Not all of it came in spam cans but tiriaq is correct in that when it first came into Canada around 40 years ago that was the only way it was available unless the dealer was breaking up the can and selling it by the box.
A few years ago a bunch of it came into Canada with Cyrillic and English/French markings. It was packaged in plain brown heavy paper with 10 boxes of 50 per brick. The early stuff had issues in some North American firearms in that the steel used in the rims was quite hard and some rifles, especially semi autos couldn't strike it hard enough to fire it. It was also heavily greased and left a real mess in the receivers. The new stuff was much better and around $25 per brick. It is also quite accurate as the bullets measure out at .2245 inches. Not high velocity though. Standard velocity is all I have seen. I sold the last of what I had, two bricks at the Salmon Arm show last weekend. It lasted about 10 minutes after opening on Saturday.
The old ammo was marked "made in USSR" the new ammo is marked "made in Russia" on the box.
