Item: i116816

Authentic Coin of:

Canada
Edward VII: King of Britain (22 January 1901 – 6 May 1910)
1902 Silver 25 Cents 23mm (5.56 grams) .925 Silver (0.1728 oz. ASW)
Reference: KM# 11 (1902-06*-09) Rare Type
EDWARDVS VII DEI GRATIA REX IMPERATOR, The portrait in right profile of Edward VII.
25 CENTS CANADA, text within wreath, with crown above.

Edward VII (Albert Edward; 9 November 1841 – 6 May 1910) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910. He was the first British monarch of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha , which was renamed the House of Windsor by his son, George V . 

Before his accession to the throne, he served as heir apparent and held the title of Prince of Wales for longer than any of his predecessors. During the long reign of his mother, Queen Victoria , he was largely excluded from political power and came to personify the fashionable, leisured elite.

The Edwardian era , which covered Edward’s reign and was named after him, coincided with the start of a new century and heralded significant changes in technology and society, including powered flight and the rise of socialism . Edward played a role in the modernisation of the British Home Fleet , the reform of the Army Medical Services , and the reorganisation of the British Army after the Second Boer War . Edward fostered good relations between Great Britain and other European countries, especially France , for which he was popularly called “Peacemaker.”
 

Edward usually smoked twenty cigarettes and twelve cigars a day. Towards the end of his life he increasingly suffered from bronchitis. In March 1910, the King was staying at Biarritz when he collapsed. He remained there to convalesce, while in London Asquith tried to get the Finance Bill passed. The King’s continued ill health was unreported and he attracted criticism for staying in France whilst political tensions were so high. On 27 April he returned to Buckingham Palace, still suffering from severe bronchitis. Alexandra returned from visiting her brother, King George I of Greece , in Corfu a week later on 5 May.

The following day, the King suffered several heart attacks, but refused to go to bed saying, “No, I shall not give in; I shall go on; I shall work to the end.” Between moments of faintness, the Prince of Wales (shortly to be King George V ) told him that his horse, Witch of the Air, had won at Kempton Park that afternoon. The King replied, “I am very glad”: his final words . At 11:30 pm he lost consciousness for the last time and was put to bed. He died 15 minutes later.

Edward VII was buried at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle , on 20 May 1910. As Barbara Tuchman noted in The Guns of August , his funeral marked “the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last”.

Canada is a country, consisting of ten provinces and three territories, in the northern part of the continent of North America. It extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering 9.98 million square kilometres (3.85 million square miles) in total, making it the world’s second-largest country by total area and the fourth-largest country by land area. Canada’s common border with the United States forms the world’s longest land border. Canada is sparsely populated overall, the majority of its land territory being dominated by forest and tundra as well as the mountain range of the Rocky Mountains; about four-fifths of the population live near to the southern border. The majority of Canada has a cold or severely cold winter climate, but southerly areas are warm in summer.

The land now called Canada has been inhabited for millennia by various Aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French colonies were established on the region’s Atlantic coast. As a consequence of various conflicts, the United Kingdom gained and lost North American territories until left, in the late 18th century, with what mostly comprises Canada today. Pursuant to the British North America Act, on July 1, 1867, three colonies joined to form the autonomous federal Dominion of Canada. This began an accretion of provinces and territories to the new self-governing Dominion. In 1931, Britain granted Canada near total independence with the Statute of Westminster 1931 and full sovereignty was attained when the Canada Act 1982 severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the British parliament.

Canada is a federal parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy, Queen Elizabeth II being the current head of state. The country is officially bilingual at the federal level. It is one of the world’s most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries, with a population of approximately 35 million as of 2015. Its advanced economy is the eleventh largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources and well-developed international trade networks. Canada’s long and complex relationship with the United States has had a significant impact on its economy and culture.

Canada is a developed country and one of the wealthiest in the world, with the tenth highest nominal per capita income globally, and the eighth highest ranking in the Human Development Index. It ranks among the highest in international measurements of government transparency, civil liberties, quality of life, economic freedom, and education. Canada is a Commonwealth Realm member of the Commonwealth of Nations, a member of the Francophonie, and part of several major international and intergovernmental institutions or groupings including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the G8, the Group of Ten, the G20, the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.