Also it is interesting that the presence of such notes was publicly knows as far back as 2007 but it appears that it became know to the wider collector community only in 2012. Five years for public knowledge to be widely known in a specialist field? Am I missing something here?
I think we all missed something. I first noticed the reference in the Bank of Canada Review to those notes in about 2009 or so. I started a thread asking about it and nobody seemed to know anything. At some point the thread was deleted. In December 2011 I wrote to the BoC myself asking for info, and they responded a month later (posted at the top of the thread.)
It makes me wonder what other juicy info is out there hiding in plain sight, waiting for one of us to stumble across it.