August marked the 50th anniversary of the end of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates. Canada exited early, moving to a floating exchange rate in 1970.1 That was a year before the United States suspended convertibility of the US dollar into gold and most major countries floated their exchange rates.
This anniversary provides a timely occasion to reflect on the  1 Canada first abandoned the Bretton Woods pegged exchange rate in 1950 but returned to it in  1962. In 1970, Canada left the Bretton Woods system for good. See J. Powell, A History of the Canadian Dollar (Ottawa: Bank of Canada, 2005).