada and those who trust me to deliver on my word. I will, you can be assured of that, because if this journey has taught me anything, sometimes life strips away absolutely everything except for your word and if you let life do that to you, then your entire legacy of work, becomes absolutely worthless.

May hope and inspiration find you today and may it fill you joy and wisdom as you pursue your dreams, regardless of what others may think about it. Because if I can build a mint, something exceptionally hard to achieve, then if I can do this, you can achieve anything at all as long as you have the courage to try and tenacity to never give up. Ever. Just be prepared to do whatever it takes.

Very sincerely and respectfully,

Joseph Green jr. B.FA