Parity; disparity

It's happening. Again. Here's the fas ci nat ing, developing story from Yahoo! Finance:

We are giddy with excitement. However. In a characteristically modest Canadian fashion, our own Globe Investor is bringing us the same story in real time, but thus:

Which, let's face it, takes all the fun out of today. Open: 1.00. High: 1.00. Low: 1.00. Yeah, sure. All quiet on the northern front.

This approximations might have been, maybe, appropriate for the exchange rate of beaver pelts, which - as the Bank of Canada's A History of the Canadian Dollar, by James Powell, informs us - were the currency in the early 1600s:

In 1608, Samuel de Champlain founded the first colonial settlement at Quebec on the St. Lawrence River. The one universally accepted medium of exchange in the infant colony naturally became the beaver pelt, although wheat and moose skins were also employed as legal tender.

Maybe. But not for a day like today. Bummer.