Some good advice in this thread. My thoughts...
Just got back from Mazatlan.
The exchange rate once we arrived was ~13.00 pesos / $1.00 USD, or ~10.00 pesos / $1.00 CDN most everywhere. You could likely do better than that by exchanging some money before your trip.
In terms of how much Mexican money you'll need, it somewhat depends on what you'll be spending your time doing. I took the bus all over the place (extremely efficient system btw), and they only accepted pesos as payment AFAIK, so we had to do some exchanging. There were other situations where pesos were easier (ie. tipping and bartering down things some times), especially when walking the "less-touristy" areas of the city.
If you're sticking to the most "touristy" hotspots, then US $ and/or credit cards will be accepted practically everywhere I'd think. We found that CDN $ was accepted more often than we expected in Mazatlan, but at the same time, I wouldn't ever want to get stuck anywhere in Mexico without some US $ or pesos!!
In short (my experience)...
small stuff -- pesos often easier
most stuff - US will work
certain "bigger" stuff -- CDN $ might be fine
I'd probably take 50% pesos, with some (25%?) US $ as well.
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