In Ontario, all licence plates stay with their owner. If a car is registered to more than 1 person, then the plate could belong to either/any of the owners. Sell the car, keep the plate. In principle, you keep your plate for life. You can order new metal if yours gets beat up, but you get the same alphanumeric combination. Since 1973, we've been through all the letter-letter-letter-digit-digit-digit combinations and then all the DDD-LLL combinations and for about the last 15 years we've been working on LLLL-DDD. We're part way through the B's now. In practice, most folks just get a new combination when they buy a new car and abandon the combination from the previous car.
Vanity plates are usually more carefully looked after, of course. Originally you could only choose 6 characters, but it was expanded to 8 about 10 years ago. You are permitted to buy a vanity combination and then gift it to someone. Then it's up to them whether to put the plate on a car or just nail it to the garage wall. I'm not sure if you can transfer a vanity combination after you've used it when you leave the province, as in Jonny B's case.
Marcus has "PAGODE" because PAGODA is taken by someone we don't know. I asked for 230SL but it was also taken so I settled on "D 230SL." I figured something involving "113" would be nice in this community, but folks on the street wouldn't get the reference.
A fun thread... make a gallery of our plates?